The Foreign Ministry has warned of a possible blow to Russian-American relations if the US pursues unilateral sanctions against Iran that affect Russian economic interests there.
“Washington should understand that our bilateral relations will suffer considerably if the American restrictions affect Russian economic entities cooperating with partners in the Islamic Republic of Iran in strict compliance with our legislation and UN Security Council resolutions,” the ministry said on its website on Monday.
Late Friday, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions against Iran which aims to penalize those parties aiding Iran’s insurance, financial, petroleum, petrochemical and shipping sectors.
Moscow considers US sanctions against Iran unacceptable, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariya Zakharova said on Monday.
“Russia is fully committed to the restrictions on cooperation with Iran that were established by the UN Security Council,” the spokeswoman said. “However, we do not recognize the unilateral sanctions that were imposed by Washington on the plea of serious concern about Iran’s nuclear program and run counter to international law.”
Zakharova called US efforts to punish countries that do business with Tehran “blackmail.”
“We refute methods of undisguised blackmail,” she said, “which is used by the US towards banks and companies of other countries.”
Earlier, the US passed legislation that targets any party doing business with Iran’s central bank.
Russia has cooperated with Iran in economic projects in the past, including in the Bushehr nuclear plant, which started adding energy to Iran’s electricity grid in September, 2011.
The United States is one of several countries, including Israel, that is concerned that Iran may be trying to develop a nuclear weapon under the cover of a civilian energy program.
Tehran has strongly rejected the accusations, saying it is pursuing nuclear energy for civilian purposes only.
This would not be the first time that the Israelis have endeavoured to destroy historical and cultural artifacts in order to bolster their territorial claims and to eradicate inconvenient elements of the past.
In 2003, in an article headed “Pillaging 7000 Years Of Iraq History No Accident” sub-heading “The Sacking Of Iraq’s Museums – US Wages War Against Culture And History”, Patrick Martin wrote in Rense.com that
“US claims to have been taken by surprise by the ransacking of cultural facilities in Baghdad, Mosul and other cities are not credible. Such a tragedy was not only predictable, it was specifically warned against. . . . Attacking the cultural resources that connect the Iraqi people to 7,000 years of history is part of the process of systematically destroying their national identity.” (Emphasis added – link to full article).
A little-known event in 1948 during the “Naqba”, was the Israeli theft of books and manuscripts.
Journalist Arwa Aburawa, writing in “Sabbah Report” two years ago, refers to
“the systematic looting of more than 60,000 Palestinian books by Israeli forces and the attempted destruction of Palestinian culture… Between May 1948 and February 1949, librarians from the Jewish National Library and Hebrew University Library entered the desolate Palestinian homes of west Jerusalem and seized 30,000 books, manuscripts and newspapers alone. These cultural assets, which had belonged to elite and educated Palestinian families, were then “loaned” to the National Library where they have remained until now.” (See “The great book robbery of 1948″ here)
Not only does Israel wish to achieve complete domination of the Middle East, it also wants to destroy the history, the culture, and the very identity of its neighbours and those it occupies.
We can be sure that an attack on Iran, one of the oldest civilisations in the world with a massive treasure-trove of historical and cultural artifacts, will include widespread theft and destruction as was the case with Iraq.
The United States, Britain, and all other backers and enablers of “gallant little Israel” are fully complicit in these crimes against humanity.
Clashes continue in Syria’s largest city Aleppo between the army and foreign-backed militant groups. This time the Aleppo Castle was the target, but the army managed to repel the assaults, and declared the historical building as safe and intact.
Castle of Aleppo, is a large medieval fortified palace in the centre of the old city of Aleppo. It is considered to be one of the oldest and largest castles in the world. Usage of the Citadel hill dates back at least to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC.
Foreign backed armed groups and supporting media outlets emphasized on controlling the castle repeatedly. Press TV crew headed to the castle, the tension was high, Syrian soldiers were almost everywhere fully geared, two tanks on the sides of the roads and a commander waiting for us.
Upon arriving the archaeological building, the traces of mortars were imprinted on the Defensive bridge, the main gate was Booby-trapped by the armed groups upon attempting to penetrate the historic fortifications and several Syrian soldering were assigned to protect the castle being under hours of attack by the armed groups.
Syrians believe this war against Syria, has already targeted all components of Syrian society, and now foreign backed armed groups and their sponsoring countries are after Syrian 7000 years history.
“In fact, the Wilkerson report does not refute the notion of an Israeli link; he addresses only Israeli-U.S. contacts in early 2002, whereas by later in 2002 and 2003 the evidence is overwhelming that Israel and particularly the Israel lobby were pushing hard for the war.” – KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
It is widely realized now that the fall of President Bashar Assad’s regime would leave Syria riven by bitter ethnic, religious, and ideological conflict that could splinter the country into smaller enclaves. Already there has been a demographic shift in this direction, as both Sunnis and Alawites flee the most dangerous parts of the county, seeking refuge within their own particular communities. Furthermore, it is widely believed in Syria that, as the entire country becomes too difficult to secure, the Assad regime will retreat to an Alawite redoubt in the northern coastal region as a fallback position.
Syrian Kurds, about ten percent of the country’s population, are also interested in gaining autonomy or joining with a larger Kurdistan. The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD)—linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has engaged in a separatist insurgency in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast region for nearly three decades—has gained control of key areas in northeast Syria. While Turkey has supported the Syrian opposition, it is terrified of a Kurdish autonomous zone in Syria, believing that it could provide a safe haven for staging attacks into Turkey. Moreover, Kurdish autonomy would encourage separatist sentiment within the Turkish Kurdish minority. Turkey has threatened to invade the border areas of Syria to counter such a development and Turkish armed forces with armor have been sent to Turkey’s border with the Syrian Kurdish region. A Turkish invasion would add further complexities to the fracturing of Syria.
What has not been readily discussed in reference to this break-up of Syria is that the Israeli and global Zionist Right has long sought the fragmentation of Israel’s enemies so as to weaken them and thus enhance Israel’s primacy in the Middle East. While elements of this geostrategic view can be traced back to even before the creation of the modern state of Israel, the concept of destabilizing and fragmenting enemies seems to have been first articulated as an overall Israeli strategy by Oded Yinon in his 1982 piece, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.” Yinon had been attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and his article undoubtedly reflected high-level thinking in the Israeli military and intelligence establishment in the years of Likudnik Menachem Begin’s leadership. Israel Shahak’s translation of Yinon’s article was titled “The Zionist Plan for the Middle East.”
In this article, Yinon called for Israel to use military means to bring about the dissolution of Israel’s neighboring states and their fragmentation into a mosaic of homogenous ethnic and sectarian groupings. Yinon believed that it would not be difficult to achieve this result because nearly all the Arab states were afflicted with internal ethnic and religious divisions, and held together only by force. In essence, the end result would be a Middle East of powerless mini-statelets unable to confront Israeli power. Lebanon, then facing divisive chaos, was Yinon’s model for the entire Middle East. Yinon wrote: “Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target.”
Eminent Middle East historian, Bernard Lewis, who is a Zionist of a rightist hue and one of the foremost intellectual gurus for the neoconservatives, echoed Yinon with an article in the September 1992 issue of “Foreign Affairs” titled “Rethinking the Middle East.” In it, he wrote of a development he called “Lebanonization,” stating “[A] possibility, which could even be precipitated by [Islamic] fundamentalism, is what has of late been fashionable to call ‘Lebanonization.’ Most of the states of the Middle East—Egypt is an obvious exception—are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common identity. . . . The state then disintegrates—as happened in Lebanon—into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions, and parties.” Since Lewis— credited with coining the phrase “clash of civilizations”—has been a major advocate of a belligerent stance for the West against the Islamic states, it would appear that he realized that such fragmentation would be the result of his belligerent policy.
In 1996, the neoconservatives presented to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu their study “A Clean Break” (produced under the auspices of an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies), which described how Israel could enhance its regional security by toppling enemy regimes. Although this work did not explicitly focus on the fragmentation of states, such was implied in regard to Syria when it stated that “Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” It added that “Damascus fears that the ‘natural axis’ with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria’s territorial integrity.”
David Wurmser authored a much longer follow-up document to “A Clean Break” for the same Israeli think tank, entitled “Coping with Crumbling States: A Western and Israeli Balance of Power Strategy for the Levant.” In this work, Wurmser emphasized the fragile nature of the Middle Eastern Baathist dictatorships in Iraq and Syria in line with Lewis’s thesis, and how the West and Israel should act in such an environment.
In contrast to some of the Western democracies as well as Arab states, Israel did not publicly call for Assad’s removal until a few months ago. This, however, does not mean that the Netanyahu government did not support this outcome. This tardiness has a number of likely reasons, one of which being the fear that an Islamist government would replace Assad that would be even more hostile to Israel and more prone than he to launch reckless attacks. Moreover, instability in a country on Israel’s border is of tremendous concern to its security establishment. It is feared that in such a chaotic condition, Assad’s massive chemical weapons arsenal and advanced surface-to-air missile systems could end up in the hands of terrorist groups like the Lebanese Hezbollah, which would not be hesitant to use them against Israel.
Unlike the armchair destabilization strategists and the neocons, the actual Israeli leaders, including hardline Likudniks such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, have to be concerned about facing the immediate negative political consequences of their decisions even if they believe that the long-term benefits would accrue to the country. This invariably leads to the exercise of caution in regard to dramatic change. Thus, the concern about the immediate security risks cited above likely had a significant effect on their decision-making.
Furthermore, it could have been counterproductive for Israel to express support for the Syrian opposition in its early stages. For Assad has repeatedly maintained that the opposition is orchestrated by foreign powers, using this argument to justify his brutal crackdown. Since Israel is hated by virtually all elements in the Middle East, its open support of the opposition could have turned many Syrians, and much of the overall Arab world, against the uprising. While Israel did not openly support the armed resistance, there have been claims from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence has been providing some degree of covert support along with other Western intelligence agencies, including that of the United States.
Since May of this year, however, the Israeli government has become open in its support for the overthrow of the Assad regime. In June, Netanyahu condemned the ongoing massacre of Syrian civilians by Assad, blaming the violence on an “Axis of Evil,” consisting of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. “Iran and Hezbollah are an inseparable part of the Syrian atrocities and the world needs to act against them,” he proclaimed. This inclusion of Iran and Hezbollah illustrates Israel’s goal of using the Syrian humanitarian issue to advance its own national interest.
If the Assad regime were to fall, Israel would certainly be more secure with a splintered congeries of small statelets than a unified Syria under an anti-Israel Islamist regime. Consequently, staunch neoconservative Harold Rhode presents the fragmentation scenario in a positive light in his article, “Will Syria Remain a Unified State?” (July 10, 2012). In contrast to what has been the conventional Western narrative of the uprising against the Assad regime, which presents a heroic Sunni resistance being brutally terrorized by government forces and pro-government Alawite militias, Rhode writes with sympathy for the pro-government non-Sunni Syrian minorities: “In short, what stands behind most of the violence in Syria is the rise of Arab Sunni fundamentalism in its various forms – whether Salafi, Wahhabi, or Muslim Brotherhood. All of those threaten the very existence of the Alawites, the Kurds, and other members of the non-Sunni ethnic and religious groups.
“It is therefore much easier to understand why the ruling Alawites feel they are fighting a life and death battle with the Sunnis, and why they believe they must spare no effort to survive. It also explains why most of Syria’s other minorities – such as the Druze, Ismailis, and Christians – still largely support the Assad regime.”
For a short aside, the neoconservative background of Harold Rhode is of considerable relevance, providing further evidence for the much denied neocon support for the fragmentation of Israel’s enemies. (The mainstream view is that the neocons are naïve idealists whose plans to transform dictatorships into model democracies invariably go awry.) Rhode, a longtime Pentagon official who was a specialist on the Middle East, was closely associated with neocon stalwarts Michael Ledeen, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. He was also a protégé of Bernard Lewis, with Lewis dedicating his 2003 book, “The Crisis of Islam,” to him. Rhode served as a Middle East specialist for Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy during the administration of George W. Bush, where he was closely involved with the Office of Special Plans, which provided spurious propaganda to promote support for the war on Iraq. Rhode was a participant in the Larry Franklin affair, which involved dealings with Israeli agents, though Rhode was not charged with any crime. Alan Weisman, the author of the biography of Richard Perle, refers to Rhode as an “ardent Zionist” (“Prince of Darkness: Richard Perle,” p.146), more pro-Israel than Perle, which takes some doing since the latter has been accused of handing classified material to the Israelis. Rhode is currently a fellow with the ultra-Zionist Gatestone Institute, for which he wrote the above article.
Obviously the very removal of the Assad regime would be a blow against Israel’s major enemy, Iran, since Syria is Iran’s major ally. Significantly, Assad’s Syria has provided a conduit for arms and assistance from Iran to Hezbollah and, to a lesser extent, Hamas, to use against Israel. If Israel and Iran had gone to war, these arms would have posed a significant threat to the Israeli populace. Moreover, a defanged Hezbollah would not be able to oppose Israeli military incursions into south Lebanon or even Syria.
A fragmented Syria removes the possible negative ramifications of Assad’s removal since it would mean that even if the Islamists should replace Assad in Damascus they would only have a rump Syrian state to control, leaving them too weak to do much damage to Israel and forcing them to focus their attention on the hostile statelets bordering them. Moreover, Israel is purportedly contemplating military action to prevent Assad’s chemical weapons from falling into the hands of anti-Israel terrorists. With such a divided country there is no powerful army capable of standing up to an Israeli military incursion.
The benefits accruing to Israel from the downfall of the Assad regime and the concomitant sectarian fragmentation and conflict in Syria go beyond the Levant to include the entire Middle East region. For sectarian violence in Syria is likely to cause an intensification of the warfare between Sunnis and Shiites throughout the entire Middle East region. Iran might retaliate against Saudi Arabia’s and Qatar’s support for the Syrian opposition by fanning the flames of Shiite Muslim revolution in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich and majority Shiite Eastern Province. Both areas have witnessed intermittent periods of violent protest and brutal government suppression since the Arab Spring of 2011. And Iraq remains a tinderbox ready to explode into ethno-sectarian war among the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, with violence already on an uptick since the formal departure of American troops in December 2011.
In assessing the current regional situation, American-born Barry Rubin, professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya, Israel) and director of its Global Research in International Affairs Center, writes in the Jerusalem Post (“The Region: Israel is in good shape,” July 15, 2012) : “The more I think about Israel’s security situation at this moment, the better it looks.” He goes on to state: “By reentering a period of instability and continuing conflict within each country, the Arabic-speaking world is committing a self-induced setback. Internal battles will disrupt Arab armies and economies, reducing their ability to fight against Israel. Indeed, nothing could be more likely to handicap development than Islamist policies.”
It should be noted that the “period of instability and continuing conflict” in the Middle East region has been the result of regime change and is in line with the thinking of Oded Yinon who, along with the other aforementioned geostrategic thinkers, pointed out that the major countries of the Middle East were inherently fissiparous and only held together by authoritarian regimes.
America’s removal of Saddam Hussein in a war spearheaded by the pro-Israel neoconservatives served to intensify Sunni-Shiite regional hostility and, in a sense, got the destabilization ball rolling. Iran is targeted now, and Israel and its neocon supporters seek to make use of dissatisfied internal elements, political and ethnic—the radical MEK, democratic secularists, monarchists, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and Azeris— to bring down the Islamic regime. And while Saudi Arabia is currently serving Israeli interests by opposing Iran, should the Islamic Republic of Iran fall, Israel and their supporters would likely turn to Saudi Arabia’s dismemberment, seeking the severance of the predominantly Shiite, oil-rich Eastern Province, with some neocons already having made such a suggestion—e.g., Max Singer, Richard Perle, and David Frum (schemes which have been put on ice while Israel and its supporters have focused on Iran). If everything went according to plan, the end result would be a Middle East composed of disunited states, or mini-states, involved in intractable, internecine conflict, which would make it impossible for them to confront Israeli power and to provide any challenge to Israel’s control of Palestine. The essence of Yinon’s geostrategic vision of Israeli preeminence would be achieved.
MIAMI, FL — The president of a veterans’ anti-war organization said the American public has been “brainwashed” to hate Iran and pressure to prevent the U.S. from attacking it will have to come from outside the US.
“I don’t think we can get mass protests going against [war on] Iran here,” said Leah Bolger, president of Veterans For Peace (VFP) in a speech Thursday to its 27th annual national convention here. “The American public is brainwashed. The American public is saying ‘We hate Iran,'” Bolger said.
“We have to reach out to the global community and get them to put pressure on the US to prevent war against Iran,” she told an audience of cheering veterans at the Marriott Biscayne Bay hotel. “We see how the U.S. sanctions are an act of war against Iran, a country which has done no harm to anyone.”
American are brainwashed, Bolger said, because the mass media has framed Syria and Iran “as terrorist nations out to get us” and making wars against them as “necessary.”
Bolger went on to say, “The Iranian people have done nothing illegal. They have every right to develop nuclear power. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT).”
By contrast, she continued, “Israel has never let the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspect their facilities. The best way to discourage nuclear weapons is for the US and Israel to dismantle their own. We are bellicose and activist nations.”
The veterans cheered when Bolger said VFP is the only veterans organization that has called for the abolition of war. The group has also called for dismantling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Veterans For Peace was founded in 1985 and has approximately 5,000 members in 150 chapters located in every US state and several countries. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) by the United Nations, and is the only national veterans’ organization calling for the abolition of war.
Sherwood Ross may be reached at sherwoodross10@gmail.com.
There is a horrible speculation that the insurgents in Syria may have seized hold of chemical weapons.
Apart from the catastrophically unthinkable havoc the rebels can wreak in Syria and in the region with the WMDs, the rhetorical question which remains is how these weapons of mass destruction have fallen into the hands of the insurgents who are chiefly composed of Wahhabi al-Qaeda mercenaries of different nationalities including Afghans, Iraqis, Turkish, Yemenis, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Saudis.
The situation in Syria is assuming Orwellian ramifications and the possibility to clearly understand or dissect the situation in the country is not an easy task.
In addition to the active role the Saudi-backed Wahhabis, CIA and some western intelligence organizations are playing in Syria, there is one entity, namely Israel which is stealthily espying every single development in Syria.
For the first time, an Israeli spy official clearly stated that Israel supports regime change in Syria and that it really demands an end to the government of President Bashar Assad.
“I hope it will happen, even though I don’t know when or how,” Intelligence Agencies Minister Dan Meridor said on Tuesday.
The top spy chief implicated why Assad should go and how it would damage the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“I am not going to try to calculate when Assad’s end will come, but when it happens, Iran’s biggest ally will be gone.”
Taking it for granted that Assad is doomed to go, he said, “I hope the new Syria will understand that joining Iran is a mistake that brings isolation from the Western world.”
Such a feeble perception of the Syrian situation is indicative of one who is either too optimistic or one who is well aware of what is going on behind the scene and that which is not visible to the ordinary people with no intelligence savvy.
Furthermore, Dan Meridor does not seem to understand that the situation in Israel is spiraling out of control with people protesting against social injustice almost on a daily basis. Since last month, four Israelis have set themselves ablaze from an extremity of despair.
On August 5, John McCain and Lindsey O. Graham, both Republicans, who represent Arizona and South Carolina in the Senate, respectively and Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent, who represents Connecticut in the Senate advised the US government to directly and openly provide assistance, including weapons, intelligence and training, to the insurgents in Syria as they claim President’s Assad’s ‘brutality’ is no longer to be tolerated.
“It is not too late for the United States to shift course. First, we can and should directly and openly provide robust assistance to the armed opposition, including weapons, intelligence and training. Whatever the risks of our doing so, they are far outweighed by the risks of continuing to sit on our hands, hoping for the best.”
Another part of this sabotage axis against Syria is Turkey which plays a very treacherous role in snowballing the Syrian crisis. Turkey has supplied the rebels with dozens of man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS).
According to NBC, the missile supplies might have been provided by Turkey, Saudi Kingdom and Qatar monarchy, the three countries which have made strenuous and costly efforts to overthrow the government of Bashar Assad.
In a press conference at the United Nations in New York City, a Syrian UN representative announced that Turkey shipped US-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to rebels via Turkey, saying that Turkey was pleased with Kofi Annan’s resignation because Ankara and Washington were initially opposed to his six point peace plan.
In fact, Turkey should be grateful to Syria what it has done for it in the past. It is acknowledged by many pundits that it was Bashar’s father Hafiz Assad who made peace between Turkey and the Kurds living on both sides of the country, thereby vaccinating Turkey for years against any attacks on the part of the Kurds.
The antagonistic policies of Turkey have left President Bashar Assad with no choice but to grant autonomy to the Kurds in Syria who can foment dilemma for the Ankara government and get Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan into hot water.
The ongoing Kurdish insurgency has reportedly claimed the lives of at least 48,000 over the past two decades.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is sharply aware of what a deep impact this decision can exercise on the security of Turkey.
He claimed the two groups had built a “structure in northern Syria” that for Turkey means “a structure of terror.”
Turkey is making a tactical mistake by supporting terrorism in Syria and supplying them with weapons, military training and human resources. Turkey will certainly fall into the pitfall it has dug for Syria and the insecurity it envisages for Syria will ultimately recoil against the government itself.
As for Washington and NATO, they are making a selfsame mistake.
The two are fondling terrorism and extremism by throwing support behind the insurgents in Syria. They know that a popular uprising in the true sense of the word is not clearly discernible in Syria and that what has been taking place in Syria is a string of militancy and terrorist operations funded by the Saudis and the Qataris and some western countries who are waiting to reap the benefits of their atrocities in case Bashar Assad’s government collapses. Such a day, if it comes, will open a new chapter of horror in the Middle East with no end in sight.
The unfurling reality is that the hostile states and powers antagonizing Bashar Assad are gradually getting caught up in the labyrinthine Orwellian pitfall of their own folly and that they are consciously or unconsciously working in the best interests of the Zionist regime.
South Korea, the fourth largest importer of Iranian crude, plans to resume purchases after a two-month pause due to a European Union embargo.
South Korean refiners and the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) are negotiating the details of a deal, which would allow supplies to restart from September, Reuters reported citing government sources. Tehran offered to deliver crude in its own tankers and provide up to $1 billion shipment insurance cover.
SK Energy and Hyundai Oilbank – the only two South Korean refiners that import Iranian crude, have confirmed that they are involved in negotiations with NITC. Though it’s unclear whether Iran had offered South Korea a discount for crude.
South Korea, India, Japan and China are the biggest importers of Iranian crude, accounting for more than half of its oil exports. In May, Seoul announced it would halt crude import from the Islamic Republic, becoming the first major importer of Iranian oil to give up supplies due to the EU sanctions.
EU sanctions banning Iranian oil as well as insurance affect Asian customers as they rely on EU companies to insure their shipments. Nearly 90% of the world’s tanker fleets are covered by 13 international P&I clubs from the EU.
Meanwhile Japan approved providing $7.6 billion insurance coverage for Iranian tankers, while China offered to use its own vessels for delivery. India has given permission to its state-run refiners to import Iranian oil on condition Tehran arranges insurance.
GAZA CITY – The attack on a Sinai police station that killed 16 Egyptian officers on Sunday was an attempt to strain relations between Egypt and Gaza, political analysts said Monday.
“What happened in Egypt was a crime and organized terror meant to drive a wedge in Palestinian-Egyptian relations. It is possible that external hands are interfering with Egypt after Muhammad Mursi became president,” Gaza-based analyst Mustafa al-Sawwaf told Ma’an.
Palestinians have no interest in attacking Egyptian forces, but Israel has been unsettled by the improvement in relations between Gaza rulers Hamas and Egypt’s recently elected Muslim Brotherhood president, al-Sawwaf said.
Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown by a citizen revolt in Jan. 2011, had played a key role in maintaining Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip, but Mursi has pledged measures to ease the blockade and held several high-level meetings with Hamas.
Al-Sawwaf said some parties within Egypt and at an international level were uncomfortable with Hamas’ friendly relations with Mursi. Hamas has condemned the Sinai attack and vowed not to let anyone threaten Egypt’s security.
Faysal Abu Shalha, a Fatah MP in Gaza, said he hoped Mursi would still implement his pledges to aid Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
But Akram Atallah, a political analyst based in Bethlehem, said he feared residents of Gaza could pay a heavy price for the deaths of the Egyptian officers, particularly if militants in Gaza were involved in the attack.
Mursi had promised to extend the opening hours of the Rafah crossing but Egyptian security officials said the Egypt-Gaza border was indefinitely closed in the wake of the attack.
Attallah told Ma’an he suspected Israel was involved in the attack. He said Israel knew about the raid and noted that it had advised its citizens to leave Sinai days earlier.
He added that Israeli forces assassinated a man in Gaza earlier on Sunday claiming that he was involved in a plot “to execute a terror attack against Israeli civilians via the Israel-Egypt border.”
Hamza Abu Shanab, a Gaza-based analyst, said the Sinai attack was an opportunity for Mursi to cancel Egypt’s 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
The Camp David agreement limits the number of soldiers Egypt can deploy to Sinai, Abu Shanab noted, and so Mursi must ask Israel’s permission to enlarge its force in the peninsula.
An Israeli refusal would be embarrassing as Tel Aviv has called on Cairo to tighten its grip on Sinai, Abu Shanab added.
Beijing reacted furiously Wednesday to new US sanctions imposed on a Chinese bank over transactions with Iran, urging Washington to revoke them and saying it would lodge an official protest.China, US flags
China’s Foreign Ministry urged the United States to lift the sanctions on the Bank of Kunlun and stop “damaging China’s interests and Sino-US relations.”
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday imposed new economic sanctions on Iran’s oil export sector and on a pair of Chinese and Iraqi banks accused of doing business with Tehran.
Obama said the new measures underlined the United States’ determination to force Tehran “to meet its international obligations” in nuclear negotiations, according to a statement released by the White House.
The US president accused the Bank of Kunlun and the Elaf Islamic Bank in Iraq of arranging transactions worth millions of dollars with Iranian banks already under sanctions because of alleged links to Tehran’s weapons program.
In a brief statement, China’s foreign ministry expressed “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to the US move and said it would officially protest the decision.
“China has regular relations with Iran in the energy and trade fields, which have no connection with Iran’s nuclear plans,” the statement said.
For quite some time now, the US-based United Against Nuclear Iran organization has been trying to prove that Lebanon’s banks are “a theater of operations” for Hezbollah. Having failed to provide any evidence of this, it began threatening Lebanon’s Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh.
United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) was not satisfied with earlier correspondences with the Lebanese Central Bank (BDL), encouraging it to support its cause. Early last June, it began to escalate its criticism of the whole banking system in Lebanon.
It accused it of running a “scheme” to “fraudulently support Lebanese debt securities.” It called on “all credit rating agencies to re-rate Lebanon to a ‘no rating’ as a result of this fraud” and for the country “to be cut off from the US financial system.”
In UANI’s latest letter sent last May to BDL Governor Riad Salameh, the organization explained why it considered Lebanon as “a sovereign money laundering jurisdiction that receives massive inflows of illicit deposits.”
It claimed the conclusion was a result of confidential, three-month long investigation, following their last letter to Salameh sent at the beginning of 2012 and his response.
UANI, which is based in New York, spoke of being “concerned” about four Lebanese banks and requested that Salameh investigate them.
The letter included a long list of questions: “Why did you take action to adopt the ‘Basic Circular’ [anti-money laundering/terror financing set of rules for the Lebanese Banking System (LBS)] on April 4, 2012?” “What role if any have BDL and/or the LBS had in the financing of any weapons-based transaction by and among Hezbollah, Iran, and/or Syria?” it asked.
But regardless of its insolent language, it was nothing more than a redrafting of several old accusations based on media reports – most notably in the New York Times – which claimed that the Lebanese banking sector is a monetary playground for Hezbollah.
One of the indicators underpinning its analysis was “the irrational strength of Lebanese sovereign bonds” in keeping its credit margins stable. UANI believes that economic logic should lead to financial instability.
Lebanon’s public debt was around $53.8 billion by the end of 2011. Its GDP does not exceed $40 billion. The debt to GDP ratio is 137 percent, “one of the highest in the world.”
“The obvious risk of sovereign default is great – unless there is a fraudulent hidden scheme driven by Hezbollah and its state sponsors, Iran and Syria, to support this economic house of cards. There is exactly such a scheme,” the letter claimed.
The letter revisits the case of the Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB) and accusations by the US Department of Treasury that it had been a money laundering conduit for businessmen belonging to Hezbollah.
It repeated claims about Lebanese businessman Ayman Joumaa’s “drug trafficking” network between South America and West Africa, which had laundered “as much as $200 million per month, through various channels, including bulk cash smuggling operations by way of Lebanese exchange houses.”
The letter ends with a bold request by UANI’s CEO, Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, asking Salameh to resign.
“In your role as Governor of BDL, under the political control of Hezbollah, it may very well be impossible for you to effectively perform your role as a legitimate central bank Governor. If that is the case, we respectfully request that you resign,” Wallace wrote.
“To the extent that you fear for your safety and/or the safety of your family given the history of violence in Lebanon, we will advocate for the grant of political asylum for you and your family here in the United States,” he promised.
A former CIA analyst says the United States and Israel seek to come up with a pretext for attacking Iran by fabricating intelligence, a ploy similar to the one adopted by the United States for justifying the war on Iraq a decade ago.
“As we saw 10 years ago with respect to Iraq, if one intends to whip up support for war, one needs to find a casus belli – however thin a pretext it might be,” Ray McGovern wrote in an article.
“How about juxtaposing ‘weapons of mass destruction’ with terrorism. That worked to prepare for war on Iraq, and similar rhetorical groundwork for an attack on Iran is now being laid in Israel,” his article further read.
Referring to the recent attack on a number of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, McGovern said, “Netanyahu broke all records for speed in blaming Iran and Hezbollah” for the bombing.
“On Fox News, Sunday on July 22, Mr. Netanyahu claimed Israel has ‘rock-solid evidence’ tying Iran to the attack in Bulgaria. The same day on CBS’s Face the Nation, Mr. Netanyahu said, ‘We have unquestionable, fully substantiated intelligence that this [terrorist attack] was done by Hezbollah backed by Iran,’ adding that Israel gives ‘specific details to … responsible governments and agencies,’” McGovern went on to say.
The former CIA analyst added that Israel, however, has so far failed to provide any evidence for its claims of Iran’s involvement.
“Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has admitted that he was aware of no information concerning the terrorist or those who dispatched him,” he underlined.
McGovern then refered to the historical moment when British intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove admitted that intelligence on Iraq had been fixed.
“… Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove [executed Iraqi dictator] Saddam [Hussein], through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” Dearlove said on July 23, 2005.
“The likelihood of hostilities with Iran before the [US] presidential election in November is increasing. Beware of “fixed” intelligence,” McGovern concluded.
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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