By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 19, 2025
Ultra-hawkish Senator Lindsey Graham said incoming President Donald Trump should take out Iran’s nuclear facilities once he returns to power. Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, but the South Carolina Republican said Trump should take advantage of Iran’s weakened position to strike the Islamic Republic.
Graham was interviewed Sunday by Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” “The next topic I will be engaging in with President Trump, is to take this moment in time to decimate the Iran nuclear program,” he said. “I don’t think diplomacy works. [Iran’s] proxies [are] incredibly weakened. Israel can go anywhere they wanna go.”
Graham claimed Iran had been weakened in the Middle East, making it an opportune time to attack Tehran. That view is also shared by Trump’s envoy to the Ukraine conflict. Last week, retired General Keith Kellog said there was an opportunity “to change Iran for the better” but said it wouldn’t last for long. Adding, “We must exploit the weakness we now see. The hope is there, so must too be the action.”
While Tehran has limited its nuclear program to civilian purposes, for decades, politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv have warned that Iran is on the brink of obtaining nuclear weapons. The US intelligence community recently restated that the Islamic Republic is not attempting to weaponize its nuclear program.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama negotiated a deal with Iran that placed unprecedented safeguards and inspections on Tehran’s nuclear program. Graham was a stalwart opponent of the Iran Nuclear Deal, and Trump broke the deal during his first term when Tehran was in compliance.
Trump brands himself a great negotiator and said on the campaign trail that he would “have to make a deal” with Iran if reelected. Graham told Brennan that it was impossible to engage diplomatically with Iran.
“This is a … religious Nazi regime,” he said. “They want to destroy the Jewish state. They wanna purify Islam and drive us out of the Mideast. It’d be like negotiating with Hitler. I am hoping there will be an effort by Israel to decimate the Iran nuclear program supported by the United States, and if we don’t do that, it’ll be a historical mistake.”
Earlier this month, Axios reported that there was a “real possibility” of American strikes on Iran during Trump’s second term.
By Sonja van den Ende | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 18, 2025
After the fall of Syria and the partial collapse of the Axis of Resistance, a predictable smear campaign has been launched in Western media, which, like for Russia, is based on distortion and lies.
It is a well-oiled Western psyops campaign to make the public believe that after Hitler, Bashar al-Assad was a feared dictator, just like they do with Putin and, before that, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
The world was surprised when, on December 8, 2024, the most feared terrorists took over the old Syria, a semi-secular state form, and immediately turned it into a caliphate.
But for the American imperial planners, their European allies, and their terrorist proxies, including those in Ukraine, there was no surprise. They knew about it. The NATO-sponsored terrorist militia was trained by the CIA in Idlib, and provided with drones by Ukraine, drones that are produced in Ukraine, from semi-finished products from a company in the Netherlands called Metinvest B.V.
Large parts of the Syrian army did not defect, as the Western media and so-called experts claim. About 9,000 soldiers are still held captive in the Syrian desert, or in the Sednaya prison, held by the terrorists.
Not only the terrorists but the American army is in charge everywhere in Syria. American rulers secretly prepared for the occupation of Syria, as they did with Iraq. They primed the terrorists in Idlib for the final offensive with Operation Dawn of Freedom.
The operation included the Turkish-financed and supported so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), which falls under the umbrella of the U.S., also known as the Syrian National Army. As early as 2016, Turkey began to assemble a new coalition of so-called Syrian rebel groups, including many former FSA fighters, in an attempt to create a more cohesive and effective opposition force. This coalition consists of the terrorists most feared by the Syrian people, who have been massacring civilians since 2011. Among others, the Syrian National Army includes Chinese Uyghurs, notorious for their brutality among head-choppers.
Little known by the Western public is that the so-called Syrian National Army was active in Karabakh during the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Turkey provided military support to Azerbaijan by supplying the terrorists of the Syrian National Army. This proxy army of international mercenaries, controlled by the U.S. and Turkey, has been fighting in Ukraine for the NATO-backed Kiev regime. The most brutal of its senior members is Abu al Shishani, who has been hiding in Ukraine for years – despite his U.S. handlers declaring him dead in 2017.
Of course, the Western terrorist sponsors wash their hands of blood. After all, there are supposed to be no real U.S. “boots on the ground” in Syria, they will argue, but there is an army base coordinating the terrorists who fight for them. The same applies to Turkey.
Turkey has two faces: it is a member of NATO while trying to realize, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a political aspiration for a great Ottoman empire based on Islam. Some say it is utopian or a lie, but it is not. The Syrian people know this very well; for 14 years, this has been going on and, unfortunately, has come true.
Then there is the other “superpower” in the region, the tiny Zionist apartheid project called Israel. No one, not even the International Atomic Energy Agency, knows what its nuclear weapons arsenal is, and it has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Since 2022, Israel has become a fully-fledged fascist regime, the most ultra-right government in the history of the colonialist project, which carries out the agenda of the settlers. These settlers are dangerous terrorists and, like ISIS (Daesh), use religion, racism and murder as weapons against all other beliefs and opinions. Yet the United States and its European lackeys continue to brazenly back the Zionist rogue state. The U.S. has supplied it with $20 billion in military aid over the past year despite the genocide in Gaza.
One of the seven political parties that govern Israel is the Otzma Yehudit Party. This party advocates for the deportation of those they consider to be the “enemies of Israel”, such as the Arabs. The party has been described in the international press and also in Israel itself as an extremist, ultra-nationalist, fascist, and racist organization.
One of the supporters of this party is Daniella Weiss, who watched with her extremist settler friends as “Gazans” were murdered on a boat off the coast of Gaza and cheered. She and her group are invited to the inauguration of Donald Trump, who himself is a Zionist and his entire incoming administration consists of nothing but Zionists.
After the attack of the U.S. and Turkish-sponsored terrorists in the north of Syria, Israel attacked the south, in Dara’a, which was agreed upon, planned and coordinated with the U.S. and Turkey. Dams and bridges were blown up, and large-scale bombardments on the Syrian army were carried out. Large parts of the army were captured and imprisoned, left in the desert, or the former prison Sednaya. They surrendered; the superior force was too great. Remnant army forces, mainly from the “Tiger Forces”, are fighting the terrorists in the hills around Hama and Latakia.
The Western media was there suspiciously quickly, after a day or so, visiting Sednaya for photo-ops. All kinds of so-called Western journalists arrived in Syria, mainly to promote the narrative that the terrible regime was gone, Syria was “free”, and Assad had turned the former Sednaya prison into a “human slaughterhouse”.
Many fake stories, especially by CNN, about so-called prisoners who were hung on ropes, photos were distributed, which later turned out to be photos from a museum in Iraq. There were also stories about prisoners in underground dungeons, yet no proof of this has ever been found.
Certainly, everything was prepared for the “journalists”; they were already waiting in Jordan, primed to cross into Syria when the “surprise fall” happened.
Years ago, there was a report made by Amnesty International called the “Slaughter House”, but now, in 2025, no evidence has been found for this fake report. What has become clear is that a large number of the prisoners were ISIS (Daesh) members, who have now been released and are imposing a terror regime on minorities such as the Alawites, Christians, and Kurds.
The West is now professing innocence and wants good relations with what they call the new government. All kinds of Western politicians have visited the terrorist leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani. He is dressed up in a new suit and his beard is trimmed. The West wants to send the Syrian refugees back from Europe. There are also flight connections again. The airport of Damascus is changed into a mosque. Is the new caliphate going to send its terrorists on holiday? To do what? Commit attacks, perhaps? Russia, in particular, must be careful, especially after the mass murder at the Crocus City shopping complex last March when 145 people were killed by Daesh-linked terrorists. Many terrorists in the new Syria are from the Caucasus and have years of experience.
Transferring terrorists to Idlib after the fall of Aleppo in 2016 was never a good idea. History has proven it.
The U.S. and its European partners want to freeze the conflict in Donbass, which can result in the same problem as in Syria. That was the biggest mistake by Assad and the former government, which took too humane a position on terrorists.
The Cradle | January 17, 2025
Syria’s new interim government, led by former Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani) has claimed its security services thwarted an attempt by ISIS to bomb the Sayyida Zainab shrine in the southern suburbs of Damascus.
The shrine, attributed to the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed and daughter of Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib is an especially revered site for Shia Muslims worldwide. Known as the Heroine of Karbala, this year, her martyrdom anniversary was commemorated on 15 January, coinciding with the Islamic date 15 Rajab.
According to news website Shia Waves, “Local sources reported a noticeable decrease in the number of visitors to the shrine compared to previous years, attributed to Syria’s ongoing security challenges and political turmoil.”
However, a closer analysis of the details provided by Syrian state media suggests the plot to bomb the shrine was fabricated. The move appears to be an attempt to present the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led government as a protector of minorities to western audiences. This portrayal contrasts sharply with its ongoing sectarian cleansing campaigns in Alawite areas of the country.
The would-be false flag also serves the interests of the new Syrian government’s external sponsors. By exaggerating the ISIS threat, it provides the US with a pretext to maintain its illegal military occupation in Syria. Such an attack is all the more possible now that Hezbollah fighters and advisory forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have withdrawn from the country, ostensibly to ensure security for the shrine.
US forces currently occupy key oil fields in the north and east of the country and maintain a strategic base at Al-Tanf on the Syria-Iraq-Jordan border. The narrative of an ISIS threat ensures continued justification for these deployments and the exploitation of Syria’s resources.
Additionally, the conspiracy helps establish a narrative of ISIS culpability in advance. This could pave the way for blame to be assigned to the group if any party—whether elements within the Syrian government pursuing the Wahhabi project of targeting Shia and Sufi shrines, or foreign intelligence agencies seeking to destabilize Syria—decides to destroy the Sayyeda Zainab shrine. Such an event would create further chaos, deepening sectarian divides and serving the interests of those looking to fragment and destabilize Syria.
A staged plot
On 11 January, an unnamed official in Syria’s General Intelligence Service claimed four members of the ISIS cell planning an attack on the shrine were arrested.
Syria state TV showed images of the men, blindfolded and standing against a wall in casual civilian clothes, claiming the group consisted of Lebanese nationals and Palestinian-Lebanese. Images also showed a number of grenades and an anti-tank mine that were allegedly to be used for a suicide attack.
However, Karim Franceschi an Italian-Moroccan who fought with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) against ISIS in Kobane in 2014, gave several reasons why the claimed plot to bomb Sayyeda Zainab was manufactured.
Franceschi observed that ISIS attacks on Sayyida Zaynab in Damascus in the past have used parked vehicles—plastic bags, cars, or motorcycles to plant bombs, rather than suicide bombers.
Further, the TM-57 anti-tank mine allegedly meant to be used in the suicide attack was rigged with the wrong fuse.
“Instead, a crude cord and igniter setup—meant for a suicide vest—is shown. This makes no sense. Using a full mine, with its specific anti-tank explosion radius, is inefficient. HTS knows this, making it clear this setup was staged for propaganda. There is no way ISIS or HTS with their extensive knowledge expertise with explosives would make something this sloppily,” Franceschi writes.
Previous ISIS attacks were not so sloppy. A string of ISIS bombings near the shrine in February 2016 killed 134 people, most of them civilians, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). In January 2016, another attack on the shrine claimed by ISIS killed 70 people.
Julani’s PR offensive
One reason for faking the plot is clear based on the statement issued by the unnamed Syrian intelligence official. He told state media the intelligence service is seeking to protect the country’s minorities, by “putting all its capabilities to stand in the face of all attempts to target the Syrian people in all their spectrums.”
The AP promoted this narrative further, reporting that although HTS leader Sharaa was a former leader in Al-Qaeda, which was notorious for calling for committing massacres against Shia in Iraq, he “has preached religious coexistence since assuming power in Damascus.”
Sharaa needs to preach co-existence and protection of minorities to have economic sanctions lifted. Crippling sanctions were imposed on Syria by the US and EU to strangle the economy and impoverish millions of Syrians in an effort to topple the previous government of Bashar al-Assad. Yet even with Assad gone, the “pointlessly cruel” sanctions remain.
Sharaa has admittedly introduced several reforms to improve life for average Syrians, including ending mandatory military service for Syrian men (which at times lasted up to eight years for meager pay), reducing draconian customs fees on imported products such as cell phones, and removing the checkpoints which slowed travel and forced Syrians to pay bribes or risk being arrested and disappearing into the prison system for arbitrary reasons.
But the lifting of the sanctions and allowing for normal economic activity is crucial for Sharaa to maintain popular support, especially given the unpopularity of his and his government’s efforts to establish a fundamentalist Islamic State in the country.
Maintaining leverage through sanctions
Just as the US and EU used sanctions for leverage against Assad, they are doing the same against Sharaa. The Intercept noted that just hours before Assad fell, and when it was obvious Sharaa and HTS would take power in Damascus, the US Congress moved to extend sanctions, rather than simply let them expire.
“Not considering sanctions relief right now is like pulling the rug out from under Syria just when it’s trying to stand,” The Intercept cited Delaney Simon, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, as saying.
Now, EU governments cite the threat to minorities from Sharaa’s security forces, which are comprised of multiple formerly Al-Qaeda linked groups with records of committing massacres against Syria’s Alawites, Druze, and Christians, as an excuse to keep sanctions in place or to reimpose them as “snapback” sanctions in the future.
Considering that the members of the US Congress most responsible for imposing the sanctions, such as French Hill and Joe Wilson, are also rapid pro-Israel supporters, it can be assumed that Sharaa will be asked in the future to sign a peace deal with Israel giving up the occupied Golan Heights to the Zionist entity in exchange for the sanctions being lifted completely and the possible return of recently occupied Syrian territory under Sharaa’s watch.
The spate of sectarian killings
By preaching religious coexistence and claiming to protect the Sayyeda Zainab shrine, Sharaa is also achieving another goal: providing cover for the ongoing campaign of sectarian cleansing that is taking place in Alawite areas of the country, including parts of Homs and the Hama and Latakia country sides.
The extremist sectarian ideology Sharaa previously embraced when dispatching car bombs to kill Shia civilians in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, is the same ideology which the armed factions under the HTS umbrella supporting his rule still embrace.
Militants affiliated with the new Syrian government, including many foreign jihadists from Uzbekistan, Chechnya, and China (Turkmenistan), are kidnapping and murdering members of Syria’s Alawite community based on their religious identity in various parts of Syria.
As a result, reports of sectarian killings by HTS or affiliated militants in Homs, Latakia, and Tartous continue to flood social media.
Syria expert Joshua Landis wrote on X that “Alawites have been attacked, many who have no history of wrongdoing in military or military service whatsoever. Today, there were demonstrations in the Sunni district of Latakia, cursing Alawites.”
Some Alawites are therefore demanding international protection, Landis notes, which further opens the door to the partition of Syria, a key Israeli goal.
To provide just one example, an Alawite man, Sheikh Ali Deeb, and his wife were killed in rural Salamiyah in the village of Dniba during an HTS search operation on 8 January. Their bodies were found on a side road connecting the village of Dniba to the neighboring village of Snida.
A pretext for US occupation
The new Syrian government’s claim to have thwarted the ISIS attack on Sayyeda Zainab also helps Sharaa remain in the good graces of Washington by giving it a pretext to continue the US military occupation of north and east Syria and its oil fields, which provide crude oil to Israel via Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkiye.
In Iraq, the US perfected the strategy of supporting and even creating Al-Qaeda groups (with Kurdish assistance), to justify its invasion and military occupation of the country.
The Bush administration relied on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s presence in Iraqi Kurdistan to justify its invasion of Baghdad in 2003. Zarqawi built Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) with help from Kurdish Jihadists from Ansar al-Islam, which fought for the CIA in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and for Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) during the Kurdish civil war in the 1990’s.
Zarqawi’s car and suicide bombs targeting Shia pilgrims continued to justify the US occupation after the pretense of Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMDs collapsed.
A decade later, the US military provided weapons to ISIS to conquer large swathes of western Iraq, including Mosul, the country’s second largest city. US officials then used the existence of the so-called ISIS caliphate to return its forces to Iraq that had left after then Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has refused to sign a status of forces agreement with President Barack Obama guaranteeing non-prosecution of US troops in 2011.
Though ISIS has been defeated in Iraq, current Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani has failed to eject US forces from the country. US officials continue to claim they are still needed to fight ISIS, even though Sudani has repeatedly claimed the terror group no longer poses a threat that Iraqi forces cannot deal with on their own.
The Israeli/Wahhabi project
In a more extreme scenario, it is possible that Sharaa and/or his backers in foreign intelligence agencies may facilitate the destruction of the Sayyida Zainab shrine itself, while blaming it on ISIS. By claiming to thwart fake attacks on the shrine now, HTS is establishing a convenient narrative to claim innocence in the future if an attack does take place.
Attacking and destroying important Muslim shrines, important to both Shia and Sunnis, is a hallmark of AQI under the leadership of Zarqawi and ISIS under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Sharaa’s former bosses.
Zarqawi’s AQI is widely viewed as responsible for destroying the golden dome of the Al-Askari Shrine, home to the 10th and 11th Shia Imams, in Samarra in Iraq.
To the delight of the Israelis and neoconservatives in the Bush administration—who sought the partition of the country, as outlined in the Yinon Plan and Clean Break documents—the 2006 attack almost ignited a full-blown sectarian war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities. This catastrophic outcome was narrowly averted, thanks to the influential fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.
Before his defeat in Mosul in 2017, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ordered the destruction of the Great Mosque of Al-Nuri and its iconic minaret. ISIS also destroyed the Al-Nabi Yunus Mosque, home to a tomb thought to belong of the Prophet Jonah, claiming that revering the shrine was idolatrous.
Blowing up the Sayyeda Zainab Shrine in Damascus, whether for fundamentalist religious goals or for the sake of creating strategic chaos, would help ensure that the sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq and threatens to engulf Syria now, becomes a reality.
The sectarian chaos will again benefit the occupation state, allowing it to expand its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and southern Syria, while incentivizing Syria’s Druze to ask for their territory to be incorporated into a Greater Israel to escape the sectarian fire consuming the rest of the country.
Alawites on Syria’s coast may turn north to Turkiye to request protection, or even annexation, if the extremist threat continues. Ankara will in turn be happy to incorporate Syrian territory, along with its offshore gas fields, as part of its ambitions to advance its neo-Ottoman ambitions and become an energy hub and transit point for West Asia gas headed to Europe.
Above all it is crucial to keep in mind that Israel, the US, Turkiye and others that orchestrated the HTS conquest of Syria do not have the well being of Syrians in mind. Many Syrians are happy to have Assad gone, but the future remains fragile and the risk of sectarian war and partition now looms large.
Time to acknowledge that the president chose the circumstances that led to US complicity
By Trita Parsi | Responsible Statecraft | January 16, 2025
There is little doubt that President-elect Donald Trump’s posture vis-a-vis Israel is a key reason why a ceasefire in Gaza has finally been achieved. According to a diplomat briefed on the matter, this was “the first time there has been real pressure on the Israeli side to accept a deal.”
This means that for 15 months, Israel has dropped American bombs on children in tents, on refugees sheltering in schools, and on patients seeking help in hospitals without President Joe Biden exerting any “real pressure” on Israel to stop.
And once the mere posture of pressure was exerted on Israel by an envoy representing a man who isn’t even President yet, lo and behold, a ceasefire was secured.
All these senseless deaths, all the American credibility lost, all the Biden voters who stayed home in protest on November 5 could have been avoided.
The truth of the matter is that every day for the past year, Biden could have secured a ceasefire by using America’s vast leverage.
And every day for the past year, from all the evidence we have today, Biden chose not to.
That is the crux of the matter. It is precisely the fact that Biden chose this path that will damage America for years to come. It wasn’t that he lacked the ability or strength to stop the carnage. It’s not that he really wanted to stop it but sadly couldn’t. It wasn’t that his hands were tied. It wasn’t that Congress forced him. Or that polls showed that he or Kamala Harris would lose the elections if they pressed Israel. It wasn’t any of that.
Biden was simply in on it. He was on board with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s war plans. He even attended the war cabinet where the plans were adopted.
In an exit interview with the Times of Israel, Biden’s outgoing ambassador to Israel even bragged about the Biden administration never exerting pressure on Netanyahu to halt the killing. “Nothing that we ever said was, Just stop the war,” Ambassador Jack Lew proudly declared.
By willingly making America complicit, Biden’s decisions will have profound and long-lasting strategic repercussions for the American people on par with the damage George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq inflicted on America’s standing, credibility, and security, as well as on the region’s stability.
Biden’s own acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Brett Holmgren, told CBS that “anti-American sentiment fueled by the war in Gaza is at a level not seen since the Iraq war.” Terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS are recruiting on these sentiments and issuing the most specific calls for America in years, according to Holmgren.
So every bomb Biden provided Israel to drop on children in Gaza was not only morally monstrous; it also made Americans less safe.
It will take years for America to recuperate from the damage Biden has inflicted on our standing, our moral compass, our credibility, and on our security. America is still recovering from the sins of the Iraq invasion.
But there will be no healing at all, no bouncing back, unless we admit the errors, hold those responsible accountable, and learn to do better. Just as Bush’s Iraq invasion and Global War on Terror gave birth to the strongest anti-war sentiments among Americans seen in decades, made war-mongering bad politics, and the epithet “neocon” an insult, Biden’s bearhug strategy on and blind deference to Israel must forever be remembered as the original sin that led America down the path of complicity in what most likely amounts to genocide.
Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Press TV – January 16, 2025
An investigative American journalist says the Biden administration repeatedly undermined international institutions and damaged US credibility in a desperate attempt to shield Israel during the regime’s aggression against the people of the besieged Gaza Strip.
Brett Murphy, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018 for his investigative reporting series, said in a recent article published on ProPublica that Biden’s record of repeated empty threats had given the Israelis a sense of impunity.
The reputed journalist spoke with scores of current and former officials throughout the year and read through government memos, cables and emails, many of which have not been reported previously.
The records and interviews shed light on why Biden and his top advisers refused to adjust his policy even as new evidence of Israeli abuses emerged.
The author maintains that almost none of the US’s demands that Israel improve conditions in the besieged Palestinian territory had been met.
Biden’s failure to follow through led to impunity for widespread human rights abuses, including blocking aid deliveries, even after explicit US warnings, he wrote.
In October, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the administration delivered their most explicit ultimatum yet to Israel, demanding the army allow hundreds more truckloads of food and medicine into Gaza every day.
The October red line was the last one Biden laid down, but it wasn’t the first. His administration issued multiple threats, warnings and admonishments to Israel.
Soon after, when the 30-day deadline was up, Blinken made it official and said that Israelis had begun implementing most of the steps he had laid out in his letter. The top US diplomat’s position was immediately called into question.
In the month that followed, the Israeli military was accused of roundly defying the US, its most important ally.
The Israeli military tightened its grip, continued to restrict desperately needed aid trucks and displaced 100,000 Palestinians from North Gaza, humanitarian groups found, exacerbating what was already a dire crisis “to its worst point since the war began.”
On Nov. 14, a UN committee said that Israel’s methods in Gaza, including its use of starvation as a weapon, were “consistent with genocide.”
The international rights groups went further and concluded a genocide was underway.
The International Criminal Court also issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former war minister Yoav Gallant for the war crime of deliberately starving civilians, among other allegations.
Time and again, Israel crossed the Biden administration’s red lines without changing course in a meaningful way, according to interviews with government officials and outside experts.
Last spring, the president vowed to stop supplying offensive bombs to Israel if it launched a major invasion into the southern city of Rafah.
The Biden administration told Netanyahu the US was going to rethink support for the war unless he took new steps to protect civilians and aid workers after the Israeli military blew up a World Central Kitchen caravan.
And Blinken signaled that he would blacklist a notorious Israeli unit for the death of a Palestinian-American in the West Bank if the soldiers involved were not brought to justice.
The southern city of Rafah was supposed to be a haven for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who the Israeli military had forced from their homes in the north at the start of the war.
“It is a red line,” Biden had said, marking the first high-profile warning from the US.
Netanyahu invaded in May anyway. Israeli tanks rolled into the city and the Israeli soldiers dropped bombs on residential areas, including a refugee camp, killing dozens of civilians.
Biden responded by pausing a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs but otherwise resumed military support.
In late May, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its assault on the city, citing the Geneva Conventions.
Behind the scenes, State Department lawyers scrambled to come up with a legal basis on which Israel could continue smaller attacks in Rafah.
Several experts told the author that international law has been effectively discretionary for some states or entities.
Each time, the US yielded and continued to send Israel’s military deadly weapons of war, approving more than $17.9 billion in military assistance since late 2023, by some estimates. The State Department recently told Congress about another $8 billion proposed deal to sell Israel munitions and artillery shells.
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the red lines have all just been a smokescreen,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a preeminent authority on US policy in the region. “The Biden administration decided to be all in and merely pretended that it was trying to do something about it.”
Throughout the contentious year inside the State Department, senior leaders repeatedly disregarded their own experts.
They cracked down on leaks by threatening criminal investigations and classifying material that was critical of Israel.
Some of the US top Middle East diplomats complained in private that they were sidelined by Biden’s National Security Council.
The council also distributed a list of banned phrases, including any version of “State of Palestine” that didn’t have the word “future” first.
Two human rights officials said they were prevented from pursuing evidence of abuses in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
During a series of internal State Department meetings, top regional diplomats voiced their frustrations about messaging and appearances. Hady Amr, one of the government’s highest-ranking authorities on Palestinian affairs, said he was reluctant to address large groups about the administration’s Israel policy.
US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew told the Times of Israel he worried that a generation of young Americans would harbor anti-Israel sentiments into the future.
The repercussions for the United States and the region will play out for years.
Protests have erupted outside the American embassies in Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, while polls show Arab Americans grew increasingly hostile to their government stateside.
By the summer, State Department analysts in the Middle East sent cables to Washington expressing concerns that the Israeli military’s conduct would only inflame tensions in the West Bank and galvanize young Palestinians to take up arms against Israel.
On Wednesday, after months of negotiations, Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire deal.
Early reports suggest if the Biden administration had followed through on its tough words, a deal could have been reached earlier, saving lives.
“Netanyahu’s conclusion was that Biden doesn’t have enough oomph to make him pay a price, so he was willing to ignore him,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute.
“Part of it is that Netanyahu learned there is no cost to saying ‘no’ to the current president,” Omari said.
Over the past 15 months, Israeli soldiers have videotaped themselves burning food supplies and ransacking homes. One Israeli military group reportedly said, “Our job is to flatten Gaza.”
Israel’s defenders within the US administration acknowledge the devastating human toll but contend that American arms have helped Israel advance Western interests in the region and protect itself from other enemies.
Press TV – January 16, 2025
The leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement says Israel “failed miserably” in the Gaza Strip, and that the US and the Tel Aviv regime were forced to accept the ceasefire agreement with Hamas after committing horrific crimes for months.
“The announcement of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza is an important development. The Israeli enemy and the US were forced to agree to the deal after months of horrendous atrocities,” Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said in a televised speech on Thursday evening.
“The Israeli enemy, with full American complicity, continued its efforts to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza, committing more than 4,050 massacres,” the Ansarullah chief said.
Houthi said the Israeli military indiscriminately targeted all Palestinians in Gaza, attacking all sections of the society in a barbaric manner.
“The Israeli enemy subjected prisoners and captives to the most heinous forms of torture, violating human dignity. The plight of Gaza marks a gross injustice that can neither be denied nor ignored.
“The steadfastness of resistance fighters in Gaza, under the most challenging circumstances and with the most basic means, is truly praiseworthy,” Houthi stated.
The Ansarullah leader emphasized that the Israeli army failed in Gaza despite possessing sophisticated weapons and extensive intelligence operations aimed at ending the resistance front and eliminating all its fighters.
“The Israeli enemy failed in Gaza even though it employed all tactics to decisively win the battle, with full US support. The Palestinians in Gaza stood firm despite being subjected to daily extermination and all forms of terror that many other nations cannot endure.”
The Ansarullah leader said the Americans had no option but to accept an agreement after a major failure.
Many Israeli leaders, media figures, and research centers were in a state of despair and frustration as well, he said.
“The Israeli enemy failed to achieve any of its declared objectives, and dismally could not release its captives without a prisoner exchange deal. It also failed to displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“What the Israeli enemy achieved in Gaza is an enormous record of unprecedented crimes within a limited expanse of land,” Houthi pointed out.
He also noted that the Palestinian nation was not protected by international organizations, which represent themselves as so-called advocates of justice and human rights.
“The United Nations was mocked and ridiculed by Israelis, with criminal [Benjamin] Netanyahu at its very platform. The world body, however, took no concrete action against the Israeli enemy.
“At the very least, the UN should have rinsed out the deep shame of recognizing Israel and granting it membership. The international community did not intervene to impose a no-fly zone over occupied Palestinian terrorists and establish safe zones, as is the case with other regions,” he said.
Houthi criticized Arab governments for their inaction, as well as their abject failure to politically and economically boycott the Zionist regime and support the Palestinian nation.
Elsewhere in his speech, Houthi stated that Yemeni forces have conducted operations to support Gaza under very difficult conditions, emphasizing that such strikes have significantly affected Israel.
“We carried out 1,255 operations involving ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles, drones as well as unmanned underwater vehicles. We worked diligently to do everything possible in support of Gaza, continuously developing our capabilities and escalating our operations,” he said.
Houthi stressed that the US, from the onset of the Gaza genocidal war, sought to provide full protection to Israel, threatening regional countries against taking any action in support of Palestinians.
“The US deployed its naval fleets and provided military and technological protection, intercepting any attacks targeting the Israeli-occupied lands. Certain regimes even collaborated with the US in intercepting missiles and drones launched towards the occupied lands.
“American aircraft carriers and warships initially intercepted some missiles; but now they can barely shoot them down and often resort to retreat,” the Ansarullah leader said.
Houti emphasized that Yemen will continue its pro-Palestinian military operations in case the Israeli enemy insists on its genocidal campaign and reneges on implementing the ceasefire agreement.
He said a total of 106 Yemenis have been killed and another 328 wounded in the course of aggression carried out by the US, Britain and Israel against Yemen.
The Ansarullah leader finally called upon all Yemeni people to participate in mass pro-Palestinian rallies across the country on Friday, reaffirming their unflinching support for Palestinians to the entire world.
Sputnik – 15.01.2025
Iran has never tried to assassinate US President-elect Donald Trump, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Wednesday.
“This is another one of those schemes that Israel and other countries are designing to promote Iranophobia. … Iran has never attempted to nor does it plan to assassinate anyone. At least as far as I know,” Pezeshkian told the NBC news broadcaster.
Trump earlier accused Iran of what he called specific steps against him, adding that “the entire US military is watching and waiting.”
In September, the Trump campaign said in a press release that Trump had been briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concerning possible assassination attempts by Iran on his life, adding that Iran is “terrified” of Trump’s strength and resolve and wants then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to win the election because of her “weakness.”
On Trump’s Role in Middle East Conflict
“I do hope that Trump will conduce to peace in the region and the world, not conversely, contribute to bloodshed and war,” the president said.
On Possible US-Israeli Attack
When asked about Tehran’s response to a possible US-Israeli attack aimed at halting the Iranian nuclear program, Pezeshkian said that the country is ready for any development.
“Naturally enough, we will react to any action. We do not fear war, but we do not seek it,” the president said.
He also expressed hope that the situation would not deteriorate that far, as an open conflict would be “detrimental” to all actors.
On Nuclear Weapons
The president emphasized that the country does not seek to build nuclear weapons, though Iran is accused of creating it.
“We upheld all the commitments that we had to commit to,” he said when asked about Iran’s talks with major powers about its nuclear program. “But unfortunately, it was the other party that did not live up to its promises and obligations.”
MEMO | January 14, 2025
An Israeli television channel has revealed that US President-elect Donald Trump sent a message to officials in Tel Aviv, urging Israel to avoid any “unnecessary” escalation and refrain from statements that could lead to regional conflicts, particularly during the transition period before his administration begins.
Channel 12 reported that Trump’s aides informed Israeli officials that the incoming US administration aims to achieve stability in the Middle East, focusing on fostering “peace” between Israel and Lebanon and maintaining the ongoing ceasefire.
In his discussions with Israeli officials, Trump emphasised that he had no intention of engaging in new wars during the early days of his presidency, as he intends to prioritise addressing domestic issues in the United States.
According to the channel, Trump has personally begun intervening in efforts to secure the release of Israeli captives held in the Gaza Strip. He has expressed significant interest in resolving this issue before officially taking office.
The report also mentioned that Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steven Witkoff, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the next steps. Following this meeting, it was decided that the heads of Mossad and the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) would be sent to Qatar to engage in direct negotiations.
Glenn Diesen | January 11, 2025
I had a conversation with Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Alexander Mercouris about the possibility of Trump delivering peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. Trump recently posted a video of Professor Sachs criticising the presentation of international conflicts as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. In the video, Professor Sachs also scolded Netanyahu and blamed Israel for America’s wars in the Middle East over the past 30 years (Netanyahu will reportedly not attend Trump’s inauguration). Trump has also recognised that NATO expansionism was the source of the proxy war in Ukraine, and has been vocal about his desire to end the proxy.
These actions give some reason for cautious optimism that peace can be achieved at a time when the world appears to be heading toward major wars. The false narratives that conflict in the world derives from a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism create a dangerous Manichaean worldview. Peace then requires good defeating evil, while compromise and workable peace are derided as appeasement. Anyone contesting the Manichaean worldview can be accused of betraying liberal democratic values. Trump has many flaws, but his greatest strength is his ability to say what he wants and break away from the West’s ideological narratives and Manichaean worldview. By recognising the security interests of rival powers (a big taboo in the West), Trump can also mitigate these concerns as the foundation for any durable peace.
Jeffrey Sachs, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen on the Duran:
By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | January 11, 2025
Peter Ford served in the UK Foreign Ministry for many years including being UK Ambassador to Bahrein (1999-2003) and then Syria (2003-2006). Following that, he was representative to the Arab world for the Commissioner General of United Nations Relief and Works Agency. He was interviewed by Rick Stering on Jan 6, 2025.
Rick Sterling: Why do you think the Syrian military and government collapsed so rapidly?
Peter Ford: Everybody was surprised but with hindsight, we shouldn’t have been. Over more than a decade, the Syrian army had been hollowed out by the extremely dire economic situation in Syria, mainly caused by western sanctions. Syria only had a few hours of electricity a day, no money to buy weapons and no ability to use the international banking system to buy anything whatsoever. It’s no surprise that the Army was run down. With hindsight, you might say the surprise is that the Syrian government and Army were successful in driving back the Islamists. The Syrian Army forced them into the redoubt of Idlib four or five years ago.But after that point, the Syrian army deteriorated, became less battle ready on the technical level and also morale.
Syrian soldiers are mainly conscripts and they suffer as much as any ordinary Syrian from the really dreadful economic situation in Syria. I hesitate to admit it, but the Western sanctions were extremely effectively in doing what they were designed to do: to bring the Syrian economy down to its knees. So we have to say, and I say this with deep regret, the sanctions worked. The sanctions did exactly what they were designed to do to make the Syrian people suffer, and thereby to bring about discontent with what they call the regime.
Ordinary Syrians didn’t understand the complexities of geopolitics, and they blamed the Syrian government for everything: not having electricity, not having food, not having gas, oil, high inflation. Everything that came from being cut off from the world economy and not having supporters with bottomless pockets.
Syria was being attacked and occupied by major military powers (Turkey, USA, Israel). Plus thousands of foreign jihadis. The Syrian army was so demoralized that they really were a paper tiger by the end of the day.
RS: Do you think the UK and the US were involved in training the jihadis prior to the December attack on Aleppo?
PF: Absolutely. The Israelis also. The leader of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), Ahmed Hussein al Sharaa (formerly known as Mohammad abu Jolani) almost certainly has British advisors in the background. In fact, I detected the hand of such advisors in some of the statements made in impeccable English. The statements had Americanized spelling, so the CIA are in there too. Jolani is a puppet, a marionette saying what they want him to say.
RS: What’s the current situation, a month after the collapse?
PF: There are skirmishes here and there, but broadly, the Islamists and foreign fighters are ruling the roost. There are pockets of resistance in Latakia where the Alawite are literally fighting for their lives. Much of the fighting is about the attempts by HTF, the present rulers to confiscate weapons. The Alawites are resisting and there are pockets of resistance in the South where there are local Druze militias.
HTS is spread thinly on the ground. They are facing problems in asserting themselves. Although they had a walkover against the Syrian army, they never actually had to do much fighting. I would guess they only have about 30,000 fighting men and spread across Syria, that is not a lot. There’s an important pocket of resistance in the Northeast where the Kurds are. The Kurdish American allies are resisting. The so-called Syrian National Army, which is a front for the Turkish army, may go into a fully fledged war against the Kurdish forces. But that’s going to depend partly on what happens after the inauguration of the new US president, how Trump deals with the situation.
RS: What are you hearing from people in Syria?
It is not a pretty story. HTS and their allies have been parading showing their dominance, flying ISIS and Al-Qaeda flags. They have been bullying, intimidating, confiscating and looting. Surrendering Christian as well as Alawite soldiers have been given summary justice, roadside executions being the norm. Christians in their towns and villages are just trying to hunker down and pray. Literally. I’m sorry to say the senior Christian clerics, with one or two noble exceptions, have opted for appeasement and effectively betrayed their communities. The senior leadership at the Orthodox Church, in particular Greek Catholic church, have had themselves photographed with dignitaries of the jihadi regime.
They are turning the other cheek. It’s quite a contrast with the Alawite. But they have no choice. You may remember that the slogan of the jihadi armies during the conflict was, “Christians to Beirut, Alawite to the grave.” HTS is going through the motions of having meetings with clerics and making soothing noises. All the while their henchmen are driving around in trucks flying ISIS flags. What I’m hearing is very depressing.
The regime is leaving the Alawites totally abandoned. You barely read a word in the west in media about the plight of the Alawite and not much more about the Christians.
RS: Western media have demonized Bashar al Assad and even Asma Assad. What was your impression of Bashar and Asma when you met them? What do you think of accusations they accumulated billions of dollars?
PF: The accusations are completely spurious. I know some members of the Assad family, some of them have lived for many years in Britain. They lived in very modest personal circumstances. If Assad had been a billionaire, like they’re saying, some of that would’ve trickled down. I can guarantee you that has not been the case. These accusations also go against the impressions that I picked up when I was seeing the Assads when I was an ambassador there. They appreciated the good things of life the same as everybody else, but they didn’t come across as the Marcos type. Nothing at all like that. It is all lies, made up to serve the deeper agenda.
The media kicking of Bashar and Asma is really distasteful. It’s pointless. He’s disappointed his few remaining followers, although it was unrealistic, I believe, for them to expect more. But the fact is that he ran when others were not able to run, and many of those have been killed, or they’re hiding or they’ve escaped to Lebanon in some cases where they’re also hiding. He did get out with his skin, but to beat up on him as the media are doing is really distasteful and pointless. It is akin to this new genre of political pornography, Assad porn, the torture stories, the hyped up narrative about prison and graves being opened up. Actually, by the way, most of those graves are war dead. They were not people who’d been tortured to death as the media pretends. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the conflict over more than a decade, and many of them were buried in unmarked graves. But the western media are reveling in this new genre of Assad porn.
This is all being whipped up to make Western audiences more accepting of the way the West is getting into bed with Al-Qaeda. The more they demonize Assad and harp on the misdeeds of the Assad regime, and the more likely we are to swallow and be distracted away from the hideous atrocities being carried out right now.
Western leaders are kissing the feet of a guy who’s still a wanted terrorist and who has been a founder member of ISIS for God’s sake, as well as a founder member of Al-Qaeda in Syria. It is morally distasteful and shaming.
Joulani needs the west desperately now. Otherwise, he will face the same fate as Bashar Asad. If the economy continues on its trajectory of the years, then Joulani will be dead meat in fairly short order. He has to deliver massive rapid economic improvement to survive as leader. And this is what it’s all about. His strategy, obviously, is to milk his status as a puppet of the West in order to secure not just reconstruction aid, but that’s for the long term, but more immediately sanctions relief, the electricity flowing again, the oil.
Let’s not forget that the oil and gas of Syria is still effectively in the hands of the United States, which through its Kurdish puppets, controls a segment of the economy, which used to be worth, I think, 20% of serious GDP and provide essential oil for fuel, cooking, everything. He’s got to get his hands on that and get sanctions lifted. That’s what so much of it is about. But he has one major problem: Israel. Israel’s not buying it. Israel is the exception. All the western front is tumbling over itself to go and kiss the feet of the sultan of Damascus. But the Israelis are sucking their teeth, saying they don’t trust the guy.
Israel is destroying the remnants of the Syrian army and its infrastructure. Meanwhile they grab more Syrian land. They want to keep Syria on its knees indefinitely by insisting that Western sanctions not be lifted. I sense there’s a battle royal going on in Washington between what we might call the deep state, which would favor lifting sanctions and the Israel lobby, which is resisting that for selfish Israeli reasons. Given that the Israeli lobby wins these tussles nine times out of 10, the outlook may not be that great for the Jolani regime.
RS: What are your hopes and fears for Syria? What’s the nightmare scenario and what’s the best possible?
PF: I’m very pessimistic. It is very hard to see a silver lining in what has happened. Syria has been taken off the table as a Middle East player. The old Syria has died effectively. Syria was the last man standing among the Arab countries that supported the Palestinians. There was no other. There were militias like Hezbollah plus Yemen but there were no states other than Syria. Syria is now gone, and the jihadis are saying, telling the world they don’t care. By the way, this is an example of how the Israelis will not take yes for an answer. The jihadis keep telling the world, “We love Israel. We don’t care about the Palestinians. Please accept us. We love you.” And the Israelis won’t take yes for an answer.
The best hope for the Syrian people is that they may get some respite. It is possible to imagine a scenario where the Syrian people are able to recover, at least economically a scenario under which sanctions are lifted, under which Syria, the central government recovers control of its oil and grain, where fighting has stopped, where it doesn’t have to pay anything to keep up an army because it’s not trying. They might be able to put everything into reconstruction.
So it is possible to imagine a scenario where Syria loses its soul, but gains more hours of electricity. That is possibly the most likely scenario. But there are major obstacles as we discussed, Israel standing in the way of sanctions, lifting pockets of resistance in discipline among the jihadi ranks, Turkey rampaging against the Kurds and ISIS which is still not a completely spent force. So the outlook is obviously cloudy. We should take stock in a month’s time when we see the early days of the new regime in Washington on which so much will depend.
RS: In Trump’s first term he tried to remove all US troops from east Syria but his efforts were ignored. Perhaps that could have made a big difference?
PF: Yes, it could have been a total game changer. If Syria had access to its oil, it wouldn’t have had the fuel problem, the electricity problem. It could have changed the history of the region.
Now, the US is increasing the number of soldiers and bases in Syria. And they recently assassinated an ISIS leader which might have played a role in sparking the recent terrorist attack in the US. All of this makes it much harder now for Trump to withdraw US forces because it will be seen as a retreat, a reward for ISIS.
I argued for years that the sanctions were manifestly not working. But in the end they did. It’s like a bridge. It gets undermined and then suddenly it breaks. There was no single cause. It was just the culmination and things reached a tipping point.
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 8, 2025
President-elect Donald Trump shared a video featuring Columbia professor Jeffery Sachs sharply criticizing US Middle East policy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanahu’s role in leading the US into wars.
In the video, Sachs says Netanyahu is “a deep, dark son of a bitch” who led the US into multiple follies in the Middle East and now wants America to fight a war with Iran on Israel’s behalf. “Netanyahu had, from 1995 onward, the theory that the only way we’re going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them. That’s Iraq, Iran and Syria. The guy is nothing if not obsessive.” The professor continued, “He’s gotten us into endless wars and because of the power of all of this in U.S. politics, he’s gotten his way.”
In 2002, Netanyahu gave an address to Congress to help sell Americans on going to war in Iraq. “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” the Israeli Prime Minister said. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
The Iraq War would result in hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqi civilians, thousands of dead Americans, trillions of dollars spent, and a government in Baghdad more aligned with Tehran. Additionally, the power vacuum created by the fall of Saddam’s government led to the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State.
As of 2019, a majority of Americans believed the war in Iraq was not worth fighting and a mistake.
After the US disposed of Saddam, the Iraqi people elected a Shi’ite-led government that favored strong ties with Tehran. Washington and its Middle East allies then became concerned that there now existed a “Shi’ite Crescent” in the region stretching from Iran to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Professor Sachs explains that President Barack Obama then ordered the CIA to launch an operation that supported Sunni militant groups in Syria attempting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. At the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned that the CIA’s support for Sunni groups could result in the creation of an Islamic Caliphate.
Sach’s criticisms of US foreign policy and Israel’s influence in Washington’s politics have resulted in attacks from high-ranking Israeli officials. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said Sachs was in a group of “fringe Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists, and blood libel enthusiasts who oppose the State of Israel.”
In the video, a two-minute compilation of a longer interview posted by Wall Steet Apes, Sachs slams the US media for failing to cover the CIA’s support for the opposition to Assad, noting the New York Times only mentioned the operation, dubbed Timber Sycamore, three times.
Trump has labeled himself as the “best friend” of Israel and has promised to increase support for the Jewish State after he returns to the White House.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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