Peace with Iran is a Good Thing
By Renee Parsons | OffGuardian | May 28, 2019
After weeks of drama perpetuating assorted Iranian ‘threats’ and after having conducted classified briefings with Congress on Tuesday, acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by his side, informed a press briefing that:
there will be no war with Iran”
And the US had,
deterred an Iranian attack based on our reposturing of assets, deterred attacks against American forces”
And that now:
[The] focus is to prevent an Iranian miscalculation. We do not want the situation to escalate. This is about deterrence; not about war. We’re not about going to war.”
Shanahan’s words could not have been more clear and definitive and yet, they have been met with silence by the Democrats and the MSM as if peace is less desirable, less profitable commodity than war. At the same press briefing Sen. Lindsay Graham, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, added his own pirouette as if there had been verifiable evidence of an Iranian threat:
We are ready to respond if we have to. The best thing would be for everyone to calm down and Iran to back off. I am hoping that this show of force will result in de-escalating.”
In other words, the US was selling the notion to anyone who would buy that the Iranians would have launched an attack if not for an increased US military build up that forced the Iranians to backpedal. It makes little difference who or what takes credit in the final analysis since peace is of the essence.
Donald Trump very likely won the 2016 election with pronouncement such as:
Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake.”
“We should have never been in Iraq.”
“We have destabilized the middle east.”
“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about.”
In view of the recent escalation of threats to Venezuela and collapse of the summit with North Korea, it has been unclear exactly who is administering US foreign policy given the President’s consistently inconsistent views and with the B Team filling a prominent role in what appears to be a presidential vacuum.
As unconfirmed, undefined “Iranian threats” first surfaced and the President’s closest national security advisors fanned the flames, he told White House reporters
It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens, I can tell you that. They’re not going to be happy.”
And later tweeting:
If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”
Declaring “heightened tensions” as if Iran was out-of-their-minds crazy enough to imminently launch an attack on a US facility, the Trump Administration evacuated non essential US Embassy personnel from Baghdad after two Saudi oil tankers were ‘attacked’ off the UAE coast, a low grade rocket exploded near the Embassy, three mortar shells landed within Baghdad’s Green Zone and a Yemeni drone ‘attacked’ a Saudi pipeline.
Combining an alarming sense of panic with an overly zealous response, all of that confluence of confusion was sufficient for the US to react with its usual belligerence dispatching a B52 bomber task force, an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aimed for the Strait of Hormuz (where one third of all oil passes through) and the release of a Pentagon “just in case” contingency for 120,000 troops in preparation for Armageddon.
History has its irony as it was the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln where President GW Bush grandstanded with his Mission Accomplished strut in May, 2003 announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq, six weeks after the US invasion.
With no moderating voice on the President’s national security team, National Security Advisor John Bolton, also known as the “devil incarnate,” has been aided and abetted by ‘bull in a china shop’ Pompeo to create a neocon foreign policy strategy that was not what Trump campaigned on.
While the combative trio is equally obsessive regarding Iran, Bolton and Pompeo organized the recent military buildup in the Persian Gulf in anticipation of a rapid response deployment when the next Iranian ‘threat’ occurred. While Bolton holds dual citizenship with Israel and the US, both Israel and Saudi Arabia have long targeted Iran for a direct military confrontation and would relish the opportunity.
Not surprisingly, there was push back from some of the usual coalition allies with British deputy commander Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika daring to suggest “There’s been no increased threat from Iranian backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas that he made it clear to Pompeo that a unilateral strategy of increasing pressure against Iran was ‘ill-advised.’
Pompeo’s hastily arranged ‘drop in’ on a European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels did little to instill confidence in sloppy US intel or the administration’s Iran agenda as Pompeo related the details.
The Pentagon helpfully pointed out that 120,000 troops would be insufficient if a ground mission was ordered which led Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to remark that war in Iran would make the Iraq war look like a “cake walk” referring to the fact that Iran is a cohesive country, four times larger than Iraq and has more than double the population of Iraq.
In other words, a recipe for an environmental, humanitarian and military disaster of epic proportions – in addition it should be expected that Russia and China would not be content to sit on the sidelines.
Many will recall the 2003 prediction that the Iraqi people would welcome American troops as liberators, strewing roses in their path, just prior to the war descending into unthinkable carnage.
As a result of all the uncertainty, Trump gave up the trash-talk and told Shanahan during a military briefing last week that he does not want to go to war with Iran letting his hawkish aides know that he did not want the “intensifying American pressure campaign against the Iranians to explode into open conflict.” It is worth knowing whether the President directly ordered Bolton and Pompeo to back off.
Trump’s assertion that “I make the final decision” is as if to reassure himself that he is in charge belies a reputation for vacillating and a weak-will that continues to plague his Administration especially on foreign policy.
While Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei has refused to negotiate with the US, explaining that “negotiating with the current US Government is toxic,” the Iranians have no interest in bargaining away their ballistic missiles which could reach Tel Aviv or putting limits on their operational range. As with North Korea, Iran is well aware of Libya’s Mummar Quaddafi fate as he laid down his weapons only to have HRC organize a revolt and order his untimely demise.
A recent FoxNews interview added some clarity and further confusion as Trump totally buys the neocon view that:
Iran has been a problem for so many years, look at all the conflicts they have caused.” Further explaining “I want to invade if I have to economically” to provide jobs. While Trump agreed that “there is a Military Industrial Complex” and “they do like war” and yet complaining that “I wipe out 100% of the caliphate and people here in DC, they never want to leave.”
When asked about his campaign pledges in 2016, Trump responded “I’m not somebody that wants to go into war” offering the assurance that “I have not changed” and yet the belligerent talk comes too easily as if Bolton was the last person he spoke with.
As he has expressed little public reaction to the administration’s ineptitude with North Korea at the Vietnam summit or the fiasco in Venezuela, Trump allows himself to be played like a fiddle, complicit with the neocon’s latest nefarious schemes that reveal him as a second-rate player; deteriorating before the public with a history of clumsy international gaffes. There is no question that neither Bolton nor Pompeo are to be trusted and that Bolton’s over reach of authority is the key driver pushing for confrontation and divisiveness while Pompeo is a more personally shrewd team player and somewhat less of a loose cannon.
Thanks to the high level of public awareness that nailed down the faulty details of this latest kerfuffle and its excessive harangues, Trump needs to relieve Bolton of his keys to the office before the next ‘threats’ take the US to the brink and find someone who better reflects his 2016 campaign promises.
Congress Fiddles While Trump Lurches Toward War on Iran
By Ron Paul | May 27, 2019
Congress, and particularly the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, seems determined to see the end of the Trump Administration before the 2020 vote. Although House Speaker Pelosi claims she is not seeking impeachment, she’s accusing the president of “covering up” something. However, she won’t say what until she can do more investigating.
But Trump’s opponents on both sides of the Congressional aisle don’t seem so enthusiastic about challenging the president when he actually does abuse his Constitutional authority to pursue a more aggressive policy overseas.
Late last week, for example, President Trump declared a national security “emergency” brought about by unspecified “Iranian malign activity” – a “loophole” allowing him to bypass Congressional review of some $8 billion in US weapons to be sold to Saudi Arabia.
Congress had been reluctant to approve yet more arms sales to Saudi Arabia after the President vetoed a bi-partisan House and Senate-approved bill requiring the US to end its military support for the Saudi war of aggression against Yemen.
What might this new Iran “emergency” be? As with the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Administration claims important secret intelligence — but of course we have to just trust them. From what we have heard from the Administration, it looks pretty flimsy. Rear Admiral Michael Gilday, the director of the Joint Staff, has outright claimed that the so-called “sabotage” of four container ships at port in the UAE is the doing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. But even Abu Dhabi didn’t claim Iranian involvement in the mysterious incident.
Could it have been a false flag?
Admiral Gilday also claims, without providing proof, that the recent firing of a small rocket in the general vicinity of the US Embassy in Iraq is the work of the Iranians. “We believe with a high degree of confidence that this [recent attacks] stems back to the leadership in Iran at the highest levels,” he said.
What would Iran gain by shooting off an insignificant rocket, exposing itself to US massive retaliation with no gain whatsoever? They don’t say.
The Trump Administration has been lacking any coherent foreign policy strategy for some time. It often seems the President is fighting more with his own appointees than with his opponents on Capitol Hill. As soon as he announces that ISIS is defeated and US troops must come home, his employees like National Security Advisor John Bolton “clarify” Trump’s statements to mean that troops are staying. Trump goes to Hanoi to cut a deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and Bolton shows up with a poison pill that blows up the deal.
Bolton announced plans for 120,000 US troops to the Middle East to help push the war on Iran he’s been hocking for 20 or so years. Then we heard it was 10,000. Then 1,500, of which 600 are already there.
Whether Trump is on board or not, his Administration is clearly dragging the US into conflict with Iran. While some Members remind the president that he does not have Constitutional authority to attack Iran without approval, that argument has not been very effective in deterring presidents thus far.
If Congress really wanted to rein in an out-of-control president, they have plenty of opportunity in his bogus “national emergency” declaration and his saber rattling toward Iran. But if asserting Constitutional authority means Congress acts to pull-back US militarism overseas, suddenly there is a great bipartisan silence. They’d rather impeach Trump over his rude Tweets than over his stomping on the Constitution.
Iran proposes ‘non-aggression pact’ to Gulf neighbors as regional tensions soar
RT | May 26, 2019
Iran has proposed signing a non-aggression pact to its neighbors, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. At the same time, the country is ready to defend itself from any attack, be it “an economic war or a military one.”
“Tehran has offered to sign a non-aggression pact with its neighbors in the Gulf,” Zarif said on Sunday during a joint press conference in Baghdad with his Iraqi counterpart Mohamed al-Hakim.
Iran’s top diplomat did not name an exact list of the countries eyed in the document, yet stressed that Tehran seeks to “build balanced relations” with all Gulf states. At the same time, Zarif cautioned that the country is ready to defend itself if attacked, by any means necessary.
We will defend against any war efforts against Iran, whether it be an economic war or a military one, and we will face these efforts with strength.
Tensions have been high in the region over the past weeks, as the ongoing standoff between the US and Iran got even more heated. Washington has ramped up its warlike rhetoric against Tehran, accusing it – but providing no hard evidence – of plotting attacks on US citizens in neighboring countries.
Apart from that, several Saudi tankers were damaged under shady circumstances at a UAE port – and the blame was squarely put on Iran. Tehran maintained it was not involved in inflicting the minor damage on the vessels, blaming the incident on some sort of “Israeli mischief” instead.
Following the incident with the tankers and a drone attack on a Saudi pipeline, attributed to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Riyadh accused Iran of seeking to destabilize the whole region and vowed to confront it with “all strength and determination” if attacked.
Tehran, on its part, has repeatedly stated that it’s not plotting to attack anyone, yet is more than capable of retaliating and even “defeating” the US and its allies in the Middle East.
US City of Baltimore Under Attack by NSA Cyber Weapon – Report
Sputnik – 26.05.2019
The cyber weapon was developed by the US tech spying agency to break into foreign computers, but now the US itself is under attack by the malware, and tech experts say it’s the handiwork of the NSA.
Guess which list unites North Korea, Iran, China, Russia, Israel and the United States? These are all the nations that have not signed the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace — Emmanuel’s Macron’s effort to stop cyber-attacks in peacetime.
The US’s National Security Agency (NSA), often portrayed in the media as the most technologically advanced intelligence agency in the world, and routinely resorts to hacking and cyber-attacks in order to steal the information they need. To do so, tech geniuses on government payrolls write “tools” — malware programs designed specifically to strike at vulnerabilities found in operational systems, including the US-made Windows OS family.
And then these programs get leaked.
In 2017, an unidentified group of hackers named Shadow Brokers published EternalBlue — NSA-made very powerful program capable of taking control of computers run on the Windows operational system. Anonymous NSA operators, cited by The New York Times, say it took the agency a year to find a flaw in Microsoft security to build the malware upon. Needless to say, once the flaw was discovered, NSA did not go out of its way to inform the software giant about it. In fact, it was only after the malware was published online that they contacted Microsoft and told them about the vulnerability.
Now the NSA-written malware is rampaging Baltimore, Maryland. The exact geography of the affected computers is undisclosed as Microsoft is trying to keep the lid on the outbreak, but it is likely that other cities were affected as well, the Times report says.
The malware is capable of paralyzing hospitals, airports, rail and shipping operators, ATMs and factories. Local US governments that use aged software and hardware are particularly vulnerable to EternalBlue attacks, according to the Times.
On 7 May, Baltimore city workers were hit with a classic ransomware attack. The malicious software locked the workers out of their computers and displayed a message written in remarkably poor English.
“We’re watching you for days and we’ve worked on your systems to gain full access to your company and bypass all of your protections,” the note on the screen warned against calling the FBI and demanded $100,000 in Bitcoin as ransom.
“We won’t talk more, all we know is MONEY!” the note said. “Hurry up! Tik Tak, Tik Tak, Tik Tak!”
According to The Baltimore Sun report, poor spelling does not necessarily indicate a foreign attacker: domestic hackers use it to deceive both victims and investigators.
Earlier in February, Allentown, Pennsylvania was also hit with an EternalBlue-based attack. It cost the city $1 million to remedy and $400,000 for new defences, according to the Times. In September, the malware hit San Antonio, Texas, locking the local sheriff’s office.
The Times reported that EternalBlue has become the favourite tool of the trade for government hackers. The 2016 WannaCry attack, attributed to North Korea and 2017 NotPetya attack, blamed on Russia, is said to be all based on EternalBlue. Iran has been accused of hacking airline networks in the Middle East, and China is said to have targeted Middle Eastern governments using the same tool.
The NSA tries to deflect flak for the Shadow Brokers leak and release of EternalBlue in the world, making an analogy with a Toyota truck — initially designed for peaceful use but converted by Middle Eastern militants into a weapon of war. Microsoft officials reject that analogy, saying EternalBlue was designed as a weapon from the start.
“These exploits are developed and kept secret by governments for the express purpose of using them as weapons or espionage tools. They’re inherently dangerous,” says Tom Burt, Microsoft’s Vice President of Customer Security and Trust. “When someone takes that, they’re not ‘strapping a bomb’ to it. It’s already a bomb.”
Rand Corp: how to destroy Russia
By Manlio Dinucci | Voltairenet | May 21, 2019
The conclusions of the latest confidential report by the Rand Corporation were recently made public in a « Brief ». They explain how to wage a new Cold War against Russia. Certain recommendations have already been implemented, but this systemic exposure enables us to understand their true objective.
Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world’s most reliable source for Intelligence and political analysis for the leaders of the United States and their allies.
The Rand Corp prides itself on having contributed to the elaboration of the long-term strategy which enabled the United States to win the Cold War, by forcing the Soviet Union to consume its own economic resources in the strategic confrontation. It is this model which was the inspiration for the new plan, Overextending and Unbalancing Russia, published by Rand [1]. According to their analysts, Russia remains a powerful adversary for the United States in certain fundamental sectors. To handle this opposition, the USA and their allies will have to pursue a joint long-term strategy which exploits Russia’s vulnerabilities. So Rand analyses the various means with which to unbalance Russia, indicating for each the probabilities of success, the benefits, the cost, and the risks for the USA.
Rand analysts estimate that Russia’s greatest vulnerability is that of its economy, due to its heavy dependency on oil and gas exports. The income from these exports can be reduced by strengthening sanctions and increasing the energy exports of the United States. The goal is to oblige Europe to diminish its importation of Russian natural gas, and replace it by liquefied natural gas transported by sea from other countries.
Another way of destabilising the Russian economy in the long run is to encourage the emigration of qualified personnel, particularly young Russians with a high level of education. In the ideological and information sectors, it would be necessary to encourage internal contestation and at the same time, to undermine Russia’s image on the exterior, by excluding it from international forums and boycotting the international sporting events that it organises.
In the geopolitical sector, arming Ukraine would enable the USA to exploit the central point of Russia’s exterior vulnerability, but this would have to be carefully calculated in order to hold Russia under pressure without slipping into a major conflict, which it would win.
In the military sector, the USA could enjoy high benefits, with low costs and risks, by increasing the number of land-based troops from the NATO countries working in an anti-Russian function. The USA can enjoy high probabilities of success and high benefits, with moderate risks, especially by investing mainly in strategic bombers and long-range attack missiles directed against Russia.
Leaving the INF Treaty and deploying in Europe new intermediate-range nuclear missiles pointed at Russia would lead to high probabilities of success, but would also present high risks. By calibrating each option to gain the desired effect – conclude the Rand analysts – Russia would end up by paying the hardest price in a confrontation, but the USA would also have to invest huge resources, which would therefore no longer be available for other objectives. This is also prior warning of a coming major increase in USA/NATO military spending, to the disadvantage of social budgets.
This is the future that is planned out for us by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank of the Deep State – in other words the underground centre of real power gripped by the economic, financial, and military oligarchies – which determines the strategic choices not only of the USA, but all of the Western world.
The « options » set out by the plan are in reality no more than variants of the same war strategy, of which the price in sacrifices and risks is paid by us all.
Translation by Pete Kimberley
Source: Il Manifesto (Italy)
[1] Overextending and Unbalancing Russia. Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options, by James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, Brent Williams, Rand Corporation, May 2019.
Where Lyme Disease Came From and Why It Eludes Treatment
By David Swanson | CounterPunch | May 17, 2019
A new book called Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons by Kris Newby adds significantly to our understanding of Lyme disease, while oddly seeming to avoid mention of what we already knew.
Newby claims (in 2019) that if a scientist named Willy Burgdorfer had not made a confession in 2013, the secret that Lyme disease came from a biological weapons program would have died with him. Yet, in 2004 Michael Christopher Carroll published a book called Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Germ Laboratory. He appeared on several television shows to discuss the book, including on NBC’s Today Show, where the book was made a Today Show Book Club selection. Lab 257 hit the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list soon after its publication.
Newby’s book reaches the same conclusion as Carroll’s, namely that the most likely source of diseased ticks is Plum Island. Newby reaches this conclusion on page 224 after mentioning Plum Island only once in passing in a list of facilities on page 47 and otherwise avoiding it throughout the book. This is bizarre, because Newby’s book otherwise goes into great depth, and even chronicles extensive research efforts that lead largely to dead ends, and because there is information available about Plum Island, and because Carroll’s best-selling book seems to demand comment, supportive or dismissive or otherwise.
In fact, I think that, despite the avoidance of any discussion of Plum Island, Newby’s research complements Carroll’s quite well, strengthens the same general conclusion, and then adds significant new understanding. So, let’s look at what Carroll told us, and then at what Newby adds.
Less than 2 miles off the east end of Long Island sits Plum Island, where the U.S. government makes or at least made biological weapons, including weapons consisting of diseased insects that can be dropped from airplanes on a (presumably foreign) population. One such insect is the deer tick, pursued as a germ weapon by the Nazis, the Japanese, the Soviets, and the Americans.
Deer swim to Plum Island. Birds fly to Plum Island. The island lies in the middle of the Atlantic migration route for numerous species. “Ticks,” Carroll writes, “find baby chicks irresistible.”
In July of 1975 a new or very rare disease appeared in Old Lyme, Connecticut, just north of Plum Island. And what was on Plum Island? A germ warfare lab to which the U.S. government had brought former Nazi germ warfare scientists in the 1940s to work on the same evil work for a different employer. These included the head of the Nazi germ warfare program who had worked directly for Heinrich Himmler. On Plum Island was a germ warfare lab that frequently conducted its experiments out of doors. After all, it was on an island. What could go wrong? Documents record outdoor experiments with diseased ticks in the 1950s (when we know that the United States was using such weaponized life forms in North Korea). Even Plum Island’s indoors, where participants admit to experiments with ticks, was not sealed tight. And test animals mingled with wild deer, test birds with wild birds.
By the 1990s, the eastern end of Long Island had by far the greatest concentration of Lyme disease. If you drew a circle around the area of the world heavily impacted by Lyme disease, which happened to be in the Northeast United States, the center of that circle was Plum Island.
Plum Island experimented with the Lone Star tick, whose habitat at the time was confined to Texas. Yet it showed up in New York and Connecticut, infecting people with Lyme disease — and killing them. The Lone Star tick is now endemic in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey.
If Newby agrees or disagrees with any of the above, she does not inform us. But here’s what she adds to it.
The outbreak of unusual tick-borne disease around Long Island Sound actually started in 1968, and it involved three diseases: Lyme arthritis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and babesiosis. A U.S. bioweapons scientist, Willy Burgdorfer, credited in 1982 with discovering the cause of Lyme disease, may have put the diseases into ticks 30 years earlier. And his report on the cause of Lyme disease may have involved a significant omission that has made it harder to diagnose or cure. The public focus on only one of the three diseases has allowed a disaster that could have been contained to become widespread.
Newby documents in detail Burgdorfer’s work for the U.S. government giving diseases to ticks in large quantities to be used as weapons, as they have been in Cuba in 1962, for example. “He was growing microbes inside ticks, having the ticks feed on animals, and then harvesting the microbes from the animals that exhibited the level of illness the military had requested.”
Burgdorfer published a paper in 1952 about the intentional infecting of ticks. In 2013, filmmaker Tim Grey asked him, on camera, whether the pathogen he had identified in 1982 as the cause of Lyme disease was the same one or similar or a generational mutation of the one he’d written about in 1952. Burgdorfer replied in the affirmative.
Interviewed by Newby, Burgdorfer described his efforts to create an illness that would be difficult to test for — knowledge of which he might have shared earlier with beneficial results for those suffering.
Newby, who has herself suffered from Lyme disease, blames the profit interests of companies and the corruption of government for the poor handling of Lyme disease. But her writing suggests to me a possibility she doesn’t raise, namely that those who know where Lyme disease came from have avoided properly addressing it because of where it came from.
Newby assumes throughout the book that there has to have been a particular major incident near Long Island Sound, either an accident or an experiment on the public or an attack by a foreign nation. Burgdorfer reportedly claimed to another researcher that Russia stole U.S. bioweapons. Based on that and nothing else, Newby speculates that perhaps Russia attacked the United States with diseased ticks, coincidentally right in the location where the U.S. government experimented with diseased ticks.
“What this book brings to light,” Newby writes, “is that the U.S. military has conducted thousands of experiments exploring the use of ticks and tick-borne diseases as biological weapons, and in some cases, these agents escaped into the environment. The government needs to declassify the details of these open-air bioweapons tests so that we can begin to repair the damage these pathogens are inflicting on human and animals in the ecosystem.”
Another product of U.S. bio-weapons tax dollars at work, of course, was the anthrax mailed to politicians in 2001. While Newby speculates that perhaps someone was trying to demonstrate the danger for our own good, I don’t think we should forget that one purpose served — whether or not intended — by the “anthrax attacks” was a significant augmentation of the Iraq war lies. The attacks were falsely blamed on Iraq, and even if people have forgotten that, they fell for it long enough for it to matter. The one bit of truth in current public understanding of Lyme disease is that it has not been falsely blamed on some country the United States is eager to bomb. Let’s keep it that way!
Islamic Republic No Threat to Anybody in Iraq or Elsewhere: Iran UN Mission
Al-Manar | May 16, 2019
Iran has rejected the United States’ claims that ‘Iranian activities’ endanger American sites and troops in Iraq, saying the Islamic Republic is no threat to anybody in Iraq or elsewhere.
“’Iran is no threat to anybody in Iraq or elsewhere, and Iran is not preparing for any attacks anywhere,” Alireza Miryousefi, the spokesman for Iran mission to the United Nations made the statement on Wednesday.
“Iran, as is evidenced by our history, only acts in self-defense, and has no offensive strategy against any nation,” he added, according to Mehr news agency.
The official censured the US for sticking to fake reports for spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic, saying, “Iranians will never capitulate to this new psychological war.”
The US has recently built up its military presence in the region over what it calls an Iranian threat to American troops and interests.
Last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that the US administration had received intelligence related to “Iranian activity” that put American facilities and service personnel at “substantial risk.”
Other senior officials within the US administration itself as well as other countries have however dismissed that claim.
Following Pompeo’s claims, the US on Wednesday ordered the partial evacuation of its embassy in Baghdad and a consulate in Erbil.
Trump considering replacing John Bolton: Report
Press TV – May 15, 2019
US media reports suggest that President Donald Trump is considering replacing his hawkish National Security Adviser John Bolton over his plans to push the United States towards a military conflict with Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.
Bolton “is headed for the exits, having flown too close to the sun on his regime change efforts for Iran, Venezuela and North Korea,” The National Interest magazine reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
“Hearing that Trump wants him out,” a former senior Trump administration official told the magazine.
There is speculation in Washington “that there’s now daylight between Trump and Bolton,” the report added.
The fighting has also expanded to include US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, officials say. A State Department official and a former White House official both report that Bolton and Pompeo are “fighting all the time.”
A former senior official in the State Department said Pompeo is enthusiastic about isolating Iran, but fearful of an actual war that might engulf much of the Middle East.
“John Bolton is the problem … Trump’s national security adviser is getting dangerous… particularly to the president’s ideals,” Douglas Macgregor, a Bolton rival and would-be successor, writes in Spectator USA.
Trump ran his election campaign on the promise to pull the US military out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — unwinnable post-9/11 wars that have consumed American lives and military budgets.
That partial retreat remains one of Trump’s strongest points in his pitch to be the so-called outsider president.
But Bolton is working in exactly the opposite direction.
The United States has been ratcheting up economic and military pressure on Iran, with Trump recently urging Tehran to talk to him.
“What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday.
But then he said he would not rule out the possibility of military action in Iran amid escalating tensions before slamming former secretary of state John Kerry for his involvement in the issue.
His remarks came after Bolton said on Sunday that the United States was sending an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in a “clear and unmistakable” message to Iran.
The Pentagon announced on Friday that the US was deploying an amphibious assault ship and a Patriot missile battery to bolster an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers already sent to the Persian Gulf.
Israel’s common denominator: Why Israel will continue to bomb Gaza
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 13, 2019
On May 4, Israel launched a series of deadly airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, prompting a response from various resistance groups. At least 25 Palestinians were killed and nearly 200 people wounded in the Israeli attacks. Four Israelis were also killed by Palestinian rockets.
The clashes were instigated by Israel, when the Israeli military killed four Palestinians in Gaza on May 3. Two were killed while protesting along the fence separating Gaza from Israel. They were participating in the Great March of Return, a protracted Palestinian non-violent protest demanding an end to the Israeli siege. The other two were killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a Hamas post in the central Gaza Strip.
Why did Netanyahu choose such timing to bomb Gaza? It would have made more sense to attack Gaza in the run-up to the general elections. For months before the April 9 elections, Netanyahu was repeatedly accused of being soft on Hamas.
Although desperate for votes, Netanyahu refrained from a major operation against Gaza, because of the inherent risk in such attacks, as seen in the botched Israeli incursion into Khan Younis on November 11. Netanyahu could have lost a highly contested election, had he failed.
Following a victory, the soon-to-be longest-serving Israeli Prime Minister has the necessary political capital to launch wars at whim.
Israeli politics featured heavily in the latest Gaza onslaught.
Netanyahu is in the final stages of forming a new coalition, yet another government of the like-minded far right, religious zealots and ultra-nationalist politicians which, he admits, is not easy.
“It’s not a simple job, and there are different aspects – giving out portfolios, control over the state budget and many other challenges,” Netanyahu said at a Likud party meeting on April 30.
If Netanyahu succeeds, he will form his fifth government – 4 of them consecutively. However, his main challenge is to reconcile among the various potential coalition partners.
Netanyahu wishes to include six parties in his new government: his own, the Likud, with 35 seats in the Israeli Knesset (parliament); religious extremist parties: Shas (8 places), United Torah Judaism (8), Yisrael Beiteinu of ultra-nationalist, Avigdor Lieberman (5), the newly-formed Union of Right-wing Parties (5) and the centrist Kulanu with 4 seats.
“Netanyahu is keen to include all six parties in his government to provide a semblance of stability and prevent a narrow majority that will be at the mercy of a single disgruntled party threatening to quit,” reported the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post newspaper.
But how is Netanyahu to maintain peace among vastly different allies and how is that relevant to the bombing of Gaza?
Netanyahu bombed Gaza because it is the only unifying demand among all of his allies. He needed to assure them of his commitment to keeping the pressure on Palestinian Resistance, of maintaining the siege on Gaza and ensuring the safety of Israel’s southern towns and settlements.
Barring that, there is little that these groups have in common. Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu and the ultra-Orthodox parties barely agree on some fundamental issues. For example, Lieberman has been pushing for a draft law requiring ultra-Orthodox conscription in the Israeli army, vehemently rejected by Netanyahu’s religious allies.
Although the election performance of Lieberman’s party was hardly impressive, his influence goes beyond numbers. Lieberman had resigned his post as a Defense Minister last November in protest of Netanyahu’s supposed “capitulation to terror”, but he has formed a strong alliance with Israel’s southern towns bordering the besieged Gaza Strip.
For years, Lieberman has expressed solidarity with them and, in return, has manipulated this whenever he wishes to pressure or challenge the Prime Minister.
Lieberman has exploited the notion among residents and settlers in southern Israel and the Occupied West Bank that they are being mistreated compared to their compatriots elsewhere.
![Gaza after Israeli strikes on 5 May, 2019 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]](https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_9022.jpg?resize=933%2C622&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
Gaza after Israeli strikes on 5 May, 2019 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]
Following a truce between Israel and Gaza factions last November, for example, hundreds of settlers protested their “second class status”, demanding greater government support to protect their “security” against Gaza. Interestingly, these border towns have been at the centre of a significant economic and demographic growth over the last few years, which has been stimulated by the Israeli government’s investments in the area.
Seeing themselves as the heirs to the Zionist founders of Israel, residents of these towns believe that they are the defenders of the Zionist vision.
Despite their continuous complaints, southern Israeli communities have seen constant growth in economic opportunity, thus population. This fact has placed these areas at the centre of Israeli politicians’ radar, all trying to win favour with their leaders and obtain the support of their vastly expanding economic sectors.
This recent electoral strength has made the demands and expectations of Israeli southern community leaders a focal point in mainstream Israeli politics.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that one of the conditions placed by Lieberman to join Netanyahu’s coalition is the intensification of the Israeli siege on Gaza and the liquidation of the Gaza resistance.
Although Benny Gantz, the leader of the centrist Blue and White Party, has lost the elections, he wishes to stay relevant in mainstream politics by appeasing to Jewish settlers and residents of southern Israel. During the Israeli army’s attack on Gaza on 4 May, Gantz joined the chorus calling for more Palestinian blood.
“We must strike hard, in an uncompromising manner, in any way the army will recommend, with military and intelligence considerations,” he told Israeli Channel 13. “We must restore the deterrence that has been eroded catastrophically for more than a year.”
Following the death of 4 Israelis as a result of Gaza rockets, Israeli politicians jockeyed to show support for southern residents, demanding yet more violence. The euphoria of support inspired the mayor of Sderot, Alon Davidi, to call for the invasion of Gaza.
The latest attack on Gaza was meant to serve the interests of all of Netanyahu’s possible coalition partners. Alas, although a truce has been declared, more Israeli violence should be expected once the coalition is formed because, for Netanyahu to keep his partners happy, he would need to keep pounding Gaza persistently.
Is Canada’s Minister of Defence an Arms Pusher?
Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan
By Yves Engler · May 11, 2019
Would it surprise you to learn that Canada’s minister of defence is an arms pusher?
Last Friday members of Mouvement Québécois pour la Paix interrupted a $135-a-plate luncheon to confront defence minister Harjit Sajjan. At an event sponsored by SNC Lavalin, Bombardier, Rio Tinto, etc., we called for cutting military spending, for Canada to withdraw from NATO and an end to weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.
While Sajjan’s responsibility for NATO and military spending are straightforward, his role in fueling the Saudi led war in Yemen is less obvious. But, the Department of National Defence (DND) plays a substantial role in Canadian arms exports to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
As he did the last three years, Sajjan is set to speak at the CANSEC arms bazar in Ottawa later this month. For more than two decades the annual Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) conference has brought together representatives of arms companies, DND, Canadian Forces (CF), various other arms of the federal government and dozens of foreign governments. In 2018 more than 11,000 people attended the two-day conference, including 16 MPs and senators and many generals and admirals.
The corporation supplying Saudi Arabia with more than $10 billion in Light Armoured Vehicles produces the same LAVs for the CF. In a 2012 Canadian Military History article Frank Maas writes, “the CF has continued to purchase LAVs because they have been successful in the field, and they support a domestic producer, General Dynamics Land Systems Canada (GDLS-C), that cooperates closely with the military.” GDLS’ London, Ontario, operations exist largely because of interventionist military industrial policy. A 2013 Federal government report on “Leveraging Defence Procurement Through Key Industrial Capabilities” lists GDLS as one of three “Canadian Defence Industry Success Stories.”
Beyond contracts, subsidies and various other forms of support to Canadian weapons makers, DND has long promoted arms exports. Its website highlights different forms of support to arms exporters. “Learn how the Department of National Defence can assist in connecting Canadian industry to foreign markets”, explains one section. Another notes: “Learn how the Department of National Defence keeps Canadian companies informed of business opportunities at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).”
Based in 30 diplomatic posts around the world (with cross-accreditation to many neighbouring countries), Canadian Defence Attachés promote military exports. According to DND’s website, Defence Attachés assist “Canadian defence manufacturers in understanding and accessing foreign defence markets … facilitate Canadian industry access to relevant officials within the Ministries of Defence of accredited countries … support Canadian industry at key defence industry events in accredited countries … raise awareness in accredited countries of Canadian defence industrial capabilities … provide reports on accredited country defence budget information, items of interest, and trade issues to Canadian industry.”
Representatives of DND often talk up Canadian military equipment as part of delegations to international arms fairs such as the UK’s Defence Security and Equipment International exhibition. According to a FrontLine Defence story titled “Representing Canada in the UAE IDEX”, representatives of DND helped 50 Canadian arms companies flog their wares at the Abu Dhabi-based International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) in February. To help the companies move their wares at the largest arms fair in the Middle East, Commander of the Bahrain-based Combined Task Force 150, Commodore Darren Garnier, led a Canadian military delegation to IDEX.
International ports visits by naval frigates are sometimes designed to spur arms sales. Lieutenant Bruce Fenton writes, “Canadian warships can serve as venues for trade initiatives, as examples of Canadian technology, and as visible symbols of Canadian interest in a country or region. In countries where relationships are built over time, as is the case with many Asian and Middle Eastern countries, a visit by a Canadian warship can be an important part of a dialogue that can lead to commercial opportunities for Canadian industry.”
To get a sense of the interaction between the various components of the military industrial complex, the FrontLine Defence story detailing Canada’s participation in IDEX was written by Brett Boudreau. His byline notes that he “is a retired CAF Colonel, a Fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, and former Director of Marketing and Communications at CADSI.” Boudreau’s trajectory — from the CF, to arms industry spokesperson, to militarist think tank, to writing for a militarist publication — is a stark example of one individual moving through the various components of the military industrial complex. But Boudreau is not unique. It is common for retired CF and DND officials to take up arms industry posts, including senior positions. It wouldn’t be surprising if Sajjan ended up on the board of an arms company after he leaves politics.
Harjit Sajjan heads a ministry intimately tied to a globally oriented corporate weapons industry that profits from war. Is this something Canadians understand and support? Or would the majority of us be upset to learn their Minister of Defence is an arms pusher, promoting sales to anti-democratic, repressive regimes?
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