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US will take no options off table on Iran: Obama

Press TV – September 30, 2013

obamabibiAmerican President Barack Obama once again repeats Washington’s warmongering rhetoric against Tehran over its nuclear energy program, saying the US will take no options off the table with regard to Iran.

“We take no options off the table, including military options,” Obama said during a meeting at the White House with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.

He added that words are not sufficient to resolve Iran’s nuclear issue, adding Tehran must give confidence to the international community “through actions.”

“We agreed it is paramount that Iran doesn’t get nuclear weapons,” Obama said.

“Because of the sanctions Iran is ready to talk and we have to test their willingness in good faith,” the US president added.

Obama assured that Washington will enter negotiations with Tehran with a “clear eye” and emphasized that it will be in “close consultation” with Israel and other friends and allies in the region during the process.

The Israeli premier, for his part, said Israel wants Iran to fully dismantle its nuclear energy program and claimed credible military threat and sanctions have brought Iran to the negotiating table.

Netanyahu called on Obama to tighten economic sanctions on Iran if it continues its nuclear advances during a coming round of talks with the West, saying, “Those pressures must be kept in place.”

The meeting between Obama and Netanyahu comes only days after Iran President Hassan Rouhani and his US counterpart had a landmark phone conversation on September 27 mainly focusing on Iran’s nuclear energy program.

It was the first direct communication between an Iranian and a US president since the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution more than three decades ago.

The two presidents stressed Tehran and Washington’s political will to swiftly resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear energy program which the United States, Israel and some of their allies claim to include a military component.

Iran has categorically rejected the allegation, stressing that as a committed member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is entitled to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

September 30, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu Heads to US Aiming to “Tell the Truth”

Al-Manar | September 29, 2013

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed for the United States on Sunday claiming he wants to tell the truth to counter Iran’s “charm offensive.”

“I intend to tell the truth in the face of the sweet talk and charm offensive of Iran,” public radio quoted Netanyahu as saying before boarding a plane for Washington. “Telling the truth at this time is essential for world peace and security and, of course, for Israel’s security,” he said.

Israeli media said Netanyahu had instructed government ministers to refrain from publicly commenting on the telephone call between the US and Iranian presidents for fear of complicating his White House talks on Monday.

But that has not stopped his confidants speaking out, and President Shimon Peres warned that the tone of much of the commentary was “dangerously scornful” of Israel’s key ally.

“You can agree or disagree (with the Americans) but I don’t like this scornful tone,” Peres told army radio. “Other people have brains to think too, not just us. We should talk to them and try to influence them.”

After meeting Obama, Netanyahu is due to address the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the same forum where last year he used a cartoon bomb as a prop to underline how close he believed Iran was to being able to build one.

September 29, 2013 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

John Humphrys’ ignorance about Iran is par for the course in all Western media

By Peter Oborne | The Telegraph | September 26, 2013

… Mr Humphrys told listeners that “there will be high-level meetings to find ways of Iran giving up its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for sanctions being dropped”. Unfortunately for Humphrys, Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme… Read full article

CASMII – September 27, 2013

In BBC Today’s programme today John Humphreys referred to Iran’s “nuclear weapons programme”, something that BBC does now and again.

Interviewing the Israeli government’s spokesman, Mark Gregory, he did not challenge him on his numerous lies and accusations, including describing Iran’s programme as “an aggressive nuclear weapons programme”, a phrase that Humphrey repeated! Neither did he challenge Gregory on the lie that the current Iranian government has threatened Israel with “obliteration” in the past couple of weeks.

It is crucial that people individually write to the BBC and John Humphreys and not allow such venomous propaganda to go unchallenged.

You can listen to the interview here. It starts at around 1.33.49

September 27, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US scuppered deal with Iran in 2005, says then British Foreign Minister

By David Morrison and Peter Oborne | Friends of Lebanon | September 26, 2013

This week can be a turning point in the troubled history of relations between the United States and Iran. It is greatly to be hoped that President Obama will take the chance of meeting President Rouhani when they both attend the UN General Assembly in New York this week and that this will set the scene for a diplomatic breakthrough between the US and Iran.*

Significantly, President Rouhani was the head of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team in 2003-5 at a time when Iran was actively engaged in negotiations with Britain, France and Germany (aka EU3) about a range of issues including its nuclear programme.

Then Rouhani made a series of proposals that could, and should have led to a settlement – were a deal not blocked by George W Bush.

We know this because, as Britain’s Foreign Minister at the time, Jack Straw took part in these negotiations. Here’s what he said on the Today programme on 3 August 2013, the day that Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated as president:

“I’m absolutely convinced that we can do business with Dr Rouhani, because we did do business with Dr Rouhani, and had it not been for major problems within the US administration under President Bush, we could have actually settled the whole Iran nuclear dossier back in 2005, and we probably wouldn’t have had President Ahmadinejad as a consequence of the failure as well.”

So, according to Jack Straw, these talks could have been successful “had it not been for major problems within the US administration under President Bush”.  In other words, the intransigence which stood in the way of a settlement in 2005 lay in Washington and not in Tehran.

This isn’t news to anybody with a passing familiarity with these negotiations – the blunt truth is that they foundered because the US insisted that Iran must not have uranium enrichment facilities on its own soil in any circumstances, and the EU3 bowed to this diktat from Washington.

What is news is that the leading British player in these negotiations, Jack Straw, has now acknowledged publicly that the intransigence that caused the negotiations to founder lay in Washington and not in Tehran.  The message we have continually heard from the US and its allies, including Britain, is that Iran was intransigent then on the nuclear issue and continues to be intransigent today – and that is what is standing in the way of a settlement.  What Jack Straw is saying is that this message pumped out from Washington and London for the past decade is not the whole truth.

This is a staggering assertion coming from the leading British player in these negotiations. The failure to take advantage of Iran’s flexibility in 2005 and reach a settlement on the nuclear issue (and perhaps a great deal more besides) has had enormous consequences.  The conflict between the US and its allies and Iran, ostensibly over Iran’s nuclear activities, has cast a dark shadow over the world for the past decade, with persistent threats of military action against Iran by Israel and the US.  This has ended up with ferocious economic sanctions being imposed on Iran by the US and the EU and Iranians dying for want of lifesaving drugs.  All this despite the fact that it is universally acknowledged that Iran doesn’t possess any nuclear weapons and, according to US intelligence, hasn’t got an active nuclear weapons programme.

The central message of our new book, A Dangerous Delusion: Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran [1] is that this was totally unnecessary, that a reasonable settlement could have been reached with Iran in 2005.  Jack Straw’s remarks on Today confirm this.

Unprecedented reassurance measures

Ostensibly, the US and its allies are opposed to Iran having enrichment facilities on their own soil because of concern that Iran would use these facilities to produce high enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

Almost unknown today because of the woeful reporting of these matters by the mainstream media is that Iran’s nuclear facilities, including its enrichment facilities, operate under IAEA supervision in accordance with Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA, as required by the NPT of which Iran is a signatory.

This makes it virtually impossible for these enrichment facilities to be used to produce weapons grade uranium for even one bomb without the IAEA becoming aware of Iran attempting to do so.  That is the current view of US intelligence – the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on 18 April 2013: “… we assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU before this activity is discovered”.

Also unknown today is that in 2005 Iran offered to put in place unprecedented measures, in addition to the requirements in its safeguards agreement with the IAEA, to reassure the outside world that its nuclear activities were exclusively for peaceful purposes.

These measures were contained in a comprehensive set of proposals presented to EU3 representatives in the Quai D’Orsay in Paris on 23 March 2005 [2] by Javad Zarif, (whom President Rouhani has recently appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs).  The proposals envisaged the continuation of Iran’s enrichment programme, but under arrangements that would have greatly reduced the possibility that Iran could produce either high enriched uranium or plutonium, the fissile material for nuclear weapons.  In particular:

  • Immediate conversion of all low enriched uranium to fuel rods for power reactors, to make further enrichment to high enriched uranium more difficult;
  • No reprocessing of spent fuel rods, thereby precluding the production of plutonium;

The proposals also provided for continuous on-site presence of IAEA inspectors at Iran’s conversion and enrichment facilities.

There is no doubt that in 2005 Iran went out of its way to address international concerns that its enrichment facilities might be used for weapons purposes.  Nevertheless, the EU3 negotiators refused to accept the plan even as a basis for negotiation – because it involved Iran continuing to enrich uranium on its own soil.

When the EU3 eventually made proposals in August 2005 [3], they required Iran to cease enrichment and related activities permanently and to make arrangements for the supply of reactor fuel from abroad, which could be cut off at any time.

Voluntary suspension of nuclear activities

Under the Paris Agreement of November 2004, which established the framework for the 2005 negotiations, Iran had consented to suspend its nuclear activities “while negotiations proceed on a mutually acceptable agreement on long-term arrangements”.  This was a voluntary act – Iran was under no legal obligation under the NPT or any other international agreement to do so.  Significantly, the EU3 themselves recognised this in the Paris Agreement saying that “this suspension is a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation”.

Iran had agreed to this suspension with great reluctance fearing that the real objective of the US and its allies, who were pushing for suspension, was to have most or all of Iran’s nuclear activities halted permanently.  That turned out to be the case.

What happened next was inevitable: over the following six months or so Iran gradually restarted its nuclear activities.  The resumption began just before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took over from Mohammed Khatami as Iranian president on 3 August 2005.

Iran referred to the Security Council

Iran came under fierce criticism for resuming its nuclear activities, even though the suspension had been a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation, recognised as such by the EU3.  And France and Britain took the lead in persuading the IAEA Board to pass a resolution in September 2005[4], which for the first time mentioned the word “non-compliance” in connection with Iran’s nuclear activities.

The word is important because Article XII.C of the IAEA statute requires any “non-compliance” to be reported to the Security Council – and Iran was referred to the Security Council in March 2006.

To be precise, the resolution said:

“Iran’s many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement, as detailed in GOV/2003/75, constitute non-compliance in the context of Article XII.C of the Agency’s Statute”.

GOV/2003/75 is a report by IAEA Director General, Mohamed El Baradei, to the IAEA Board in November 2003 [5] (that is, nearly two years earlier).  In other words, the resolution stated that Iran had been in “non-compliance” in November 2003.  However, it also stated that, “the Director General in his report to the Board on 2 September 2005 noted that good progress has been made in Iran’s correction of the breaches and in the Agency’s ability to confirm certain aspects of Iran’s current declarations”.

So, Iran was referred to the Security Council, not because of current “non-compliance” that needed to be corrected, but because of past “non-compliance”, which had largely been corrected.

In fact, as Mohammed El Baradei wrote in his book, The Age of Deception, it was referred in order to get the Security Council to stop Iran’s perfectly legitimate uranium enrichment programme:

“What made Iran’s eventual referral a cause for cynicism was that there was nothing new in its ‘non-compliance’, which had essentially been known about for two years.  Recent developments had been positive: the agency had made substantial progress in verifying Iran’s nuclear program.  The eventual referral, when it came, was primarily an attempt to induce the Security Council to stop Iran’s enrichment program, using Chapter VII of the UN Charter to characterise Iran’s enrichment – legal under the NPT – as “a threat to international peace and security”. (p146-7)

Chapter VII Security Council resolutions

Beginning on 31 July 2006, the Security Council passed six Chapter VII resolutions on Iran’s nuclear programme, demanding, inter alia, that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment.

In theory, before passing a Chapter VII resolution, the Security Council has to decide that a “threat to the peace” exists (or that a “breach of the peace, or act of aggression” has taken place) and that action is required by the Council to “maintain or restore international peace and security” (UN Charter, Article 39).  The action may be to impose economic sanctions on a malefactor under Article 41 of the Charter.

But what possible basis can there be for saying that Iran’s nuclear activity constituted even a “threat to the peace” in 2006?  Iran had no nuclear weapons and its nuclear facilities were under IAEA safeguards.  And the IAEA hadn’t uncovered any attempt to divert nuclear material for military use or any evidence of a nuclear weapons programme.

Furthermore, a couple of months earlier, in May 2006, speaking about Iran’s nuclear activities at the Monterey Institute for International Studies [6],Mohamed El Baradei said: “Our assessment is that there is no imminent threat”.

Can there be any doubt that the Security Council has acted outside UN Charter in passing Chapter VII resolutions imposing economic sanctions on Iran?

War in Lebanon ignored

Ironically, when the first Chapter VII resolution was passed on 31 July 2006, Israel’s military assault on Lebanon had been going on for almost three weeks.  Hundreds of Lebanese civilians had been killed and Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure had suffered billions of dollars worth of damage.  The previous day a large number of civilians, many of them children, had been killed by Israeli bombing in Qana.

From 12 July 2006, when the Israeli assault began, the US and the UK blocked the Security Council even calling for an immediate ceasefire.  They did so because they wanted the hostilities to continue – because they supported the Israeli action, hoping that it would seriously damage Hezbollah.

But, on 31 July 2006, having remained silent for three weeks about Israel’s ongoing assault on Lebanon as the death toll rose, the Security Council declared Iran, not Israel, a threat to the peace – because of its nuclear activities.

(A final point: if Iran is a “threat to the peace” even though it has no nuclear weapons and no hard evidence of a nuclear weapons programme, surely Israel with perhaps as many as 400 nuclear warheads must be a “threat to the peace” and deserve to be sanctioned?)

US sanctions

Four of these six resolutions included tranches of economic sanctions. These UN-approved sanctions were rather limited, because Russia and China would have blocked harsher ones.  They were directed primarily at individuals and entities allegedly involved in the Iranian nuclear and missile programmes.  They didn’t have much impact on the Iranian economy as a whole and therefore didn’t hurt ordinary Iranians.

The US used to make a virtue of this – in January 2010, Secretary of State,Hillary Clinton said:

“Our goal is to pressure the Iranian government, particularly the Revolutionary Guard elements, without contributing to the suffering of the ordinary [people], who deserve better than what they currently are receiving.” [7]

Times have changed.  Sanctions imposed by the US beginning in July 2012 have done, and continue to do, real damage to the Iranian economy.  President Obama boasted of this success during his re-election campaign: in a debate with Mitt Romney on 22 October 2012, he said:

“We … organized the strongest coalition and the strongest sanctions against Iran in history, and it is crippling their economy. Their currency has dropped 80 percent. Their oil production has plunged to the lowest level since they were fighting a war with Iraq 20 years ago. So their economy is in a shambles.” [8]

No worries there about contributing to the suffering of ordinary Iranians.

These are not UN sanctions – they were not prescribed by the Security Council in a resolution under Article 41 of the UN Charter.

They owe their existence to legislation passed by the US Congress in December 2011 at the behest of the Israeli lobby in the US. The legislation was accepted by President Obama, who was loath to offend the lobby in the upcoming election year.

The legislation requires the US administration to bully other states around the world to stop (or at least reduce) purchases of Iranian oil, by threatening to cut off foreign financial institutions from the US financial system, if they conduct transactions with the Central Bank of Iran or other Iranian financial institutions.  Additional sanctions have been imposed since.  None of this affects US trade with Iran since it has been negligible since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

As usual, the EU (including Britain) didn’t need to be bullied – they imposed a total ban on oil imports from Iran beginning in July 2012.

At the time of writing, ordinary Iranians are suffering considerable hardship as a result of these sanctions.  It is now difficult for Iran to make payments for imports of any kind, because it is cut off from the international banking system.  As a result, although pharmaceuticals are not included in the sanctions regime, some life-saving drugs are unobtainable and patients are dying.

See, for example, Iran unable to get life-saving drugs due to international sanctions by Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan (Guardian, 13 January 2013, [9]), which says:

“Hundreds of thousands of Iranians with serious illnesses have been put at imminent risk by the unintended consequences of international sanctions, which have led to dire shortages of life-saving medicines such as chemotherapy drugs for cancer and bloodclotting agents for haemophiliacs.”

Iran doesn’t deserve to be the subject of economic sanctions – it hasn’t attacked another country in the past two hundred years, it isn’t occupying territory not its own, it hasn’t got any nuclear weapons and by no stretch of the imagination can it be regarded as a “threat to the peace” and deserving of economic sanctions.

Britain shares in the responsibility for this appalling state of affairs whereby patients are dying in Iran because of the unavailability of life-saving drugs. To cause the deaths of innocent civilians in a country that has engaged in aggression, and deserves to be sanctioned, is difficult to justify.  To cause the deaths of innocent civilians in Iran today is impossible to justify.

Deal breaker

All of this could have been avoided.  A deal could have been reached in 2005, which would have provided unprecedented measures to reassure the outside world that Iran’s nuclear activities were for exclusively peaceful purposes – if the US and its allies had been prepared to concede that Iran had a right to enrichment.

So, what are the prospects of a deal now?  Seyed Hossein Mousavian was the spokesman for the Iranian negotiating team while Rouhani headed it.  In his book The Iranian Nuclear Crisis, he reports that at a meeting in Geneva on 25 May 2005, Rouhani warned the EU3 negotiators three times that “any proposal that excluded enrichment would be rejected in advance” (p171).

That was the deal breaker in 2005, when the reformist Khatami was President.  It continued to be the deal breaker under his successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  It remains the deal breaker today under President Rouhani.

*The meeting did not occur.  See US government notes here http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/24/press-briefing-senior-administration-officials.  See President Rouhani’s speech at the UN here and notes on his other meetings here. [editor]

References:

[1] www.amazon.co.uk/Dangerous-Delusion-Wrong-About-Nuclear/dp/1908739894/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375977693&sr=8-1&keywords=a+dangerous+delusion

[2] www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/Iran_Proposal_Mar232005.pdf

[3] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2005/infcirc651.pdf

[4] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2005/gov2005-77.pdf

[5] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-75.pdf

[6] www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2006-05/31/content_604730.htm

[7] www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/134671.htm

[8] www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/23/us/politics/20121023-third-presidential-debate-obama-romney.html

[9]  www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/13/iran-lifesaving-drugs-international-sanctions

By Peter Oborne  and David Morrison, September 2013.

Peter Oborne is the chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph and reports for Channel 4′s Dispatches and Unreported World.  David Morrison is a Political Officer of Sadaka: The Ireland Palestine Alliance.  They co-authored  A Dangerous Delusion: Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran (April 2013).  Morrison can be reached at david@sadaka.ie.

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September 26, 2013 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Allies Deliver A Cost-free Victory

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By Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle | September 25, 2013

Until joined by the Islamic government in 1979 and then by Hizbullah in the 1980s, Syria was Israel’s most visceral enemy. This enemy is now being destroyed but not by Israel. So-called Muslims backed by so-called Muslim governments – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – are doing the job for it, in alliance with the traditional western enemies of the Arabs. Syria’s cities and towns have been devastated. An estimated 100,000 people have been killed. Millions more have been displaced, scattered across Syria or seeking refuge beyond its borders. Reconstruction will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Recovery will take decades. Without spending a penny or losing a life, Israel has been handed one of the greatest strategic victories in its existence.

Michael Oren let the scarcely concealed cat out of the bag the other day when he said Israel would prefer a Syria without Bashar al Assad to a Syria in the hands of the jihadists. The outgoing Israeli ambassador in Washington, Oren was only bringing something to the surface that could be seen underneath it despite the vociferous denials of Israel’s lobbyists. Israel wants the government in Damascus destroyed. Netanyahu has been trying to hide its interest behind a mask of indifference but as the likelihood of a US military ‘strike’ – for a war that would engulf the region – slipped away, the lobbyists in Washington broke cover. They buttonholed every congressman and women, only for the vote on war to be postponed indefinitely, much to the chagrin of the gulf and Turkish governments, their armed and political protégés and the Israeli government.

While the Syrian army continues to grind the armed groups down, there seems no end to the volume of money, armaments and men outside governments are still prepared to pour into this conflict. Obama is still trying hard to get Russian agreement on a UNSC resolution that would allow the US to begin another war in the Middle East by attacking Syria. In the meantime the armed groups are continuing with the war they are waging. In his recent interview with former US congressman Dennis Kucinich and Fox news correspondent Greg Palkot, Bashar al Assad estimated that 80 to 90 percent of the armed men are Al Qaida-type takfiri jihadists. The ‘defence’ consultancy HIS- Janes puts the figure at about 50 per cent but whether it is 50 per cent or 90 cent, whether they are foreign or Syrian, the jihadists are dominating the fighting. Talk of moderates is deception. Only in the last few days the main fighting groups – all takfiri – have again rejected the authority of the exile Syrian National Coalition and the so-called Free Syrian Army. This is presented as something new when at least a year ago the very same groups issued the same kind of declaration saying the same things. The so-called FSA is the western standard bearer for ‘moderation’ in this struggle even though its brigades are every bit as fanatical as Jabhat al Nusra or any of the other takfiri groups.

If the Syrian government does fall – and at the moment it is not only holding its ground but steadily driving the takfiris back – chaos would prevail in Syria on a far greater scale than Libya at present or Algeria in the 1980s. The country would implode. This is so self-evident that the US and its allies must know it and if they know it, one has to presume that this is what they want. Saudi Arabia is out to destroy the Syrian government regardless of the consequences. Britain and France are following the US and US policy on any issue in the Middle East is largely fashioned according to the interests of Israel. Turkey is the odd man out. Whatever Recep Tayyip Erdogan thought he was going to get out of confronting Syria his own country has been very adversely affected by his decisions. The breakdown of Arab states into sectarian enclaves permanently at war with each other has been an Israeli strategic objective for decades. It has happened in Iraq and now the specter of the collapse of another unitary Arab state hovers over Syria.

While the takfiris do their best to destroy Syria, Israel is getting on with the colonization of Palestinian territories as fast as it can. The current wave of settlement expansion is the greatest since 1967. In the past year edicts have been pouring out of the Housing Ministry authorizing the construction of thousands of housing ‘units’ in East Jerusalem and across the West Bank. The strategic focus is on settlement expansion in and around East Jerusalem and the construction of highways and roads that will simultaneously integrate the settlements into the greater Jerusalem municipality (enlarged immediately after the 1967 war) and, along with the Separation Wall, further cut the Palestinians off from the city. In the first quarter of 2013 alone there was a 176 per cent increase in settlement expansion over the same quarter for 2012.

In August this year, just as the ‘peace talks’ were resuming, Israel announced the construction of thousands more housing ‘units’ in East Jerusalem settlements. The mainstream media tells us that settlement expansion is ‘impeding’ peace, ‘threatening’ the peace talks and the ‘two state’ solution. The plain fact is that there are no ‘peace talks’. They are the camouflage for the war Israel has been waging against the Palestinians for seven decades. To their discredit and dishonor Mahmud Abbas and Saib Urayqat are giving these ‘talks’ a Palestinian face. By announcing settlement construction in the same breath as announcing the resumption of ‘peace talks’ Israel shows its absolute contempt for both of them.

Land expropriation and development for agricultural purposes continues unabated. So does the theft of water. The Council for European Palestinian Relations estimated recently that the settlers consume an average of 280 liters of water a day compared to 86 liters for the Palestinians, below the World Health Organization’s recommended minimum of 100 liters. Only 60 per cent of the water allocated to the Palestinians is potable. While taking their land Israel simultaneously uses it as a rubbish dump, with solid waste from West Jerusalem being dumped at Abu Dis, once set up by Israel as the Palestinian ‘capital’ of East Jerusalem even though it was not even inside the municipality until Israel put it there. The settlers do the same, dumping their rubbish and household waste water on Palestinian land in the valleys below their settlements on the hilltops.

In a statement handed to the UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission to Palestine in February this year, Al Haq (Law in the Service of Man) presented some statistics. In 2012, 202 ‘incidents’ of settler violence along with dispossession, home demolitions, forcible evictions and intimidation; more than 200 settlements established since 1967, including 14 in East Jerusalem, and more than 500,000 settlers now living in them; and more than 42 per cent of the land of the West Bank as well as most of its resources allocated to Jewish settlements. Al Haq notes that the Israeli High Court ‘has rendered the question of the settlements non-justiciable’.

The Council for European Palestinian Relations estimates that the population in the West Bank settlements is growing at an average of five per cent a year compared to 1.8 per cent for the rest of occupied Palestine. It puts the total number of settlers at 467,000, of which number 385,000 are living in between the Separation Wall and the 1967 ‘green line.’

Every brick laid by Israel on the West Bank, every liter of water pumped out for settlements swimming pools and lawns and the presence of every settler represents a violation of international law. Yet, says Naftali Bennett, the Religious Services Minister and leader of the Jewish Home Party: ‘We will continue building and you will see this soon.’ He was speaking before the August announcement that more housing ‘units’ would be added to Jewish colonies in East Jerusalem. ‘I am sending the message from here to all the parties in the negotiations: the land of Israel belongs to the nation of Israel’. He has pledged to do ‘everything in my power to make sure they never get a state.’

In a leaked exchange with another cabinet minister Bennett said that ‘I’ve killed many Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that.’ He complained that the conversation had been taken out of context, because what he meant was that he had ‘only’ killed them in the context of operations. There was one such ‘operation’ on the West Bank last week. Heavily armed soldiers stormed into the Jenin refugee camp, broke into the house of the Tubaisi family, shot Islam al Tubaisi, 19, in the leg, dragged him downstairs, his head banging on every step and shot him dead before an ambulance took him to hospital. Perhaps in time the members of this unit will be bragging in time about how they also have killed many ‘Arabs’.

Dig deep enough into the crises in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and the confrontation with Iran and eventually you will find Palestine. It remains the central issue, the pivot on which US policies, dominated by Israeli interests and demands, has turned for more than six decades, yet for the takfiris affiliated with Al Qaida, killing other Muslims (and Christians) in a variety of countries takes precedence. It is striking that the same heads of government inveighing against terrorism and expressing their outrage at the slaughter of innocents in Nairobi have not once expressed outrage at the slaughter of innocents in Syria unless they thought they could blame the Syrian government.

The call of unity sounds through modern Arab history like the cry of a lost bird. United the Arabs will stand and divided they will continue to fall. As long as they are not able to put common interests first they are going to be ripe for the plucking. What is at stake in Syria is not the political system but Syria itself and for the past three years it has been systematically and deliberately destroyed by an unholy coalition of outside governments and the gangs of armed men doing their dirty work in the name of Islam.

The dominant Arab actors in this deliberately induced catastrophe are the regimes in Riyadh and Doha. They engage with Israel behind the scenes even as it colonizes Palestinian land and sends uniformed gangsters into the Haram al Sharif to beat Muslim worshipers trying to protect one of the holiest sites in Islam. While consorting with the enemy and abandoning the Palestinians these two regimes – infinitely less representative of the will of the people than the government in Damascus – take the lead in the destruction of an Arab state. The greatest beneficiary of their actions on one hand and their inaction and neglect on the other is Israel. This is surely as great a disgrace as any in Arab and Islamic history.

– Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

September 26, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama at the UN

By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | September 25, 2013

h.sharifi20130906082926890President Barak Obama said in the middle of his 40 minutes of lies and hypocrisy at the UNGA as world leaders looked on in dismay: “With respect to Syria, we believe that as a starting point, the international community must enforce the ban on chemical weapons.” (The US and Israel both possess and have used chemical weapons, see below) and added “Although we will at times be accused of hypocrisy and inconsistency [!], we will be engaged in the region for the long haul” [to serve Israel].

Incredibly he also said he believed in American “exceptionalism” [white man’s burden]. Hypocritically he also mentioned Martin Luther King Jr. But MLK opposed American imperialism and exceptionalism and who said in a speech in 1968: “God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now. God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war ….. We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world.” [we still do]

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September 25, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

What does the Syrian chemical disarmament deal mean?

By Zaher Mahruqi | Press TV | September 24, 2013

Bashar’s acceptance to let go of his “Nukes of the poor” arsenal could mean that the Syrian government has assessed the potential outcome of an American sustained offensive to be a game changer and desperately agreed to any way out.

Handing over chemical weapons in a gradual more controlled manner would have been understandable but giving up the location of the chemical sites with such immediacy hints to a much weakened Syrian position. It is no secret that the details given to the UN will eventually end up in Israeli hands, then why would the Syrian government accept such a deal other than Assad’s real fear of loosening his grip on power?

Netanyahu’s remarks following the chemical handover deal that “negotiating with Syria and Iran with a real and present threat to use force is the only way to make them cooperate” suggests that Syria’s president is indeed at the mode of fighting for survival. But that too is too simplistic provided that, surrendering chemical weapons or not, the US is sure to pursue him to the very bitter end. Then why give up such a strong deterrent?

The fact of the matter is that Bashar al-Assad is an intelligent man who at the very least understands that betraying Russia and Iran, who have been supporting his efforts in the past two years, would be a serious mistake. Therefore, any big decision Syria makes has to have been consulted with its main backers and has been given some sort of guarantees that giving up chemical weapons is not as risky as it might appear and that a credible backup plan is in place.

Smartly, Syria is giving both the US and Russia a face saving mechanism to avoid any further escalation between the two super powers and at the same time it is buying crucial time. Bashar himself declared that at least one full year is required to clear Syria of chemical weapons.

For Syria, chemical weapons are much harder to dispose of than replenish because Syria’s allies have stockpiles upon stockpiles of them. And so if the US chooses to change course somewhere during the period of chemical disarmament and attacks Syria, the very scenario that has been averted would be quickly reintroduced.

One ship full of chemical weapons is all that is required to rearm Syria, after all the main target of such weapons is a country the size of a province; Israel. Moreover, the Iranian and Hezbollah threat of intervening by attacking Israel will not be changed by simply handing over the chemical weapons.

Of course, the decision to hand over the weapons which buys the Syrian government crucial time is unwelcome by the “saboteur” of the region, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The real danger for them is that this could actually lead to further weakening of the Syrian opposition and force them unto Geneva peace talks; talks which have just been strengthened by Syria’s agreement to declare its chemical arsenal.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia know well that their stances on Syria in the past two years makes it impossible for relations with Bashar’s Syria to normalize or even a negotiated Syria where opposition participates in governance.

Regardless of Turkish and Saudi stances, the US administration and Israel had strong interests in making sure that a war is averted in some way. Had the US congress vote gone ahead and disapproved of any attack on Syria in order to fulfill the wishes of the American people, it would have been a huge blow to them.

For Obama, it would have meant being stripped of legitimacy as it relates to Syria and wider international engagements and for Israel it would have meant the weakening of the Zionist lobby within US politics and a disastrous counter attack from Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

Bashar’s objectives to consolidate alliances and weaken the counter alliance and buying time have all been thus far satisfied. The one year disarmament period that Bashar suggested will be needed is no speculation at all; it is well calculated period during which time to weaken the opposition and its supporters and to deny the US and her allies any legitimate pretext to attack Syria.

Moreover, if Iran and Hezbollah felt justified to intervene early on, now any attack from the US or her allies before the chemical disarmament is complete makes the Iran and Hezbollah retaliation against Israel with the support of Russia even more justified.

On the other hand, the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, (the latter seeming more keen than the US to overthrow Bashar’s government), provided that the SNC is in a weakened position and the desperation of the trio is acute, places them in a real danger of open colluding with the likes of Al Qaeda and Al-Nusra Front. So much for fighting “terrorism”!

Every time one sees a billboard advertising Syrian International Trade Exhibition across the world one wonders how can a government in a war state for over two years manage to facilitate an environment where its factories can produce? The answer could simply be that Syria is not nearly as chaotic or as weak as Western media portrays it to be. That position has just been strengthened by Syria’s agreement to disarm.

The objective of the US and Israel has always been to disarm any Arab army that might use its weapons against Israel; the issue is not whether a country owns a huge arsenals of weapons or not, but whether it has enough potential will to use them against Israel.

The Saudis are armed to the teeth and so are the Turkish but it is their clear stance on ensuring Israel’s peace that makes them allies rather than enemies. It is for that reason that Syria is a prime target as was Saddam’s Iraq.

Five armies that pose serious threat to Israel were the priorities of the US and Israel namely Iranian, Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi and Hezbollah and so far only one has been dealt with; that of Iraq. In the case of Egypt, the US and Israel are pleased because the Egyptian army is suspect and they truly believe they will eventually buy out its generals. That means Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are left to fight this war that will not stop until one side secures a clear victory.

Where Russia had disappointed in the past as was the case with Iraq, now it appears poised to put up a stronger posture and as such days ahead will clarify the longevity of the new Russian posture. But the latest events have revealed that Russia is no longer a mere Security Council voter but a physical actor in world events.

Therefore, it is naive to assume that Russia has been blackmailed or tricked by the US into pressuring Syria to surrender her most prized deterrent against Israel. Syria will comply albeit at a calculated pace and will give America and Israel no legitimate pretext to attack it and as such Russia will have no choice but to stand its ground. If an attack takes place, Russia’s response is likely to be far stronger than the recent showdown in the Mediterranean or else Russia becomes a goofball.

The stance of Western media and Aljazeera is a good indication that the US and her allies are not in a war mood. When a war is imminent, there are certain networks that have a duty to fulfill and that is drumming for war. They are not doing that just yet!

While it will be naive to assume that Bashar will hold on to power indefinitely, it is clear that the Syrian civil conflict will be a long term struggle and will not end nor conclude the way the US and Israel are hoping for.

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September 24, 2013 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Allies Don’t Need Lobbies

By Jay Knott | Dissident Voice | September 24, 2013

In a recent article on Counterpunch, Rob Urie defended the traditional Marxist analysis of US policy in the Middle East. He argues that support for Israel is driven primarily by economic interest, not the Jewish lobby.

He starts by paying tribute to the idea that Western societies are uniquely racist. He says that the “Western narrative” claims there is an “Arab character”, and that this is “antique racist blather”. He gives no definition of these terms. Further, he establishes his credentials as part of the dominant current in the American left by claiming that “over a million people in Iraq died so ‘we’ in the West can drive SUVs.”1

When he tries to criticize bourgeois economics, he makes it clear he doesn’t understand the developments it has made since Marx’s day, using the mathematical discipline known as “game theory”. He dismisses the basic abstraction of economic theory, the idea of the rational individual, on the grounds that it is “devoid of history, culture and political context”. But abstractions are always devoid of something.

He defends a more concrete economic theory, mostly Marxist, with some input from another theorist of capitalist crisis, Hyman Minsky. This concrete theory leads him to the view that US activity in the Middle East is primarily driven by rational capitalist motives, the need to secure a supply of oil.

“Taking the totality of circumstance — former oil company executives launching war on an oil rich nation on a pretext they publicly proclaimed they didn’t believe shortly before taking office — and that upon launching their war proved to be non-existent, requires a willingness to overlook the obvious — that the war on Iraq was for oil, that is difficult to support.”1

Perhaps I’ve misunderstood him, but based on what he says in the rest of the article, this convoluted sentence seems to argue that, because president Bush and vice-president Cheney attacked Iraq on false premises, and they also said it was all about oil, and they are former oil executives, and Iraq has a lot of oil, it’s difficult to deny US attacks on Iraq are all about oil.

In fact, it’s not hard at all. As Urie points out, at times Bush and co. said that attacking Iraq was “protecting the world’s supply of oil.”1 But, as he also points out, they are congenital liars. Why should we believe them when they say they are trying to “protect” the oil supply? Protect it against what? When politicians “admit” attacks on Middle Eastern countries are wars for oil, they are parroting the neo-con party line, feeding the public, both left and right, with a plausible-sounding pretext. For right-wingers, “it’s a war for oil” is a reason to support war, and for leftists, it’s a way to feel better by complaining impotently about corporate greed. Both approaches help the war drive.

Fortunately, the American public isn’t listening to the “war for oil” canard. Americans of all classes are listening to those who argue, on coherent capitalist grounds, against war in the Middle East. That helped avoid war on Syria.

The predictions of Urie’s theory failed even as he was writing them: “Finally, for those who have moved on from the U.S. war on Syria story, the war is proceeding largely as planned.”

“War for oil” is a lie, and more sophisticated slogans such as “geo-political rationales”1 are too vague to explain anything. If, as a result of an American military adventure in the Middle East, the price of oil goes up, the Marxist left says it was a war for oil because the oil companies benefit. If it goes down, they say it was a war for oil because most of the other companies benefit. Their hypothesis is unfalsifiable.

But their argument that Israel defends America’s interest in the world’s most oil-rich region is easily falsified. Israelis do not fight in America’s wars. It it were in US interests to support Israel, it would not need a multi-million dollar lobby working day and night to undermine any squeak of defiance, corrupting and intimidating politicians from the president down.2 Real friends don’t need lobbies.

Urie rejects the view that the Jewish lobby can explain US support for Israel, on the grounds that, since Israel has a much smaller economy than the USA, it cannot influence the USA to act against its own interests in the Middle East. But that’s not how it works. It’s not that the Lobby has more money than Microsoft. Through its influence on the US government, AIPAC is able to appropriate some of Microsoft’s profits, and use them for a purpose contrary to the interests of most of Microsoft’s shareholders, and almost all Americans, rich and poor. The question is how it does that.

The quaint ideas of Marx and Urie do not explain the curious phenomenon of US support for the Jewish state. The facts are more compatible with the views of Mearsheimer and Walt.2 The long history of US politicians’ groveling to Israel is more economically explained as a real example of Jewish power rather than a facade designed to make us believe it’s an example of Jewish power.

Capitalism is the world’s current economic system. Oil companies like to make a profit. The Pentagon wants to ensure its oil supply and deny it to putative enemies if necessary. There is a lot of oil in the Middle East.

None of these banal observations even begin to explain US policy in the Middle East.

As I wrote three years ago, in a response to Noam Chomsky,

“By means of the Lobby, the tail wags the dog. Its the simplest, clearest, and most economical explanation of the facts.”3

But my explanation still requires an explanation. If ethnic interests, such as the Israel lobby, [Is the “Israel lobby” an “ethnic interest? — DV ed.] can trump class interests, such as the need for stability, and one’s theory says it cannot, something has to give. The power of Israel in the USA and all the other Western countries falsifies the predictions of Marxism so comprehensively, one must conclude that Marxism, at least when it comes to analyzing US Middle East policy, is part of the problem. A radically different approach is needed.

  1. Rob Urie, “The Profits of War and De-Stabilization: Capitalism and US Oil Geo-Politics,” Counterpunch, 20-22 September 2013.
  2. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2007).
  3. Jay Knott, “Faithful Circle,” Dissident Voice, 18 September 2010.

Jay Knott is the author of The Mass Psychology of Anti-Fascism.

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September 24, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is the Israel Lobby Only a Chimp Among Gorillas?

By DIANA JOHNSTONE | CounterPunch | September 23, 2013

Some friendly criticism of our article “The People Against the 800 Pound Gorilla” provides a welcome opportunity to clarify the discussion.  Shamus Cooke, while largely agreeing with the points made by Jean Bricmont and myself, reproaches us for focusing on the pro-Israel lobby as the major factor promoting U.S. war against Syria to the detriment of much bigger factors: the U.S. capitalist class, the big banks, “empire”, oil, the military-industrial complex – in a word, capitalism.

The problem with our article, writes Shamus Cooke, “is that the authors elevate the Israeli gorilla to a weight class it doesn’t belong in; and in so doing the authors are forced to minimize the size of several other giant gorillas, whose combined weight overshadows the Israeli chimp.”

Of course, “capitalism”, however you want to define it, vastly dwarfs the Israel lobby. So do the military-industrial complex, the oil business, or U.S. imperialism, all of which have existed prior to and independently of the Israel lobby.

But is weighing the Israel lobby against “capitalism” a valid comparison?  The Israel lobby is a clearly identifiable pressure group, with names, addresses and policies that are clearly stated.  Capitalism is an economic system that at present, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, prevails in almost the entire world.  Today, every specific policy in most countries is defined within a capitalist context, and some of those policies, notably on highly emotional issues, are opposed to each other, without challenging for a moment the existence of “capitalism”.

So it is with policy toward the Middle East and the war in Syria.  Capitalism is not at stake in those conflicts, and “the system” is resilient and elastic enough to profit from whatever policy is adopted.

The very existence of the gigantic U.S. military machine constitutes a constant danger of being used to meet some “threat” cooked up by think tanks, interest groups and foreign lobbies. At the start of the Cold War, the notorious China Lobby personified by Mme Chiang Kai-Shek exerted a negative influence on U.S. policy in the Far East. More recently the Cuban lobby of anti-Castro exiles has influenced US policy to the detriment of U.S. export sectors such as agribusiness. Today, the politically powerful Israel lobby stimulates and exacerbates the worst tendencies in a divided political establishment. If the American people had the awareness, and American politicians the courage, to say “no” to that lobby and its specious arguments, the less belligerent forces in Washington would have a better chance of prevailing.

A century ago, denouncing capitalism as the source of war found an echo in large, active political parties which theoretically aspired to replacing capitalism with socialism. But even those massive parties failed to prevent the First World War. And today, there is no significant political force in any Western country prepared to carry out a coherent program of replacing capitalism with something else.  So if stopping war depends on first getting rid of capitalism, we are doomed.

One can always argue that capitalism is an underlying factor that promotes war.  Perhaps one can say the same about “human nature”.   But we do not care to wait until capitalism collapses or human nature changes in order to prevent the disaster of greater war in the Middle East.

What interests us now is to expose and oppose the single most significant political influence promoting ongoing war in the Middle East. That is unquestionably the Israel lobby, which overlaps on the right with the so-called neo-conservatives, and on the left with the “humanitarian” interventionists. To argue against war, it is therefore the Israel lobby that needs to be confronted.

Shamus Cooke says that strategists “such as the Project for a New American Century” (the neo-cons who dominated the Bush II administration) are “the ‘vanguard’ of American capitalism, and their geopolitical outlook is firmly rooted in the economic interests of the corporations that most benefit from overseas investing.”

I would say, rather, that PNAC, and its various reincarnations, is a cohort of fanatically pro-Israel strategists aspiring to control U.S. foreign policy by claiming to promote the interests of a capitalist class which has no unified strategic outlook of its own.  There is no reason for American capitalism, which has interests on all continents, to focus so single-mindedly, and so aggressively, on the Middle East.  The United States needs Middle Eastern oil less than those countries need to sell it. Many sectors of Western capitalism actually suffer from the sanctions imposed on a country like Iran. The focus on the alleged Iranian “threat” serves only to maintain Israel’s status as sole nuclear power dominating the Middle East, backed up by the United States.

To oppose war, it is necessary to oppose those who advocate it.  And that is the Israel lobby, not “capitalism”.  Why is there so much more reluctance to criticize the Israel lobby than to criticize capitalism?  These days, criticism of capitalism is accepted even in mainstream media.  But criticism of capitalism has never stopped a war.

Defeating the Israel lobby and changing U.S. policy in the Middle East from a policy of bullying, sanctions and bombing to a policy of diplomacy and compromise would not put an end to capitalism, to the military-industrial complex or to U.S. imperialism.  But such a victory would be a good basis for going on to oppose the huge network of overseas U.S. military bases, the encircling of Russia and China, the exploitation of Africa and any return to the traditional imperialist treatment of Latin America.

The political fight against the Israel lobby is not the only campaign for peace, but it is the one that is most urgently necessary today.

Diana Johnstone can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr

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September 23, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Syria and the ‘devious’ Israeli connection — Dr. Olmert doth protest too much, methinks

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | September 18, 2013

In a September 9 blog for The Huffington Post, Dr. Josef Olmert seizes on Professor Stephen Walt’s open letter to Congressman Joseph Kennnedy, urging him to oppose the use of military force against Syria, as an opportunity to attack Walt and Mearsheimer’s thesis that the influential — not “demonic” as Olmert chooses to misrepresent it — Israel Lobby has managed to skew U.S. foreign policy from its national interest. Writes Olmert:

So, under these circumstances, I eagerly expected to read about the Israeli connection of the Syrian problem, as well as it being behind the President’s decision to attack in Syria. Nothing of the kind in the open letter, and for good reason. The Syrian conflict has nothing to do with Israel. So was the case in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring started, so it was in Libya, where the US intervened ” from behind,” so it was in Egypt, where the secular-liberal Tamarud movement agitates against the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty and the deposed Muhammad Morsi related to Jews as descendants of pigs and monkeys.

Well, Israel has not been involved in all these situations, as well as in Yemen, Bahrain etc. because the Arab Spring had nothing to do with the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It has to do with poverty, corruption, authoritarianism and sectarianism — all are huge issues which are concerned with the very fabric of the Arab state system, with basic ills of Arab societies; in sum, with issues that are mostly the makings of the Arabs, ones which ought to be solved by them.

The Arab Spring has been a cataclysmic, formative event, the most important to have happened in the Middle East since the heydays of Nasserism, back in the 1950′s. Such a huge event and no Israel connection, so where is the big thesis of Walt and Mearsheimer? How is it connected to the Middle East circa 2013? Well, it is not.

Dr. Olmert’s denial of an Israeli connection to the so-called “Arab Spring” is undermined, however, by his own biography. Although omitted from his “full bio” page at the HuffPost, the adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina is a contributor to an “online community” known as Fikra Forum, “that aims to generate ideas to support Arab democrats in their struggle with authoritarians and extremists.” Notwithstanding the high-sounding self-description, the pro-democracy “Arab” forum is in fact a creation of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that was itself created by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful and best known organization in the Israel Lobby.

Among Olmert’s fellow Fikra Forum contributors is Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a group that lobbies Washington for military intervention on behalf of the Syrian opposition. As Moustafa’s Israeli Fikra co-contributor no doubt remembers, an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by SETF’s recently resigned political director, “Doctor” Elizabeth O’Bagy, was touted by John McCain and John Kerry during a Senate Foreign Relations hearing to bolster the dubious case for intervention in support of the supposedly “moderate” rebels.

So who does the one-time advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and the brother of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert think he’s fooling when he claims there’s no “ever devious” Israeli connection to the Syrian problem?

Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter @O_Cathail.

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September 18, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Syria deal seems to have just postponed US-led war

By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | September 17, 2013

The avoidance of an imminent US military onslaught on Syria is of course to be welcomed.

But the deal struck by American Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov at the weekend looks rather like a postponement of US aggression than a step towards a peaceful resolution.

Already Western politicians and media are conflating the latest UN chemical weapons inspection report with the weekend admission by the Syrian government that it possesses such armaments.

The UN report only confirms that the toxic nerve agent sarin was used in an attack on 21 August near the capital, Damascus. But this finding is being spun to insinuate that the armed forces of President Bashar al-Assad are to blame and in that way justifying Western threats of retaliatory military action.

It is troubling that within hours of Kerry and Lavrov shaking hands in Geneva on a seeming breakthrough agreement they were both saying very different things about its consequences.

On his way back to Washington, Kerry met the French and British foreign ministers in Paris on Monday morning where they reiterated – with usual high-handed truculence – that the option of military force against Syria was still on the table if the Syrian government did not fully comply with the complete decommissioning of its chemical weapons.

For his part, Lavrov in response to the Paris statement appeared to be irked by the repetition of the militarist option by “our partners… this shows a lack of understanding of what John Kerry and I agreed on.” The Russian foreign minister added that any use of military threat might wreck the chance of a peaceful resolution.

Elsewhere, US President Barack Obama also stated that military force against Syria remained an option in spite of the Geneva pact to disarm Syria’s chemical arsenal through diplomacy. That position of wielding military threat was also backed by French President Francois Hollande.

The Americans, British and French want to finalize a resolution at the United Nations Security Council this week which will be “strong and binding,” meaning the authorization of military force if Syria does not deliver on handing over of its stockpile of chemical weapons.

Russia and China – the other two UN Security Council members – will no doubt veto any such resolution.

However, in that case, the US, supported by Britain and France, says that it will invoke a unilateral decision to go it alone in the use of military force outside of the UN. During his press conference with Lavrov in Geneva, Kerry responded to a question about what his country would do if it did not obtain a UN mandate, by saying “the [American] president always has the right to defend US interests.” In other words, the US president can do whatever he wants, including waging war on another country.

This unilateral move would leave the US open to charges of aggression. But knowing Washington’s arrogant capacity for self-justification, sophistry and long history of aggression, such a charge is by no means a deterrent to eventual US belligerence.

It is significant that the first destination for Kerry after Geneva was to fly to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The latter welcomed Kerry with open arms and was visibly pleased with the prospect of “stripping Syria of all its chemical weapons.” Some commentators have averred that the weekend Geneva deal was a slap in the face to Netanyahu from the Obama White House in that it steered away from Israeli war plans against Syria.

Such an analysis seems misplaced as it presumes, against all the evidence, that Washington does not have an inherent war plan for regime change in Syria. It is also misplaced given Netanyahu’s obvious glee on receiving Kerry. And why wouldn’t the Israeli warmonger be pleased?

The so-called Geneva “deal” may have halted US war plans on Syria for now, but the upshot is that Western aggression towards that country is even more emboldened and, bizarrely, has also now gained a veneer of legitimacy.

Syria was compelled to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and thereby surrender its arsenal of chemical weapons. While such weapons are an abomination and in an ideal world should be removed completely everywhere, the result of the Lavrov-Kerry arrangement is that Syria is obliged to unilaterally disarm. Israel has an equally dangerous stockpile of chemical weapons, as well as biological and nuclear arsenals.

Unlike the Syrian government, the Israeli regime has actually used its chemical weapons in the form of White Phosphorus against Palestinian citizens in Gaza. Yet, while Syria is being disarmed of its weapons that have acted as a deterrent against Israel’s weapons of mass destruction, the Israeli regime is free to increase its balance of terror.

Provocatively, the Western powers are still insisting that they have the right to launch a military attack on Syria if the latter does not conform to the chemical disarmament process. But this process is all one-sided. The West is swinging the threat of military force even though it is an unlawful act of aggression. The US and its allies should be indicted for this aggression against Syria, which they have been engaging in for several months and not just since the 21 August chemical weapon atrocity near Damascus.

The UN chemical weapons inspectors, led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom, has confirmed that the deadly nerve agent sarin was used in the attack on 21 August. The UN team does not conclude who actually used the toxic gas despite Western insinuations. But there is plenty of evidence from alternative sources pointing to the Western-backed mercenaries fighting for regime change who committed this atrocity and others involving chemical weapons, such as at Khan al-Assal near Aleppo on 19 March this year.

As well as the US and its allies remaining armed and dangerous so too are the militants that are terrorizing Syria on behalf of Washington. According to recent reports, Washington is stepping up its weapons supplies to al-Qaeda-linked mercenaries – the same mercenaries who are beheading army captives and civilians, as well as poisoning women and children to fabricate crimes attributed to the Syrian army.

US-led all-out war on Syria may have been averted by the Lavrov-Kerry deal in Geneva at the weekend, but the price for that respite seems to be the West and its allies having gained even more leverage for their criminal agenda of regime change.

What Syria, Russia, Iran, China and other independent nations need to do is to widen the terms of any deal over Syria. This must include the complete cessation of weapons being funneled into Syria by the US and its allies; the immediate halt to threats of war by the US; and if we are going to have disarmament of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East then that process must include the Israeli regime as absolutely mandatory.

~

Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.He co-hosts a weekly current affairs programme, Sunday at 3pm GMT on Bandung Radio.

September 17, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Peres: Syria Is Punished for Refusing Peace with ’Israel’

Al-Manar | September 16, 2013

In significant remarks made by the president of the Zionist entity, Shimon Peres, he stated that what is happening in Syria today is punishment of the Arab state for refusing to compromise with ‘Israel’.

In statements published by the Zionist daily Yediot Ahronoth on Sunday, Peres said that “the 1973 war had brought peace in spite of its brutality.”

“One of the 1973 war outcomes was signing the Peace-Treaty with Egypt, through which  Sadat could bring security and peace to his people, contrary to Assad, who refused to participate in Sadat’s settlement as he participated in his war,” the Zionist president elaborated.

“Today, Syria lives internal war and the Syrian people pay for it over Assad’s refusal to compromise. Today he is punished for his refusal,” he said.

Peres’s remarks came during his participation in the commemoration of Zionist soldiers who had been killed in the 1973 war. The ceremony was also attended by Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other military and security officials.

These statements made it clear that what is happening in Syria is not a revolution but a foreign scheme, analysts and observers say, noting that these statements indicate the beneficiary of the Syrian crisis and its maestro.

September 16, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

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