MAGA and Progressive Lawmakers Unite to Lambast Biden’s Attacks on Houthis
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 28.01.2024
US representatives and senators of all stripes have subjected the president to sharp criticism over his strikes in Yemen.
US President Joe Biden’s recent air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen have provoked cross-party criticism in Congress.
Representatives Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), as well as other 12 House Democrats and six Republicans, have joined ranks to express “serious concerns” about the “unauthorized” strikes.
“We believe the US’ unauthorized strikes in Yemen violate the Constitution and US statute,” wrote the lawmakers, arguing that Congress has the sole power to declare war and authorize military action.
Addressing Biden himself, they continued: “We urge your Administration to seek authorization from Congress before involving the US in another conflict in the Middle East, potentially provoking Iran-backed militias that may threaten US military service members already in the region, and risking escalation of a wider regional war,” the letter said, as quoted by Axios.
Since January 12, the US and its allies have been carrying out strikes with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs against the Houthis in Yemen.
The US-led coalition has conducted 11 strikes against the Shiite militia so far in response to the Houthis targeting Israel-linked vessels in the Red Sea in a bid to force Tel Aviv to halt military actions against Palestinians in Gaza.
Earlier this week, another bipartisan group of senators questioned Washington’s effort to protect foreign ships in the Red Sea.
“As Commander-in-Chief, you have the power and responsibility to defend the United States under Article II of the Constitution,” a letter signed by Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Todd Young (R-Ind.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) said. “However, most vessels transiting through the Red Sea are not US ships, which raises questions about the extent to which these authorities can be exercised.”
Commenting on the strikes on Yemen targets, the lawmakers drew attention to the fact that “there is no current congressional authorization for offensive US military action against the Houthis.”
“[U]nless there is a need to repel a sudden attack, the Constitution requires that the United States not engage in military action absent of a favorable vote of Congress,” the lawmakers insisted.
While non-interventionists on both sides of the US political aisle are urging Biden to show restraint, the hawks are chastising the president for not doing enough against the Yemen Shiite group.
For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lambasted the president for “failing to sufficiently exercise the authority he has.”
“[Biden’s] played whack-a-mole against warehouses and launch sites, but left the terrorists’ air defenses and command-and-control facilities intact,” argued McConnell.
McConnell highlighted the 2002 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) that empowered then-US President George W. Bush to kick off the Iraq War. In 2023, US lawmakers sought to strip US presidents of the AUMF; however, the legislative measure got stuck in the US Congress.
Not only US lawmakers but also right- and left-wing American scholars have recently warned the Biden administration against escalating tensions in the Middle East.
They particularly argued that the cost of the global trade disruption caused by the Red Sea crisis would be far less than the cost of the US operations against Yemen, especially given the risk of a clash with Iran, which traditionally supported Shiite militias in the small Middle Eastern state. A larger regional war is looming, they warned.
Pentagon contradicts White House about US troop presence in Yemen
The Cradle | January 28, 2024
US defense officials claim they have no boots on the ground in Yemen, despite a recent acknowledgement that US forces are indeed present in the war-torn Gulf state, a 27 January report from The Intercept shows.
On 17 January, a journalist asked US Defense Department press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder if he could give assurances that the US had no troops on the ground in Yemen. Ryder responded, “I’m not aware of any U.S. forces on the ground.”
However, the White House reported to Congress on 7 December that “A small number of United States military personnel are deployed to Yemen to conduct operations against al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS.”
Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, who worked on Yemen as a Capitol Hill staffer, told The Intercept it is possible Brig. Gen. Ryder “is trying to skirt the question to avoid greater scrutiny.”
Pentagon officials also deny that the US is at war with Yemen despite bombing it.
“We don’t think that we are at war,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said on 18 January. “We don’t want to see a regional war.”
One journalist in the press briefing responded, saying, “We’ve bombed them five times now … if this isn’t war, what is war?”
This month, the US began a new bombing campaign against Yemen, which is now primarily governed by the Ansarallah resistance movement. With US and UK backing, Saudi Arabia and the UAE fought a war against Ansarallah between 2015 and 2022.
This month’s US bombing campaign came after Ansarallah-led Yemeni forces began attacking Israeli-linked shipping vessels in the Red Sea. Ansarallah wishes to stop the Israeli military campaign on Gaza, which has killed over 26,000 Palestinians and is widely viewed as constituting genocide.
But as the US bombing campaign in Yemen began, “defense officials suddenly became more reticent about the American military presence in Yemen,” The Intercept noted.
Though US officials claim their forces are in Yemen to fight Al-Qaeda-linked groups, a BBC investigation released on 22 January revealed that the UAE, a close US ally, has hired Al-Qaeda militants to fight for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Emirati-backed government in sparsely populated eastern Yemen.
A whistleblower cited in the investigation provided the BBC with “a document with 11 names of former Al-Qaeda members now working in the STC,” among them former high-ranking operatives of the extremist group.
Nasser al-Shiba, a former high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, is now the commander of the of the STC’s armed units, several sources told the BBC.
US, UK jets bomb Yemen’s main oil export terminal
The Cradle | January 27, 2024
Yemen’s Al-Masirah TV reported on 27 January that US and UK warplanes bombed the port of Ras Issa, the country’s main oil export terminal, located in Hodeidah province.
The news followed an announcement by the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which claimed: “On Jan. 27 at approximately 3:45 a.m. (Sanaa time), US Central Command Forces conducted a strike against a Houthi anti-ship missile aimed into the Red Sea and which was prepared to launch. US Forces identified the missile in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”
No casualties have been reported from the latest US-led aggression on Yemen.
The attack came a few hours after the country’s armed forces carried out a successful operation against the Marshall Islands-flagged and UK-linked Martin Luanda oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden, setting the vessel on fire.
No deaths or injuries were reported among the crew as a US navy ship was providing assistance, CENTCOM said.
The attack on the oil tanker was described as “a victory for the oppression of the Palestinian people, and a response to the US-UK aggression against Yemen” by armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree.
Singapore-based multinational commodity trading company Transfigura confirmed the Martin Luanda was operated on its behalf and that it was carrying Russian naphtha “bought below the price cap in line with G7 sanctions.”
“We are aware of reports that the M/V Marlin Luanda, a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, has sustained damage from an attack in the Gulf of Aden. Current reports suggest no casualties, and nearby coalition vessels are on the scene,” a UK government spokesperson said following the attack.
Shortly after the attack, the Free Spirit vessel, chartered by Swiss-based Dutch multinational energy and commodity trading company Vitol to carry crude oil, did a U-turn before reaching the Gulf of Aden, according to data from LSEG Shipping Research.
Although US, UK, and Israeli-linked vessels are being forced to avoid the Red Sea altogether thanks to Sanaa’s pro-Palestine operations, Saudi and Chinese shipments are continuing to transit the vital waterway unimpeded.
US enlists extremists to attack Russian troops in Syria: Official
The Cradle | January 26, 2024
The Russian President’s Special Envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, has accused Washington of directing Syrian armed groups to carry out attacks against Russian troops in the country.
“There are indications that the Americans are specifying tasks for their forces from among the Syrian armed opposition to inflict the greatest amount of damage on Russian military forces in Syria,” Lavrentiev said on 26 January.
Lavrentiev added these attacks are planned not only against Russian forces in southern Syria but also in what is known as the Idlib de-escalation zone northwest of the country – patrolled by Russian and Turkish forces in line with a 2018 agreement.
“[The US] has begun … supplying [extremist groups] with modern weapons and modern drones so that it can carry out raids, including on the Hmeimim base.”
Hmeimim is a Russian-operated military base located southeast of the Syrian city of Latakia. Hostile, unidentified drones have approached the Hmeimim base in the past.
On 3 October, Idlib-based extremists launched a drone towards a crowded military college in the city of Homs, killing dozens of civilians and graduating officers.
Russian officials have repeatedly accused the US of harboring and training extremist militants in Syria, particularly inside Washington’s Al-Tanf military base.
Russian and Syrian officials have also accused US forces of providing ISIS with logistical support and allowing it to operate from the 55-kilometer area surrounding the Al-Tanf base.
Lavrentiev’s comments come as ISIS is making a resurgence in Syria. Despite losing the majority of its territory in the country, the group’s cells operate in the Syrian desert – geographically linked to Al-Tanf and the 55-kilometer zone around it – carrying out frequent hit and run attacks against Syrian troops, civilians, farmers, and truffle harvesters.
This marked resurgence in ISIS activity coincides with ongoing attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq by Iraqi resistance factions in support of Gaza and in rejection of US support for Israel.
Since October, the Iraqi resistance has launched at least 153 attacks on the US bases.
US officials are reportedly also in talks to establish a time-table with the Iraqi government for a withdrawal of their troops from Iraq.
However, sources told Reuters that the talks “are expected to take several months, if not longer, with the outcome unclear and no US troop withdrawal imminent.”
As US bases in Syria come under fire, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a US-backed Kurdish militia which helps oversee Washington’s occupation of the country’s oilfields – has also been facing a widespread rebellion since last August, waged by Arab tribes with Syrian government backing.
Saudi, Chinese vessels undeterred by Yemen Red Sea ops
The Cradle | January 26, 2024
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is continuing to send oil and fuel tankers through the Red Sea, despite US and UK bombing of Yemen and attacks by Yemen’s armed forces on Israeli, US, and UK-linked ships passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
“We’re moving in the Red Sea with our oil and products cargoes,” Mohammed al-Qahtani, head of Aramco’s refining and oil trading and marketing businesses, told Bloomberg on 26 January.
The risks of continuing to use the Red Sea route to Europe amid the violence are “manageable,” he said.
In November, Yemen’s de-facto government, led by the Ansarallah resistance movement, began targeting ships with Israeli links and ships traveling to Israel via the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
Ansarallah took the decision in response to Israel’s bombing and ground campaign against Gaza, which many view as a genocide.
Rather than press Israel to end attacks on Gaza, the US and UK began bombing targets in Yemen, endangering not only Israeli-linked ships but ships from other nations as well.
In response, many of the world’s largest shipping companies began redirecting ships around the Horn of Africa, adding two weeks to the journey from Asia to Europe.
But in January, Aramco increased crude shipments through the Red Sea toward Europe, according to vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
“That is also giving us huge access and optionality,” Qahtani said. “We are assessing that almost on a daily basis.”
He said that the cost of these shipments has increased, as few shipping companies are willing to travel the route, and insurance costs have risen. “But overall it’s is very manageable.”
Most Saudi crude is exported east to Asia, but the kingdom has been able to continue using the Red Sea route for western shipments due to its continued ties with the Yemeni government.
Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah continue to negotiate a formal end to the war they fought between 2015 and 2022.
As western shipping companies have rerouted their ships, Chinese firms have stepped in to fill the void, as China also enjoys good relations with Ansarallah and does not fear its ships being attacked in the Red Sea.
Chinese firms have been serving ports such as Doraleh in Djibouti, Hodeidah in Yemen, and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, which all saw major drops in port traffic following the attacks.
Cichen Shen, the China expert at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, told the Financial Times that the “easiest explanation” for the rush of Chinese operators into the region was that they seek to exploit their relative invulnerability to attack to win business.
“You have commercial interest and you see this capacity gap and you see the demand,” Shen said of the lines’ motivation for moving ships to the region. “I think the commercial interest is probably the biggest reason.”
Who Is the Antiwar Candidate?
Fuggedaboutit!
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JANUARY 25, 2024
I sometimes wonder what the Founders, if they could return to life and see their creation, would think of today’s American Republic. President George W. Bush described the Constitution of the United States as “just a goddamned piece of paper” before he went on a rampage all over the world in what he called the “war on terror.” Of course, he had probably never even read the Constitution or the Federalist Papers and therefore did not understand how the Founders had deliberately made it difficult to go to war, which they regarded as the greatest evil confronting the new nation. Bush proceeded to push through other unconstitutional legislation including the so-called Patriot Act which empowered him to kill some hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings in places like Afghanistan and Iraq without declaring war on anyone after having produced fabricated information to justify the brutality.
But that was then and now is quite different and even worse, with a president who often appears to be lacking any brain cells holding hands behind his furrowed brow. The United States is currently at war in two countries, has illegal occupying military forces based in at least three more, and is quite possibly conniving at adding a few more enemies du jour, namely Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China and Russia. All of this is being accomplished without declarations of war from Congress and without even compliance with the 1973 unconstitutional War Powers Act, which mandated that the president should be confronting an imminent threat to take such action. Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken have also twice sidestepped the requirement that Congress should approve all arms transfers to foreign nations by falsely claiming an “emergency” to ship $250 million of armaments to Israel, weapons that are being used to carry out a genocide against the Palestinians, making the US totally complicit in that war crime.
I have of course been following the Republican primaries as well as the flow of self-justifying verbiage otherwise known as lying coming out of the mouths of the Democratic Party incumbents, most notably the Zionist-Catholic Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden; his able sidekick Kamala “has anyone seen her lately” Harris; his Antony Blinken who goes to Israel to negotiate and the first thing he tells Bibi is that he is a Jew; his Director of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas who has forgotten that real countries have borders; and his Treasury Secretary Janice Yellen who is happy funding multiple wars simultaneously while running up the already unsustainable federal debt. Behind it all is the apparent belief that the United States should be empowered to tell the rest of the world how to behave. Oh, and the Democrats have decided to base their 2024 campaign on the highbrow principle of free abortions for everyone! Joe Biden’s confessor would like to hear that!
And then there is Congress, which is following the Senator John McCain principle that one should always embrace the possibility for a new war. Congressman Nancy Pelosi and Senator Schumer seem to love Ukraine and Israel so much that it leaves little time to do anything for their actual constituents. Schumer often reminds audiences that his surname is close to the Hebrew word for protector, making him “the Jewish state’s protector in the Senate.”
The problem is that America’s so-called government has been so corrupted by both money pouring in from defense contractors and Jewish/Israeli interests that they have lost sight of the people who have the misfortune of having voted the bastards into office. Opinion polls suggest that the public has gone off both the comedians running Ukraine and the Israeli baby killers in Gaza. The voters have also learned that they have little to no say regarding what the psychopaths in the White House and on Capitol Hill decide to do with their tax money and even their very lives.
Just to show how useless voting has become, it is interesting to look at the policies concerning war and peace that have been enunciated by current and recent presidential candidates to find out if anyone seriously wants to step on the brakes of the war machine. Bear in mind that the Neocons have come to control the foreign policies of both major parties which means that Israel will always come first in Washington while war will also be a constant element in America’s relationship with the world.
First comes Genocide Joe whose record speaks for itself. He managed to get out of Afghanistan by abandoning many billions of dollars-worth of military equipment and killing a bunch of American soldiers, but he quickly sought to make up for that by avoiding a negotiated end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and giving Israel a free hand backed by money and weapons to undertake the slaughter in Gaza. He has made America accessory to both conflicts and has a hit list of other countries he might decide to weaken or attack to demonstrate that he is a strong leader. The possible victims include major nations like Iran, Russia and China. He is now attacking the Houthis in Yemen and has warned that if even a single American is killed at the illegal military bases in Iraq and Syria he might have to go to war with Iran, which he blamed for the incidents without providing any evidence. His Vice President is Kamala Harris, who is married to a Hollywood Jewish lawyer. She is, of course, little more than an affirmative action token in place, but makes noises indicating that she is fully on board with what is going on with Israel and Ukraine.
Trump the GOP nominee-apparent? He is completely ignorant on most issues including foreign policy and wars and he appoints reckless hawks and neocons like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to senior positions. Christian Zionist Mike Pence, a dispensationalist who wants the world to end so he can be wafted up to heaven, was his Vice President. Trump is totally owned by the Israel Lobby operating through his son-in-law and his former Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Friedman notably spent his time in the Jewish state supporting Israel rather than working on behalf of American citizens or US interests. Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem in spite of international agreements making such a move illegal after receiving $100 million in political donations from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He also recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, allowed illegal settlement expansion, and gave Netanyahu a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians. Trump also ordered the killing of Qassim Suleimani, a senior Iranian official who was in Baghdad on a peace mission and staged missile attacks on Syria based on false intelligence. Trump gives lip service to ending “useless wars” but never did so in practice when he was in office. He is prone to throwing around threats and has declared recently that if an enemy in the Middle East spills a “’drop of American blood’ I will spill a ‘gallon of yours.’” This comes from a man who avoided the Vietnam War draft because he found a doctor who discovered that he suffered from “bone spurs.”
And then there is still standing the Republican contender Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina and Donald Trump’s United Nations representative. She has been described as the female version of John McCain and she is a complete supporter of the carnage in Ukraine and is even more so a total Israel firster. She is a hawk across the board and it is believed that the bulk of her political financial support comes from Jewish sources that are tied to Israel. She has said that Israel should eliminate Hamas, which she considers to encompass all Palestinians, and that the US should not take in any Palestinian refugees. She also rejects the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict because the Palestinians, who have rejected several two states solutions according to Nikki, want instead a one-state solution that would eliminate Israel. She also supports the war against Russia in Ukraine.
And then there is good old Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who recently dropped out of the race. He might just be the most vicious Zionist of them all. He has led a number of delegations from Florida to Israel and was one of the first to respond to October 7th Gaza events by banning Palestinian groups at all state universities due to their alleged “antisemitism.” He did not ban or even criticize a single Jewish group for cheerleading the subsequent slaughter of the Palestinians and even opposes giving Palestinian refugees US visas because he claims they are all “antisemites.” He fully supports everything Israel is doing in Gaza and believes that Netanyahu should have a free hand to do whatever he wants to the Arabs. When DeSantis was a Congressman he notoriously refused to meet with survivors in his district from the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty which killed 34 American crewmen and injured more than 170. The Israelis sought to sink the ship and a cover-up of the incident ensued thanks to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who declared that he would rather see the ship go to the bottom of the sea and all on board killed than embarrass his Israeli friends. LBJ also ordered the recall of a squadron of US jet fighters that were sent to help the Liberty.
Not much room left! Finally there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr) who initially did a good job in fooling potential voters into thinking he was a man of peace, but he turned all John McCain after he blundered by praising Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters. Israel’s friends and partisans quickly informed him that Waters was on their enemies list because of his openly expressed support for the Palestinian cause. Kennedy immediately deleted his praise of Waters and declared him to be a “vicious anti-Semite.” He also claimed falsely that the Palestinian Authority has offered to pay a bounty to any Palestinians who “kill a Jew anywhere in the world” while also claiming that Palestinian children are all “being raised as serial killers. He approves of the demolitions of Palestinians’ homes and argues that in Gaza “Israel is doing more right now to protect human life” while he also praises the IDF’s “unique moral approach” to war.
Kennedy also issued a detailed statement online and has become one of the Jewish state’s most outspoken supporters. He posted on X: “This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now. As President, I’ll make sure that our policy is unambiguous so that the enemies of Israel will think long and hard before attempting aggression of any kind. I applaud the strong statements of support from the Biden White House for Israel in her hour of need. However, the scale of these attacks means it is likely that Israel will need to wage a sustained military campaign to protect its citizens. Statements of support are fine, but we must follow through with unwavering, resolute, and practical action. America must stand by our ally throughout this operation and beyond as it exercises its sovereign right to self-defense.”
Kennedy’s inability to separate fact from fiction is evident in his referral to “Palestinian settlements within Israel,” when describing Palestinians living in what is left of their former land that is now under Israeli occupation and subject to constant settlement expansion, as though the Palestinians are the ones colonizing the Israelis. Kennedy is now running as an independent but has lost many of his staffers because of his position on Gaza. Many antiwar Americans were initially thrilled when Kennedy announced that he would be against Joe Biden in this year’s primaries and that he’d hired former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, an antiwar progressive, to be his campaign manager. But Kucinich quit in the middle of October. In November, Kennedy’s field team, headed by former California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s wife Rhonda, also quit. In December, his foreign policy and veteran’s affairs adviser James R. Webb, Marine Corps veteran of Iraq War II and son of the former senator from Virginia, also submitted his resignation. Webb revealed that his resignation was in disgust over Kennedy’s stance on Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip and Kennedys’ claim that “collective punishment” of civilians is justified.
One might add that there is another interesting more-or-less independent in the race, namely Jill Stein who will be seeking the nomination of the Green Party. She is a genuine antiwar person whom I have known for eight years and she has criticized the “endless war machine” as well as what is going on in Ukraine and in Gaza, where she has called for an immediate cease fire. Alas, she has no chance of getting more than a couple percentage points of the votes cast.
Other fringe candidates include Cornel West, an independent, and two Democrats who will continue to appear on the primary ballots going ahead. They are Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. So, there you have it folks. To paraphrase the immortal Donald Trump, peace on earth is for losers!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Insurance underwriters insert ‘no connection to Israel’ clause for shipping
MEMO | January 25, 2024
Insurance underwriters are requiring some clients to sign contracts guaranteeing that they have no connection to Israel or the US in order to obtain cover for cargo ships passing through the Suez Canal, the New York Times has reported. The demand comes as Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have pushed up insurance premiums for merchant vessels.
According to the NYT, the attacks at this critical choke point handling 12 per cent of global trade have more than doubled the average worldwide shipping costs. Some ships are opting to avoid the Suez Canal and instead take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, adding weeks to delivery times.
Passing through the Red Sea still necessitates expensive speciality war risk insurance offered by London brokers to cover potential Houthi strikes. Rates have jumped as much as 50 times more than before the Yemen conflict, and now cost up to one per cent of a ship’s value despite relatively minimal damage to ships so far. For a ship carrying goods worth $100 million, that could mean an extra $1m to be insured.
Insurers blame the increased risk on Israel’s military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza. By forcing clients to guarantee that they have no ties with Israel and its Western allies, underwriters aim to shield themselves from inadvertently covering any vessels associated with the current geopolitical tensions underlying the attacks.
Analysts say that the ripple effects on global trade and consumer prices are still unfolding. They warn that if Red Sea transit remains high-risk, inflation could return.
The demand by underwriters follows previous preventative measures taken by vessels to avoid Houthi attacks. Earlier this month, cargo ships passing into the Red Sea began to declare that they have no links to Israel, according to data from the navigation safety feature known as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which transmits the identity, location and destination of larger vessels.
Israel’s Western allies appear to be running out of options in their attempt to contain the Houthis. Yesterday, the Financial Times revealed that the US has urged China to help curb Houthi attacks around the crucial Bab Al-Mandab Strait. Chinese ships are not being targeted by the Yemeni group and nor are vessels of countries that are not supporting Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Nevertheless, China is reported to have expressed “concern” about the attacks, and called for “restraint”.
Yemeni missiles force US navy to turn back from Bab al-Mandab Strait
The Cradle | January 25, 2024
The Yemeni armed forces announced late on 24 January that intense clashes took place with several US warships escorting two commercial vessels attempting to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
“A clash occurred today between a number of US destroyers and warships in the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab while they were protecting two US commercial ships,” the spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a video statement.
“Despite attempts by the warships to intercept them, our ballistic missiles reached their targets successfully,” Saree’s statement added, noting that a US warship was “directly hit” and the commercial vessels “were forced to retreat.”
According to the Yemeni official, the battle lasted for about two hours.
Abdullah bin Amer, Deputy Head of the Moral Guidance Department at the Yemeni Ministry of Defense in Sanaa, said that the US warships tried to counter the attack “in a confused and intense manner,” launching missiles that reportedly “fell into the sea [and] on the Yemeni mainland in empty areas.”
In the early hours of Thursday, Danish shipping giant Maersk confirmed that explosions nearby forced two ships operated by its US subsidiary – Maersk Line Limited (MLL) – were forced to turn around as they attempted to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait with a US navy escort.
“While en route, both ships reported seeing explosions close by, and the US Navy accompaniment also intercepted multiple projectiles,” Maersk said in a statement, adding it was suspending Red Sea transits by vessels of its US subsidiary.
The two vessels were carrying “US military supplies.”
MLL carries cargo for the Department of Defense, Department of State, USAID, and other US government agencies.
Wednesday’s battle is the latest escalation between Yemen and the US, as the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa has pledged to enforce a naval blockade against Israeli, US, and UK-linked vessels until the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza stops.
The crossfire came less than a day after US warplanes conducted their most recent air raid campaign over Yemen. US and UK warplanes, ships, and submarines have launched dozens of attacks across Yemen in retaliation for the country’s pro-Palestine actions.
Earlier on Wednesday, Yemeni authorities ordered US and British nationals to leave the country within a month.
“The ministry … would like to stress that you must inform officials and workers with US and British citizenships to prepare to leave the country within 30 days,” reads a letter sent by the Yemeni foreign ministry to the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Peter Hawkins.
Senate Looks to Fund Middle East Military Activity as CENTCOM Is ‘Running Out of Funds’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 24, 2024
The Senate is planning to add money to upcoming legislation to fund President Joe Biden’s military buildup in the Middle East and war in Yemen. Senator Susan Collins says the legation should be a priority as US Central Command is quickly depleting its funds. Senator Jack Reed believes Congress will need to pass multiple rounds of funding to allow Biden to wage war across the Middle East.
Following the Hamas attack on southern Israel, Biden ordered thousands of troops and multiple aircraft carrier strike groups into the region. Politico reports the Department of Defense informed Congress the deployment of additional troops and warships to the Middle East over the past four months has cost $1.6 billion. The Pentagon estimates the cost will be $2.2 billion over the course of the year.
The cost estimates do not include the price of the interceptors and munitions used in fighting the Houthis. Congress has not authorized Biden’s war in Yemen or the military surge in the Middle East. A growing number of American lawmakers, including within Biden’s party, have voiced opposition to the White House waging a war in Yemen without Congressional authorization.
A Pentagon official said at some point, the holes in the Department of Defense budget will have to be filled by Congress. An official told Politico, “It will be, I think, a hole that we would want to be filled. It is a bill that will be due and we will have to pay for it within a limited amount of resources.”
The Senate is now preparing to fund the conflicts in the Middle East, but there are no plans to authorize the war. Politico reports Congress is considering several options for authorizing the war spending. The outlet explains, “Lawmakers are aware of the unplanned cost and are weighing how to pay for it. Options include adding it to the annual spending bill, adding it to the $111 billion emergency supplemental for Ukraine and Israel, or funding it through a stand-alone supplemental for war costs.”
The White House has been pushing Congress to pass a $111 billion bill that provides funding for the wars in Ukraine and Israel, the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, and border security. The legislation has been delayed for several months over debate on immigration policy.
Sen. Collins, a Republican member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is urging the body to take action. “[US Central Command] needs [the funding] sooner. They’re fast running out of funds,” she said.
Senator Jack Reed believes Congress will have to pass multiple rounds of funding to fight wars in the Middle East. He said, “I sense, given the unexpected cost, that there will have to be a separate supplemental. These aren’t routine costs. They’re because of our reaction to the Houthi disruption, to Iranian malign behavior, etc. And I think that’s probably where we would go for it.”
Senators Dan Sullivan, Mitch McConnell, and Mark Kelley have all called for adding money to the supplemental war legislation to replace the interceptors and munitions used to fight the Houthis in Yemen.
UAE enlists Al-Qaeda, US mercenaries to operate in Yemen: Report
The Cradle | January 24, 2024
A BBC investigation released on 22 January reveals that the UAE hired Al-Qaeda militants to fight for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Emirati-backed government in Yemen.
A whistleblower cited in the investigation provided the BBC with “a document with 11 names of former Al-Qaeda members now working in the STC,” among them former high-ranking operatives of the extremist group.
Nasser al-Shiba, a former high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, is now the commander of the of the STC’s armed units, several sources told the BBC.
These militants were hired to carry out political assassinations across Yemen at the behest of Abu Dhabi, according to the investigation.
The BBC also points to a shadowy group of US mercenaries, known as Spear Operations Group, hired by the UAE to carry out assassinations.
Isaac Gilmore, a former US navy seal who later became Spear’s chief operating officer, is “one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.”
“He refused to talk about anyone who was on the ‘kill list’ provided to Spear by the UAE — other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden.”
Saudi and UAE-backed mercenary groups have run rampant across Yemen since the start of the war in the country nine years ago. Aside from assassinations, these mercenaries have also been implicated in a number of crimes, including the looting and illegal trading of Yemeni cultural heritage.
Several ancient sites and museums have been looted and stripped of valuable artifacts by UAE-backed mercenary groups in Yemen. There are also accounts of underage girls being raped by militants of such groups.
This is not the first time that UAE-backed armed groups in Yemen have been accused of working or coordinating with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
According to documents obtained by Yemen’s Al-Masirah media outlet in February last year, Takfiri militants affiliated with the UAE-backed mercenary group, the Giants Brigade, looted large amounts of oil from the reserves in the energy-rich province of Shabwah, south of the country.
“We have all the evidence of the UAE’s relationship with Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen,” Saleh al-Jabwani, Saleh al-Jabwani, a minister in the former Saudi-backed government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, said in 2019.
The BBC investigation comes one month after UAE-backed mercenaries came under the spotlight once again, following reports that the US was working to recruit members of these mercenary groups to “distract” Ansarallah from its military operations against Israel.
“The United States is moving to activate factions loyal to the UAE in Yemen to distract Sanaa from continuing to carry out more air and sea attacks against the Israeli entity,” the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 8 December.
According to Hebrew media, the UAE-backed STC has approached Israel and offered to help protect Israeli shipping in the Red Sea from attacks by Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement and the armed forces of the government in Sanaa.
Since November, Yemen’s Armed Forces and Ansarallah have seized one Israeli-linked vessel and have targeted over a dozen other ships, either owned by Israelis or Israeli firms or en route to Israeli ports. The Red Sea blockade by Yemen is in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, which Sanaa has vowed to continue until the war and siege in Gaza ends.
Yemeni armed forces have also launched drones and missiles towards Israel’s southern port city of Eilat.
These attacks are garnering significant amounts of popular support for Ansarallah in Yemen.
According to Yemeni officials and analysts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft on 24 January, elements of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah Party – which has, for the most part, been opposed to Ansarallah throughout the Yemen war – have been providing them with material support and have praised their pro-Palestine operations.
Iraqi resistance joins Yemen in imposing naval blockade against Israel
The Cradle | January 24, 2024
The Secretary-General of the Sayyid al-Shuhada Brigades, Abu Ala al-Walaei, announced during the early hours of 24 January the start of phase two of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq’s (IRI) pro-Palestine operations, including enforcing a naval blockade on Israel in the Mediterranean Sea.
“At a time when the criminal US occupation is again blatantly targeting our security forces … we urge the Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq to begin the second phase of their operations, which includes enforcing a blockade on Zionist maritime navigation in the Mediterranean Sea and putting the entity’s ports out of service,” Walaei said via social media.
The leader of the Sayyid al-Shuhada Brigades, a faction within the larger Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), stressed that these operations will continue until “the unjust siege on Gaza is lifted and the horrific Zionist massacres against its people are stopped.”
Hours earlier, US warplanes conducted a new round of airstrikes targeting alleged locations of the PMU-affiliated Kataib Hezbollah in Al-Qaim on the Iraqi-Syrian border and in Jurf al-Nasr south of Baghdad.
At least one death was reported following the attack in Al-Qaim.
The spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, Jaafar al-Husseini, said in response to the attack: “The resistance will continue to destroy enemy strongholds in support of our people in Gaza until the brutal US-backed killing machine stops and the entire siege is lifted.”
Iraq’s National Security Advisor Qassim Al-Araji criticized the US for once again “violating Iraqi sovereignty” by targeting the PMU.
“Attacking the headquarters of the [PMU] in Al-Qaim and Jurf al-Nasr is an assault and a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty and does not help [quell tensions],” the official said, stressing that, “Instead of bombing and targeting the headquarters of an Iraqi national institution, the US side should move to stop the aggression against Gaza.”
The Iraqi government has previously demanded that the US army respect the country’s sovereignty and security, as Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani stresses that the PMU is an “integral part” of the country’s armed forces.
As part of the Resistance Axis’ operations in support of the Palestinian people, the IRI – an umbrella group of armed factions that includes members of the PMU – has conducted about 150 attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria over the past several months.
The most recent attack took place on Tuesday morning, with a rocket salvo hitting the US-occupied Conoco oil field in northeast Syria for the second time in three days.
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From the Archives
NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
Blog Roll
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- Iran FM meets with US envoy on UN meeting’s sidelines at American side’s insistence: Report
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- China condemns US extortion of Iranian airlines, rejects Washington’s ‘illegal’ sanctions threats
- Italy to move military personnel from Taif base after missile strike
- Finland’s Stubb tells European leaders to calm down
- Defeating Russia on battlefield impossible – Fico
- Finland’s Gender Clinic Reversal
- Massachusetts Wants Mental Health Visits, Why Does Government Use ‘Health’ to Enter Our Homes & Families?
- If Americans Knew
- Sanctions are collective punishment: immoral and self-defeating
- Phosphorus Munitions Fired by Israel Burn Groves, Orchards in Southern Lebanon
- Israel Carries Out New Ceasefire Violations Across Gaza
- AI – Emphasis on the ‘I’: Israel Is Funding AI Chatbot Propaganda
- Israel Blocking Hundreds of Wheelchairs for Injured Children From Entering Gaza
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- Gaza desperately needs tents, wheelchairs, fuel… and everything else (Israel blocks it all) – Daily Update
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- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
