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Iran’s POSITION On Israel And Gaza w/Professor Marandi

Sabby Sabs | May 7, 2024

May 9, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Video | Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, Sanctions against Iran, Syria, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Delivering a ‘True Promise’: an insider account of Iran’s strikes on Israel

The Cradle | May 3, 2024

Following the strategic success of Iran’s ‘True Promise’ retaliatory drone and missile operation in response to last month’s Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, The Cradle presents an exclusive insider‘s narrative provided by Iranian Member of Parliament Mahmoud Nabavian, a principalist who won the most votes in Tehran during the country’s March elections.

His account of the retaliatory strikes against the occupation state offers unparalleled insights into the 13–14 April events. With access to military sources, Nabavian’s testimony serves as the most detailed view to date by an Iranian government official on Iran’s response, one that has sorely exposed the vulnerabilities of Israel’s air defense systems.

In a closed Telegram posting, Nabavian explained that Israel’s “cowardly” attack, which led to the martyrdom of prominent leaders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), occurred “on our soil” – a reference to the Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus:

“As the Imam [Ali Khamenei] said, the enemies made a mistake.” Iran’s full-on retaliatory strikes, he thus maintains, were justified and legal under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Below is a transcript (edited for length) from Nabavian’s important revelations about Iran’s military strikes on Israel and the flurry of international deal-making attempts that preceded them:

Two hours after the attack on the consulate in Damascus, the Iranian National Security Council convened and affirmed the inevitability of a response and gave a 10-day deadline to take the necessary diplomatic measures and for the armed forces to prepare their plan to respond.

Diplomatically, the first step was to go to the Security Council, even though we knew that this would be futile. But it was necessary to file a complaint about the attack on our land, assert our natural right to self-defense, and request a Security Council session. Because we are not members of the Council, we had to talk to member states to request that the session be held.

China, Russia, and Algeria agreed. Russia submitted the request, and the session was held, but the US, Germany, Britain, and France did not allow a statement to be issued condemning Israel. The heads of our missions abroad were also active in informing the concerned countries that we would respond to the Zionist entity.

Due to these pressures, Israel denied it had attacked a diplomatic building and that those who were targeted were not diplomats. The consulate building, four of its five floors, were purchased 45 years ago and were designated for diplomatic work. It was indeed a diplomatic building.

After we assured the international community of our right to respond, some countries, such as the US, Germany, England, France, Canada, and Egypt, tried to convince us not to do so, and they confirmed their readiness to meet Iran’s requests. For example, some of these countries that were not previously willing to grant entry visas to our diplomats or officials suddenly decided to do so immediately.

When the US realized that we were serious, it sent a threat that if the response was launched from Iranian territory, it might attack Iran. Our response was that the US is not among our targets, but if it decides to involve itself in defense of Israel, we will respond by targeting it as well, and as you know, there are many American bases around us.

Despite this, the US, Britain, France, and Germany insisted on the same message, yet our answer was that Israel crossed a red line. Then, they said, if we must respond, let it be from outside Iranian territory.

Why did they insist that the strike not be from inside Iran? Because for a long time, they have been assassinating our nuclear scientists and carrying out sabotage operations at the Natanz nuclear reactor. In the last six months alone, they have assassinated 18 members of our armed forces, and we have always responded through our allies [in the Axis of Resistance], but if we did that this time, we would lose face.

If Lebanese Hezbollah had responded to Israel, it could have bombed Beirut, and western powers would have seized upon this to say, ‘If this is a war between Iran and Israel, why did Hezbollah involve itself in it?’ They would also hold it responsible for the subsequent unrest in Lebanon.

Therefore, the insistence that the Iranian response should be through Iran’s allies was meant to distort Hezbollah’s reputation and unleash Israel to target it and other resistance forces in the region and to portray them as mercenaries of Iran. We read these western intentions well, and accordingly, the decision was taken to respond from within Iranian territory.

On the night of Eid al-Fitr, a meeting was held with the heads of diplomatic missions of the countries of the region, and we informed them that we are keen on good neighborliness, but if the US uses any of your countries to carry out action against us, we will strike the US bases on your lands.

This message was conveyed to Washington, and they realized that Iran was serious. They asked us to exercise restraint. The US, Germany, England, France, and Canada – these countries that support brutality and crime in the world and provide the weapons with which the people of Gaza are bombed – ask us to exercise restraint.

[UK Foreign Secretary] David Cameron called the night after the Iranian attack and said he couldn’t sleep last night. This is the malicious British foreign secretary. Why? Because we sent 300 drones and missiles over the heads of the Israelis. The Iranian official who spoke to him said, ‘For six months, rockets have been falling on the people of Gaza, and you slept well every night.’ This is the same malicious Britain that encouraged the US to launch attacks on Yemen.

The important thing is coordination at all levels before responding, politically, diplomatically, and in the media. After the Leader [Ali Khamenei] affirmed in his Eid al-Fitr sermon that we will certainly discipline the enemy, messages came to us requesting that the response be proportionate and not forceful.

Our answer was clear: that first, we would definitely strike Israel; second, that the attack would be direct from Iranian territory; and third, that the National Security Council decided that the response would be a deterrent.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan informed us that it had information that we would bomb the Israeli embassy in Baku, and they asked us not to carry out any action on their territory. I think this was a message that they could turn a blind eye to striking Israeli targets in a neighboring country, but we were already aware of that.

The messages we received were not limited to the US and European countries, but we also received messages from some countries in the region. We tried to take advantage of the matter to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, and we told everyone that this might be a solution to the problem.

They asked us whether a ceasefire in Gaza meant that we would refrain from responding. We answered that we would strike Israel in any case, but perhaps a decision like this would help reduce the severity of the attack. They asked that we give them a few days.

We asked our military forces to postpone the response for 24 hours and gave the countries of the world the opportunity to adhere to their obligations stipulated in international laws and for Israel to pledge not to attack Iranian forces and interests in the region and the world.

Regarding the Iranian request to conclude a permanent, complete, and immediate truce in the Gaza Strip: US President Joe Biden sent a message stating that he would work to achieve it himself, but he set a malicious condition, which is that the Palestinian resistance releases all Israeli prisoners in exchange for Israel releasing 900 Palestinian prisoners, after which the implementation of the truce begins.

Of course, Hamas did not agree to the matter, and this was the correct decision. We understood that they [the Americans] are not serious about reaching a truce and that they are only looking to achieve their malign goals.

Everyone realized that we would attack Israel. The US, France, Britain, and even Italy harnessed all their military capabilities in Qatar, alongside the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

They equipped six missile launchers in the region’s waters with a range of between 2,000 and 3,000 kilometers. They harnessed all modern satellites and radars, moved 103 aircraft into the region’s airspace to strike our missiles, and placed all air defense systems under unified command under the supervision of the US to confront Iranian missiles in several stages.

That is, if the Iranian missiles were able to pass any defense line, they would be targeted and shot down in the next.

What is interesting is that the German foreign minister, 24 hours before the Iranian operation was carried out, called us and was pleading that we not target Israel from inside Iranian territory. He said that our missiles would not be able to pass the obstacles and defense lines that they had prepared to intercept our missiles and that the US was using 70 drones in Iraq for that, and it would increase the number to 700.

They were monitoring the movements of our soldiers, missiles, and drones, and they believed that none of the Iranian missiles would reach Israel. They were confident that the missiles would not be able to penetrate air defense systems.

At the Turkish Incirlik base, which includes 5,000 soldiers, a large number of AWACS planes and 15 jamming planes were harnessed to repel our attack.

As such, they were astonished at how Iran was able to evade the huge layers of defense they had activated, and what surprised them even more was that it took five and a half to seven hours for the drones to reach the Zionist entity, and their speed was not great, which meant that they were easy to shoot down.

Twenty-four hours before the operation, Washington sent a firm message stating that if we decided to attack Israel from our territory, they will respond militarily against Iran. This time, they did not talk about possibilities but rather said that they would definitely attack Iranian territory. Our answer was decisive, that we will definitely strike Israel from within our territories, and if you commit any mistake, we will target all your bases in the region.

We informed Saudi Arabia and the countries of the region that if Iranian territory is targeted from within your territory, we will definitely respond. Saudi Arabia announced that it would not allow any operation against Iran to be carried out from its territory, and the authorities in Cyprus also informed us of a similar message.

We knew that the Iraqi and Jordanian airspace was completely under US control. We thought about the Israeli targets that we were going to hit, and we faced two obstacles: the first was that their air defenses were very strong, and we had to find a way for our drones and missiles to pass them, and the second was not to take action that will lead to us being condemned.

The decision was to strike two military targets: the first was the [Nevatim] airport from which the F-35 plane that bombed the Iranian consulate took off, and the second was an Israeli intelligence center in the Golan. By coincidence, the fighter jet that targeted the consulate fired its missiles from above this intelligence headquarters.

Our drones, numbering about 130, were launched, the majority of which belonged to us, and between two and three were sent by our allied forces. We also launched missiles carrying explosive warheads, a large number of which deflected the air defenses from their path.

I will not talk much about the number of hits we targeted, but out of 17 missiles, 15 hit their targets, meaning 89 percent. The whole west was there, and we delivered an important message to the world.

In the aftermath of the operation, 15 countries contacted and said that they were seeking a ceasefire in Gaza and asked Israel not to respond.

The British and German foreign ministers contacted us and said that international law does not include the term “punishment.” We answered them: If that does not exist in international law, why did you propose punishing Hamas after 7 October? The calls continued to ask whether we would attack Israel again. We said that if we were attacked, we would respond tenfold.

The countries of the region have now understood Iran’s capabilities and it seems that they will seek to significantly improve their relations with Iran. The Israelis realized that when the spirit of despair takes hold, as Ben Gurion says, ‘we will begin to fall down the slope that leads to the abyss,’ and this has become clear to the world.

As the master of the resistance [Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah] expresses, ‘Israel is weaker than a spider’s web,’ and, God willing, this operation will be a deterrent against the assassinations that were occurring against us. Now, this is the only thing that Israel can do, and we must be more vigilant, and we must instill hope in the peoples of the region and not care about the rulers.

Mahmoud Nabavian’s account not only exposes the meticulous planning behind the Islamic Republic’s response but also reveals a resolve to defend sovereignty and impose a credible deterrence against future violations – at all costs.

Tehran’s military response should be interpreted beyond the current regional war centered on Gaza and signals a broad recalibration of power dynamics in West Asia. As western and neighboring states assess the implications of Iran’s new assertive military posture, alliances, and strategies will require careful reconsideration.

May 4, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Iran’s Israel Strike Reshapes West Asia Forever

By Kit Klarenberg | Active Measures | May 3, 2024

On April 13th, Iran, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s AnsarAllah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on the Zionist entity, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s criminal bombing of Tehran’s Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – in particular West Asia – will never be the same again.

Iran’s first ever strike on the entity, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ, and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. The entity claimed a 99% interception rate.

However, extensive photo and video material shows many missiles hit their targets, and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.

This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills scouring around Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message – Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature, but didn’t do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv’s, to decide whether – and how – to retaliate. A response came on April 19, in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.

Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran’s air defenses, but ultimately couldn’t. An Iranian spokesperson subsequently referred to the effort as “failed and humiliating.” This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced, following Operation True Promise’s seismic success. As we shall see, the Zionist entity now has little time remaining, and no good choices left to make.

‘New Equation’

Despite its astonishing optics, and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn’t a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook the Islamic Republic’s longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran’s Syrian embassy was without historic parallel, and clearly concerned with eliciting a major escalation, in order to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred wider response, while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards the entity. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:

“We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point we will attack against them.”

Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise plainly demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike the entity directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities, and vulnerabilities, not only of Israel, but the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.

Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13th, and the data yield was likely enormous. Since Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly told Politico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev “become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians”:

“For example, we used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”

If there’s a next time too, Iran’s missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles fired at the entity during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) general.

“One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones,” they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs “were enormous”, comparable to what Israel spent during the entire 1973 Arab/Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.

Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for the entity, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end AnsarAllah’s anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea.

Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast that it was squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 AnsarAllah drones. “That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor,” a CIA officer lamented. “We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.”

‘Israel Goes Under’

There is no sign publicly yet of Washington having rectified this concern, which may account for why US officials at the start of April offered AnsarAllah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade, which was rejected. But in the event of a subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, Tehran’s Shahed drones will not be used to deter shipping, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust the entity’s air defenses.

This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13th, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause a battlefield and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries, and states trying to keep Kiev’s lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.

That conclusion is supported by an April 22nd Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran’s barrage. It “matched worst-case scenarios” outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, “this was on the high end… of what we were anticipating.” White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn’t.

On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st century Holocaust, the entity’s genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation of November 6th 2023 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself. “Thousands” of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.

The race to escape Israel

One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn’t yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, AnsarAllah and Hezbollah could completely paralyzse the entity economically, render entire areas of the entity uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran’s crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a grand scale.

Resultantly, the entity’s “Samson Option”, under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, “we have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under.” But Tehran’s hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, or chemical/biological payload of their own.

‘Whoever Moves’

The Zionist entity’s Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster, in every conceivable way. The fiasco’s consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent of fatal. This may account for Netanyahu’s flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of Israeli Occupation Forces’ defeat is such that in an absolutely scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11th, Zionist “journalist” Chaim Levinson lamented:

“We’ve lost. Truth must be told… It’s unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel’s northern border… No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership’s weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we’re a shtetl with an airforce, and that’s on the condition it’s awakened in time.”

Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv’s battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IOF, has condemned the Forces’ “military and moral failures”, and how “its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down”:

“[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound… Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left… Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible.”

An Israeli Occupation Force psychopath

The Economist went on to slam a “lack of enforcement” of already virtually non-existent “rules of engagement” under which the IOF operate. A “veteran reserve officer” was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily “decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed.” A sapper in another unit admitted, “the only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”:

“Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalising Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20 the IDF’s chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, ‘to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn’t ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.’ Four months into the war, this was too little, too late.”

That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far the Zionist entity has fallen since October 7th. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s citizenry. Its once-vaunted military is not feared by adversaries, and their ability to unilaterally strike Muslim countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.

Meanwhile, the entity has suffered population collapse, with concomitant mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs, as the trauma of perpetrating genocide, and living under the daily threat of attack as Palestinians have since 1948, ravages soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads, and likely won’t return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.

For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, they are unambiguous indicators that the Zionist entity is on the brink of extinction, which wasn’t the case before Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls on October 7th 2023. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel’s creation. And there is no going back to “normal”.

Refaat Alareer

Time is now and forever on the side of the indefatigable, undefeated Resistance – so too justice, and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanising words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IOF airstrike on December 6th 2023:

“If I must die, let it bring hope.”

May 3, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Yemen, Zionism | 2 Comments

Iran Checkmates US Warmongers, Offers Scholarships for Students Expelled for Protesting Gaza War

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 01.05.2024

Over 1,200 students at universities across the US have been arrested to date as police moved to violently disperse campus protests calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The past week and a half has seen students put on probation, suspended, and in rare cases even expelled from some of America’s most prestigious educational institutions.

Iran’s Shiraz University is offering scholarships for American and European students facing expulsion for taking part in the wave of anti-war and pro-Palestine protests rocking Western universities.

“Students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide similar conditions],” Shiraz University head Mohammad Moazzeni said at a gathering of university students and professors.

Expressing solidarity with students over the bravery they have displayed, Moazzeni blasted Western countries’ police forces’ harsh treatment of the protesters, saying it exposes the true nature of Western civilization.

“They exert a lot of violence in order to contain this raging movement and have even threatened to expel the students from universities and hinder their employment in the future, and such autocratic methods show the decline of the global arrogance,” Moazzeni said, using the term Iranian officials and military commanders often use to refer to the US and Israel.

Situated in southern Iran, Shiraz University is recognized in rankings as one of the Islamic Republic’s top educational institutions. Its agricultural sciences and water resources programs presently rank among the top 100 in the world.

Nearly 100,000 foreign students from over 90 countries already study at Iranian universities each year. In 2022, Iranian Organization of Student Affairs deputy-head Mohammad Javad Salmanpour said Iran has the capacity to increase its contingent of foreign students to 250,000 by the year 2026.

Iran is home to over 170 public universities, and some 700 private schools, with its educational institutions boasting strong science, research and technology, health and medical education, engineering, agricultural and animal sciences, Persian literature, Islamic studies, and management programs.

Last year, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute ranked Iran among its top ten powers in critical technology research, with the Islamic Republic touted as a global leader in six of 44 critical technologies – making up between four and seven percent of publications in areas including nanoscale and advanced composite materials and manufacturing, smart materials, advanced aircraft engines, air-independent propulsion, novel antibiotics and antivirals, and biofuels.

Over 1,200 students, faculty and staff at universities across the United States have been arrested to date in anti-Gaza war protests, with police cracking down on protesters demanding a ceasefire, and an end to US military, financial and diplomatic support for Israel’s operations. Students are also calling on their schools to condemn Israel’s military campaign, to divest from companies linked to Israel, and to discontinue study abroad programs at Israeli universities.

Columbia University warned Tuesday that it would expel students who took over a building, barricaded its entrances and unfurled a Palestinian flag and a “Free Palestine” [banner] from a window. Elsewhere, including Yale, the University of Southern California, and the University of Minnesota, students and staff have faced arrests, suspensions and probation.

In an address on Iranian National Teacher’s Day Wednesday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that crackdown on pro-peace and pro-Palestine rallies in the US proves the correctness of Tehran’s policy vis-à-vis Washington. “This matter has revealed to everyone that the US is complicit in the crimes committed by the Zionists in the massacre of the Gazans, which is an unforgivable sin. [The US government] might say something that seems they are showing sympathy at times, but it’s all a lie. This has proven the [correctness of the] Islamic Republic’s stance, negative outlook and lack of trust in the US government,” he said.

May 1, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Iran, United States, Zionism | 1 Comment

How Biden Showed the World the US & NATO Are Paper Tigers

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 30.04.2024

On April 13, Iran responded to an Israeli attack on its embassy in Syria by striking Israel with more than 300 drones and missiles. While most were shot down by Israeli and US air defenses, hypersonic missiles fired by Iran hit their targets, showcasing the limits of Western defenses.

US President Joe Biden revealed to the world that the US military is no longer the giant that woke up on December 7, 1941, but a paper tiger unable to exert the power it once held. Both former Chinese leader Mao Zedong and Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden described the United States in this way. Though it may have taken several decades, they are finally being proven correct.

The United States showed in the 1990s and through the start of this century that it was capable of dominating the battlefield when facing opponents with significantly less sophisticated equipment.

But, as American hegemony has slipped, other countries have caught up and in some aspects surpassed the so-called world’s only remaining superpower.

This is evident in the United States’ inability to halt the Yemen Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement’s blockade against ships traveling to Israeli ports and the United States’ failure to prevent Iran’s attack on Israeli military targets.

With the Houthis, the United States has resorted to attempting to bribe the group into stopping their attacks, a tactic that has failed. But the attack by Iran was worse for the perception of American-dominance, because the failure of its weapons were on full display.

While most if not all of the drones sent by Iran were taken out by a combination of Israeli and US air defense systems, the drones were intended to distract and exhaust the defenses and allow Iran’s hypersonic missiles to hit their targets, which most reports say they did.

The attack from Iran showed the world “that US defense capabilities” are “not there,” retired senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Monday.

“The ability to have a strong missile defense is not there, and the Russians [also] have these hypersonic capabilities,” Maloof explained. “[Iran] did hit their targets, and they did it with hypersonics and there was no defense.”

In Ukraine, the situation would be comical were it not so dark. As the Kiev regime hyped what became its failed counteroffensive last year, a succession of NATO equipment was touted as the game changer that would send the Russians into retreat.

First, it was the Bradley Fighting Vehicles, then Leopard tanks, then Challenger tanks, then a growing list of air defense systems and long-range artillery. Russia systematically destroyed them all, proving that NATO weapons are not the pinnacle of modern warfare and in many cases are relics of 20th-century warfare that will act as a gilded millstone around the neck of any army that relies on them in the 21st century.

There was another tank the US provided to Ukraine last summer, but it was not seen on the battlefield until very recently: the Abrams M1 tank. It too was touted as a game changer, but despite Ukraine’s desperate need for armor, they were not used until the battle for Avdeyevka in February of this year.

In September, Sputnik wrote an article highlighting the weaknesses of the Abrams tank, which was responded to by Popular Mechanics. The outlet asserted the Abrams would represent a “huge leap in the capabilities” of Ukrainian armor formations and accused Sputnik of exaggerating “not only the threat to Abrams tanks, but the tank’s vulnerabilities.”

The article concluded that Russian forces “will have to work very hard to kill an Abrams tank.” But when it finally arrived, five tanks were quickly destroyed and at least one tank was captured. Last week, US military officials confirmed to US media that Ukraine had removed the Abrams tanks from the front lines, saying that they are too easily destroyed by Russian drones.

“We saw, as with pretty much every type of tank we’ve seen in this combat that relatively cheap, $500, $1,000 a pop, Kamikaze drones can seriously damage a tank fairly easily,” security and international relations expert Mark Sleboda told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Monday.

The Abrams tank costs roughly $10 million a piece.

The shattering of NATO’s veneer of invincibility will have geopolitical implications, Maloof argued. “Are we going to … convince the Saudis now that we’re going to defend them, when they saw with their own eyes that whatever layering we performed for the Israelis didn’t work. Are they going to buy into that? No, they’re going to start going their own way, increasingly more so.”

On Tuesday, Iranian Economy Minister Ehsan Khandouzi described his talks with the Minister of Economy and Planning of Saudi Arabia, Faisal F. Alibrahim as “productive.”
“Faisal F. Alibrahim agreed with all [of] Iran’s [economic] proposals,” Khandouzi noted.

“The days of US dominance [are] over, and we’re seeing this now as some 40 countries want to join BRICS and get out from under the dollar,” Maloof explained. “So, all of this is interrelated. It’s all playing [out] in real-time, before our very eyes, and it’s happening very rapidly.”

May 1, 2024 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Wars for Israel | Iran, NATO, Ukraine, United States, Yemen | Leave a comment

The Interlocking of Strategic Paradigms

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 29, 2024

Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT, has provided a forensic analysis of the videos and evidence emerging from Iran’s 13th April swarm drone and missile ‘demonstation’ attack into Israel: A ‘message’, rather than an ‘assault’.

The leading Israeli daily, Yediot Ahoronot, has estimated the cost of attempting to down this Iranian flotilla at between $2-3 billion dollars. The implications of this single number are substantial.

Professor Postol writes:

“This indicates that the cost of defending against waves of attacks of this type is very likely to be unsustainable against an adequately armed and determined adversary”.
“The videos show an extremely important fact: All of the targets, whether drones or not, are shot down by air-to-air missiles”, [fired from mostly U.S. aircraft. Some 154 aircraft reportedly were aloft at the time] likely firing AIM-9x Sidewinder air to air missiles. The cost of a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile is about $500,000”.

Furthermore:

“The fact that a very large number of unengaged ballistic missiles could be seen glowing as they reenter the atmosphere to lower altitudes [an indication of hyper-speed], indicates that whatever the effects of [Israel’s] David’s Sling and the Arrow missile defenses, they were not especially effective. Thus, the evidence at this point shows that essentially all or most of the arriving long-range ballistic missiles were not intercepted by any of the Israeli air and missile-defense systems”.

Postel adds, “I have analyzed the situation, and have concluded that commercially available optical and computational technology is more than capable of being adapted to a cruise missile guidance system to give it very high precision homing capability … it is my conclusion that the Iranians have already developed precision guided cruise missiles and drones”.

“The implications of this are clear. The cost of shooting down cruise missiles and drones will be very high and might well be unsustainable unless extremely inexpensive and effective anti-air systems can be implemented. At this time, no one has demonstrated a cost-effective defense system that can intercept ballistic missiles with any reliability”.

Just to be clear, Postol is saying that neither the U.S. nor Israel has more than a partial defence to a potential attack of this nature – especially as Iran has dispersed and buried its ballistic missile silos across the entire terrain of Iran under the control of autonomous units which are capable of continuing a war, even were central command and communications to be completely lost.

This amounts to paradigm change – clearly for Israel, for one. The huge physical expenditure on air defence ordinance – 2-3 billion dollars worth – will not be repeated willy-nilly by the U.S. Netanyahu will not easily persuade the U.S. to engage with Israel in any joint venture against Iran, given these unsustainable air-defence costs.

But also, as a second important implication, these Air Defence assets are not just expensive in dollar terms, they simply are not there: i.e. the store cupboard is near empty! And the U.S. lacks the manufacturing capacity to replace these not particularly effective, high cost platforms speedily.

‘Yes, Ukraine’ … the Middle East paradigm interlinks directly with the Ukraine paradigm where Russia has succeeded in destroying so much of the western supplied, air-defence capabilities in Ukraine, giving Russia near complete air dominance over the skies.

Positioning scarce air defence ‘to save Israel’ therefore, exposes Ukraine (and slows the U.S. pivot to China, too). And given the recent passage of the funding Bill for Ukraine in Congress, clearly air defence assets are a priority for sending to Kiev – where the West looks increasingly trapped and rummaging for a way out that does not lead to humiliation.

But before leaving the Middle East paradigm shift, the implications for Netanyahu are already evident: He must therefore focus back to the ‘near enemy’ – the Palestinian sphere or to Lebanon – to provide Israel with the ‘Great Victory’ that his government craves.

In short, the ‘cost’ for Biden of saving Israel from the Iranian flotilla which had been pre-announced by Iran to be demonstrative and not destructive nor lethal is that the White House must put-up with the corollary – an attack on Rafah. But this implies a different form of cost – an electoral erosion through exacerbating domestic tensions arising from the on-going blatant slaughter of Palestinians.

It is not just Israel that bears the weight of the Iranian paradigm shift. Consider the Sunni Arab States that have been working in various forms of collaboration (normalisation) with Israel.

In the event of wider conflict embracing Iran, clearly Israel cannot protect them – as Professor Postol so clearly shows. And can they count on the U.S.? The U.S. faces competing demands for its scarce Air Defences and (for now) Ukraine, and the pivot to China, are higher on the White House priority ladder.

In September 2019, the Saudi Abqaiq oil facility was hit by cruise missiles, which Postol notes, “had an effective accuracy of perhaps a few feet, much more precise than could be achieved with GPS guidance (suggesting an optical and computational guidance system, giving a very precise homing capability)”.

So, after the Iranian active deterrence paradigm shift, and the subsequent Air Defence depletion paradigm shock, the putative coming western paradigm shift (the Third Paradigm) is similarly interlinked with Ukraine.

For the western proxy war with Russia centred on Ukraine has made one thing abundantly clear: this is that the West’s off-shoring of its manufacturing base has left it uncompetitive, both in simple trade terms, and secondly, in limiting western defence manufacturing capacity. It finds (post-13 April) that it does not have the Air Defence assets to go round: ‘saving Israel’; ‘saving Ukraine’ and preparing for war with China.

The western maximalisation of shareholder returns model has not adapted readily to the logistical needs of the present ‘limited’ Ukraine/Russia war, let alone provided positioning for future wars – with Iran and China.

Put plainly, this ‘late stage’ global imperialism has been living a ‘false dawn’: With the economy shifting from manufacturing ‘things’, to the more lucrative sphere of imagining new financial products (such as derivatives) that make a lot of money quickly, but which destabilise society (through increasing disparities of wealth); and which ultimately, de-stabilise the global system itself (as the World Majority states recoil from the loss of sovereignty and autonomy that financialism entails).

More broadly, the global system is close to massive structural change. As the Financial Times warns,

“the U.S. and EU cannot embrace national-security “infant industry” arguments, seize key value chains to narrow inequality, and break the fiscal and monetary ‘rules’, while also using the IMF and World Bank – and the economics profession– to preach free-market best practice to EM ex-China. And China can’t expect others not to copy what it does”. As the FT concludes, “the shift to a new economic paradigm has begun. Where it will end is very much up for grabs.”

‘Up for grabs’: Well, for the FT the answer may be opaque, but for the Global Majority is plain enough – “We’re going back to basics”: A simpler, largely national economy, protected from foreign competition by customs barriers. Call it ‘old- fashioned’ (the concepts have been written about for the last 200 years); yet it is nothing extreme. The notions simply reflect the flip side of the coin to Adam Smith’s doctrines, and that which Friedrich List advanced in his critique of the laissez-faire individualist approach of the Anglo-Americans.

‘European leaders’, however, see the economic paradigm solution differently:

“The ECB’s Panetta gave a speech echoing Mario Draghi’s call for “radical change”: He stated for the EU to thrive it needs a de facto national-security focused POLITICAL economy centered around: reducing dependence on foreign demand; enhancing energy security (green protectionism); advancing production of technology (industrial policy); rethinking participation in global value chains (tariffs/subsidies); governing migration flows (so higher labour costs); enhancing external security (huge funds for defence); and joint investments in European public goods (via Eurobonds … to be bought by ECB QE)”.

The ‘false dawn’ boom in U.S. financial services began as its industrial base was rotting away, and as new wars began to be promoted.

It is easy to see that the U.S. economy now needs structural change. Its real economy has become globally uncompetitive – hence Yellen’s call on China to curb its over-capacity which is hurting western economies.

But is it realistic to think that Europe can manage a relaunch as a ‘defence and national security-led political economy’, as Draghi and Panetta advocate as a continuation of war with Russia? Launched from near ground zero?

Is it realistic to think that the American Security State will allow Europe to do this, having deliberately reduced Europe to economic vassalage through causing it to abandon its prior business model based on cheap energy and selling high-end engineering products to China?

This Draghi-ECB plan represents a huge structural change; one that would take a decade or two to implement and would cost trillions. It would occur too, at a time of inevitable European fiscal austerity. Is there evidence that ordinary Europeans support such radical structural change?

Why then is Europe pursuing a path that embraces huge risks – one that potentially could drag Europe into a whirlpool of tensions ending in war with Russia?

For one main reason: The EU leadership held hubristic ambitions to turn the EU into a ‘geo-political’ empire – a global actor with the heft to join the U.S. at Top Table. To this end, the EU unreservedly offered itself as the auxiliary of the White House Team for their Ukraine project, and acquiesced to the entry price of emptying their armouries and sanctioning the cheap energy on which the economy depended.

It was this decision that has been de-industrialising Europe; that has made what remains of a real economy uncompetitive and triggered the inflation that is undermining living standards. Falling into line with Washington’s failing Ukraine project has released a cascade of disastrous decisions by the EU.

Were this policy line to change, Europe could revert to what it was: a trading association formed of diverse sovereign states. Many Europeans would settle for that: Placing the focus on making Europe competitive again; making Europe a diplomatic actor, rather than as a military actor.

Do Europeans even want to be at the American ‘top table’?

April 29, 2024 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | European Union, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

The US and the UK are pushing for total war on all fronts

By Timur Fomenko | RT | April 29, 2024

The events of recent weeks have produced a sudden jolt in Western politics. From a lethargy that was starting to creep into US and western discourse over the Ukraine war, Iran’s attack on Israel suddenly seemed to have had the effect of awakening Ronald Reagan from his grave and leading to a surge of neo-conservativism on steroids, on both sides of the Atlantic.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson did a complete 180-degree U-turn and proclaimed himself a “Reagan Republican” passing a series of aid bills for astronomical overseas spending that he had otherwise blocked for months, as he denounced an “axis of evil.” Along with that, a proposed TikTok ban bill came out of nowhere too and was quickly signed into law.

Then the UK decided to devote its largest ever aid package to Ukraine, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warning of an “axis of authoritarian states” and amplifying ideologically combative rhetoric. At the same time, it was then revealed Biden had sent 300km long range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine despite having pledged not to do so for years, fearing escalation. Finally, EU President Ursula von der Leyen has suddenly dramatically increased economic warfare on China, pushing the European Commission to open probes on scores of Chinese exports. Where exactly did all this come from?

It’s almost as if the US and its allies seized upon the tensions between Iran and Israel in order to “whitewash” their slate and double down on a series of objectives they are otherwise losing public support for, including the war in Ukraine, but also Israel’s invasion of Gaza. One has to wonder if the Israeli attack on the Iranian compound in Damascus, which provoked Tehran’s response, was deliberately staged, coordinated and planned for this purpose. It served the mutually convenient goal of letting both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Western governments off the hook for whatever opposition they had otherwise faced.

It should be abundantly clear now that the current powers that be, in London and Washington, have absolutely no intent of letting up on the wars they have provoked, while also pushing for a potential third one with China, and seem indifferent to the consequences, even if for example, the Israel-Gaza war is shattering the West’s claims of moral superiority. In each case, the stakes are very high, Western foreign policy at large has taken on a very zero-sum and ideological character which bemoans the loss of hegemony, and seeks to uphold it at all costs. It is reactionary to the extent it does not have a vision for improving the world, but wants to take back the world to the way it was. It is a sense of entitlement and privilege that wants to suppress an emerging multipolarity.

Because of this, it has become impossible for Western leaders to ever consider the concept of compromise in these respective theaters, and they refuse under any circumstances to make concessions which could be deemed strategic. This has produced a position where the only outcome they are willing to accept in Ukraine is what they deem “the defeat of Putin,” and have been subtly escalating ever since, edging ever closer to the point where a “proxy war” becomes a direct one for all intents and purposes. NATO military advisors are already on the ground, and Ukrainian attacks are being guided by NATO intelligence or even coordinated by British admirals.

The media in the West, especially in Britain (there is more dissent in the US) are effectively in war mode. The BBC amplifies non-stop Ukraine propaganda, pushing any claim that will help Kiev irrespective of its empirical worth or evidence, and all voices of dissent have been shut down. It seems evident that the decision may have been made to risk a full-on war with Russia, rather than to consider any negotiation scenario. Thus, the shockwaves from the Iran-Israel saga have been used to pursue a new and sudden round of escalation on every front, which can have only been bolstered by the prospective elections looming in both the US and UK.

Because of this, it is fair to say that the world faces a more dangerous and uncertain outlook than at any point since the end of World War II. This current crop of Western leaders are not pursuing a more restrained and calculated mindset, as seen for most of the Cold War, but an aggressive and evangelistic one that does not prefer stability but affirms hegemony as an absolute right, thus more resembling a pre-1914 world. Because of this, we should draw the conclusion that Western leaders are not truly seeking to avoid war, but are prepared to embrace it if necessary. The British military establishment and the media have long been making noises about conscription. In the US, if Joe Biden wins re-election, we can assume that he will unapologetically escalate on every single front. World War III is no longer a dramatized specter of farfetched panic, but an actual possibility that should not be ruled out.

April 28, 2024 Posted by aletho | Militarism | China, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Russia, UK, United States | 2 Comments

Pakistan under risk of sanctions over trade deal with Iran: Washington

The Cradle | April 24, 2024

Washington threatened Pakistan with sanctions on 23 April over a trade agreement recently signed with Iran.

“We advise anyone considering business deals with Iran to be aware of the potential risk of sanctions. Ultimately, the Government of Pakistan can speak to their own foreign policy pursuits,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on 23 April.

The warning came after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Pakistan on 22 April and met with top officials, including Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

“Both sides agreed to increase the volume of bilateral trade to 10 billion US dollars in the next five years,” Sharif’s office said in a statement.

Raisi and Sharif also discussed during the visit the importance of energy cooperation between Tehran and Islamabad.

A gas pipeline project between the two, dating back over a decade and aimed at allowing the flow of Iranian gas into Pakistan, has been consistently held up by the US.

A US official revealed last month that Washington has set a “goal” to prevent the construction of the Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline. The project has been delayed by nearly a decade in large part due to US economic pressure.

“I fully support the efforts by the US government to prevent this pipeline from happening,” US Assistant Secretary Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, Donald Lu, said during a congressional hearing on 19 March. “We are working toward that goal,” he stressed.

On Wednesday, Iran and Pakistan issued a joint statement calling on the UN Security Council “to prevent Israel’s regime from its adventurism in the region and its illegal acts attacking its neighbors and targeting foreign diplomatic facilities.”

The statement also called “for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, unimpeded humanitarian access to the besieged people of Gaza, return of the displaced Palestinians, as well as ensuring accountability of the crimes being committed by the Israeli regime. They reiterated their support for a just, comprehensive, and durable solution based on the aspirations of the people of Palestine,” according to the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

April 24, 2024 Posted by aletho | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Palestine, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Revealed: Israel’s hidden history of attacks on Iran

By Robert Inlakesh | MintPress News | April 17, 2024

Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel was framed in the West as a reckless attempt to spark a major regional war, but in reality, Israel has been attacking Iran for decades.

As is routinely the case with Western-backed wars, the corporate media’s timeline begins at the moment that suits their narrative. We have seen this play out recently, with the attempt to rob the Gaza war of all contexts before October 7, 2023. Similarly, when it comes to Israel’s conflict with Iran, the two have been embroiled in what is referred to as a “shadow war,” the details of which are pretty shocking.

While the international media’s attention was riveted on Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel, drawing great focus to some 300 drones and missiles used in the attack, no major deal was made of Israel’s strike on April 1 against the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed a dozen people, including seven Iranian officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In this unprecedented act of aggression against Iranian soil, breaking international diplomatic norms, the Israelis were shielded by the U.S. government at the United Nations Security Council, blocking any condemnation of this act.

Despite an admission from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that had the UK embassy been attacked similarly, they too would retaliate, the double-standard argument that Iran shouldn’t respond continues to dominate the airways.

This is as Iran’s IRGC has received condemnation for seizing a container ship in the Persian Gulf associated with the Zodiac Maritime shipping company of Israel billionaire Eyal Ofer and his family. In 2021, the Mercer Street oil tanker, which Zodiac Maritime also operated, was struck by Iranian drones, prompting similar condemnation. Yet, little was to be said regarding the Israeli-owned company’s role in collaborating with the Israeli military and intelligence establishment to ferry arms and operatives around the region and carry out assassinations or reconnaissance missions.

However, the Israel-Iran “Shadow War” did not begin with recent events. Israel has been carrying out brutal assassinations of civilian scientists on Iranian soil since 2010 while also carrying out acts of espionage that have endangered innocent civilians in the country.

As early as in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, Israeli Mossad agents have been planting viruses designed to cause malfunctions in Iranian oil and nuclear power facilities. Another kind of provocative action occurred in 2018, when it was reported that an Israeli Mossad team had raided an archive facility in Tehran, stealing documents that pertained to its nuclear power program.

In 2020, the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Israel planted bombs inside Iran’s Natanz Nuclear facility, which almost caused an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Later that year, the Israeli Mossad assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran. Then, in April of 2021, another explosion occurred at the Natanz facility, which the New York Times reported was Israel’s doing.

The Israelis have also trained members of the MEK terrorist group to carry out attacks on civilian targets inside Iran. The list of Mossad-linked cells that have been arrested by the Iranian authorities or carried out acts of espionage and sabotage is simply too numerous to cover at length. Early last year, U.S. officials even told Reuters that a suicide drone attack targeting a factory in the city of Isfahan was an Israeli attack.

More recently, in late December, Israel launched airstrikes on Damascus and assassinated IRGC official Seyed Razi Mousavi. And in January, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, murdering five Iranian military personnel members and Syrian citizens. Then, in early February, Israel was accused of blowing up gas pipelines in Iran. None of these actions, which would likely illicit a response by most nations, provoked Iran to launch a direct strike on Israel.

In addition to all of this, Israel has been the world’s top cheerleader for the West’s crushing sanctions that have significantly impacted Iran’s civilian population, specifically access to lifesaving medical supplies. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli Lobby group in the United States, worked hard to prevent the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal from passing, then pushed for the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw before pressuring the Biden administration to refrain from reviving the deal despite this being a campaign promise. Israel even played a role in the Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top general tasked with battling ISIS, Qassem Soleimani.

Yet, despite Israel’s long history of documented attacks against Iran and around 30 years of false predictions as to when Iran is supposedly going to develop a nuclear weapon, which is the premise for Western sanctions, the corporate media is still trying to sell the public on the lie that Israel is an innocent victim and that there was no justifiable reason for Iran to retaliate.

April 24, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

US congress approves gifting seized Russian assets to Ukraine

RT | April 20, 2024

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill authorizing the government to liquidate seized Russian assets and transfer the proceeds to Ukraine. It also includes measures forcing the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owners and authorizing stricter sanctions on Russia, China, and Iran.

The bill was passed by 360 votes to 58 on Saturday. Known as the ‘21st Century Peace through Strength Act’, it rolled together a number of previously disparate bills, most notably the so-called ‘Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act’, which allows the Biden administration to confiscate billions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets held by American banks and transfer them to Ukraine.

The US and EU have blocked an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank since the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. The vast majority of these assets are held in Europe, but American banks are sitting on around $6 billion, according to multiple reports in US media outlets.

At present, the US has no legal mechanism to seize these assets, and has moved relatively paltry sums of seized Russian money to Estonia for use in Ukraine.

While the bill passed with bipartisan support, it was strongly condemned by fiscal conservatives and anti-war Republicans. US Senator Rand Paul warned earlier this year that “confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets is an act of economic war” that would undermine global confidence in the US.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a similar warning on Friday, while the Kremlin has declared that any actions taken against its assets would amount to flagrant “theft.”

The ‘Peace Through Strength Act’ also included a measure that would ban TikTok if the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell off its US operations.

The FBI and Federal Communications Commission have long maintained that TikTok passes user data to the Chinese government, but TikTok has repeatedly denied the allegation.

Beijing has argued that forcing a sale “runs contrary to the principles of fair competition and international economic and trade rules.”

The bill also authorizes additional economic sanctions on Russia, China, and Iran.

In a series of separate votes on Saturday, the House approved massive military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, which along with the ‘Peace Through Strength Act’ will now be combined into a single bill and sent to the Senate for approval. Totaling $95 billion, the legislation will provide $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion to Israel, and $8 billion to Taiwan and other countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

House Speaker Mike Johnson relied on support from Democrats to bring the bills to the House floor, but the decision may cost him his job. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), an ardent opponent of funding for Ukraine, has filed a motion to remove Johnson from the speakership. Posting on X (formerly Twitter) after Saturday’s vote, Greene called the aid “despicable,” and said that the US “should be demanding peace, not funding the military industrial complex’s blood money wars fueled by dead bodies in Ukraine.”

April 20, 2024 Posted by aletho | Economics, Timeless or most popular | China, Iran, Russia, United States | 1 Comment

Iran’s new deterrence equation with ‘Israel’ was decades in the making

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | April 20, 2024

On April 13, the Islamic Republic of Iran changed the deterrence equation with the Zionist entity by striking it directly. While the success of this operation can be judged, in the short term, through the monitoring of the US and Israeli responses, it is important to understand that Iran’s retaliatory operation was in fact the culmination of decades of Israeli attacks on its territory and citizens.

Immediately after Iran’s retaliatory operation, dubbed True Promise, was concluded, the Western and Israeli establishments began working hard to concoct their own narrative as to what occurred. Interestingly, they couldn’t quite stick to a singular script and adopted two contradictory takes: The first was to pretend that the Israelis were the victim and that Iran’s attack was much larger in scope than expected; hence demonstrating Tehran’s ‘evil’ intent. The second was to argue that the Israelis, along with their UK, US, French, and Jordanian air defense alliance, pulled off one of the most successful defensive military campaigns in history and that Iran did basically no damage.

The two narratives make the Israelis both the victim and the hero of the story. Yet, they greatly contradict each other by arguing both that nothing happened and that the Iranian retaliation went way beyond what is allegedly acceptable. What these two stories also do is allow us the ability to debunk both independently and tell the real story behind what occurred.

Debunking Iran’s so-called ‘evil intent’

As is typical for the Western corporate media, they conveniently begin every story on the day that fits their desired framework, pushing the same propaganda narratives as their leadership. In this instance, they take the same approach as was adopted on October 7, 2023, when it came to the battles between the Palestinian Resistance and the occupying entity. We were all supposed to believe two lines of argument, which, if violated, would be treated as treasonous and immoral: The first was that all history prior to October 7 was invalid and could not explain or justify the military operation of Hamas. The second was to pretend that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was a “terrorist” attack with no military goals.

Not only was the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, blown up by Israeli strikes, in what constituted an egregious violation of international law, diplomatic norms, and both Iranian and Syrian sovereignty, but this was not the first time. On the April 1 consulate attack, 7 members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed, along with Syrian and Lebanese nationals. When asked on Sky News what the UK would have done in the event that one of its consulates were attacked, British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, admitted that London would have too responded harshly, contradicting his own narrative that was espoused moments prior.

The Iran-Israeli struggle didn’t originate with this strike on the consulate, which the US and its allies prevented a condemnation for in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). It’s been ongoing for decades. While Iran has periodically carried out retaliatory and defensive operations, in the Gulf and northern Iraq, against Israeli targets, no direct action was ever taken against targets inside occupied Palestine.

When looking critically at what is often called the Iran-Israeli “shadow war”, we will find that Tehran has repeatedly shown extreme levels of restraint. Since 2010, the Israeli regime has been carrying out direct action inside Iranian territory, beginning with its bloody assassinations of civilian nuclear scientists. These assassinations have utilized Mossad agents to gun down scientists in the streets and plant bombs in civilian areas. The Zionists have also repeatedly used members of terrorist organizations, such as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), training and recruiting them to murder civilians inside Iranian territory.

Acts of sabotage, espionage, and even a raid on a facility in Tehran, which resulted in the theft of documents pertaining to Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, were all carried out under the supervision of the Mossad. In 2020, The New York Times and The Washington Post both reported that the Israelis were behind the planting of a bomb at the Natanz Nuclear Facility. It was later also revealed through NYT that the Israelis had been responsible for the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran on November 27 of that same year. Then, the following year, the Israelis were again accused of another explosion that occurred at the Natanz Nuclear Facility.

In addition to this, in early 2023, it was revealed that the Israelis were behind an attack, using suicide drones, which attempted to strike a factory in the Iranian city of Isfahan. Keeping all of this in mind, the Israelis have been one of the biggest proponents of the West’s sanctions against Iran, which have sought to collectively punish the Iranian civilian population. AIPAC and specifically Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, mounted a huge effort to prevent the 2015 Nuclear Deal, undermining its implementation, before pushing the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw and then working to ensure that the current American President, Joe Biden, would not fulfill his campaign promise to revive it. “Tel Aviv” was even allegedly involved in the US Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, of the IRGC’s Quds Force in 2020.

Countless strikes that have assassinated Iranian citizens inside Syria have been carried out by the Zionist regime throughout the years, none of which have ever received a single condemnation from any Western nation. More recently, in late December the Israeli regime assassinated IRGC official, Seyed Razi Mousavi, in airstrikes conducted against his location in Damascus. In this case, the IRGC launched a retaliatory series of strikes against Mossad facilities in northern Iraq and fired ballistic missiles into Syria’s Idlib province, working to warn the Zionists not to commit further attacks.

Despite this clear warning, the Zionist entity decided in January to strike Damascus again and murdered 5 IRGC members, along with Syrian civilians and soldiers. Then, in February, the Zionists were reportedly behind explosions that partially destroyed gas pipelines in Iran. At this point, no direct strikes against the Zionists occurred, despite the long list of provocations.

It was only on April 1, after the consulate attack, that the Iranians decided that enough was enough and that they would change the equation once and for all, in order to prevent the Israelis from committing their heinous crimes against Iran at will.

Debunking the West’s air defense ‘victory’

The Islamic Republic of Iran allegedly gave a 72-hour notice to neighboring and allied nations, in addition to immediately arguing its right to respond, in the way it did, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN charter; also making all parties aware that the response would be limited.

When the attack began, the Iranians launched a batch of older model drones, which were slow and easy to identify. This gave ample time to the broad coalition of Israeli allies, including the US, UK, France, and Jordan, to use their fighter jets and air defense capabilities throughout the region, to combat the incoming attack. All flights were grounded, and the Zionists were given the time to move assets and prepare, while the only targets in the sky were Iranian drones and missiles for an incident that lasted 5 hours in total.

If we look at this with an open mind and simply observe the obvious, what happened was no achievement at all to the Israelis, but rather, an absolute embarrassment. The Iranians used old munitions and models of their drones, gave the enemy hours to shoot down the slow-moving targets across Iraq, Jordan, and then finally occupied Palestine. In an operation that cost Tehran in the tens of millions, the Israelis were forced to spend upward of a billion dollars in their attempt to combat the volley of drones and missiles.

Despite the broad Western-Arab-Zionist coalition having hours to combat the attack, in addition to days to set up and prepare, Iran hit its intended military targets with ballistic missiles and those missiles were not even its newest models. While the Zionists claim to have shot down “99%” of the incoming missiles and drones, we have now received the admission that over a dozen missiles have hit their targets, which debunks this statistic.

On the other hand, many of the munitions fired by the Islamic Republic managed to reach the skies of occupied Palestine and set off nearly 800 sirens across the territory, instilling fear in the settler population and causing them to flee populated areas to bunkers. In an attack that drew the full concentration of the Zionist regime and its allies, depleting large reserves of interceptor missiles, the allies of Iran were much more reserved than had been expected. It was anticipated by many that the likes of Hezbollah, the Palestinian Resistance, Yemen’s Ansar Allah, and the Iraqi Resistance would launch large volleys of projectiles to distract the air defenses, yet the missiles, rockets, and drones fired from these fronts ranged from nothing – in the case of Gaza – to limited fire at best. What the limited aid of the regional resistance forces demonstrated was that they were not even needed to enable older-model Iranian missiles to hit their targets.

Despite this obviously being the case and that Tehran did not seek to strike anything beyond military targets, the Israelis and their Western allies managed to concoct a laughable narrative of triumph. As this was the first time the Iranian military had ever launched a direct attack against the Zionist regime, it also managed to test the Israeli capacity to fend off strikes from Iran; under the most favorable circumstances possible.

While the Western corporate media are now promoting the idea of an amazing victory for their air defense capabilities, it is obvious that these rather pathetic distortions of the truth are rooted in upholding the image of the weapons systems used and saving face after receiving a slap from Iran. The military-industrial complex cannot be ignored in analyzing the Western media narrative here, because there is a direct interest in upholding the image of their weapons being the most effective on earth. This is in order to boost, or, at least maintain sales.

An admission of the truth would be a major blow to the military-industrial complex in the West and would also instill even greater fear in the Israeli population. The Zionist regime cannot admit how vulnerable it is in the face of a large regional confrontation with the Islamic Republic and so it has worked to deceive its people, using this incident as a means of attempting to prove defensive competence; something that was greatly undermined on October 7 by the Palestinian resistance.

The Israelis were neither the victims nor were they the victors, they made a stupid mistake and found themselves faced with a difficult situation, prompting their Western allies to urge them not to immediately strike Iran directly. Although the coming weeks and months will provide us with the ability to properly analyze all the effects of Iran’s retaliatory operation, in the meantime, we can assess that a totally new equation has been reached and the governments of the collective West are not happy about it.

April 20, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Syria, Zionism | Leave a comment

US house speaker announces ‘new axis of evil’

RT | April 19, 2024

In a dramatic break from his party’s hardline conservative base, US House Speaker MIke Johnson this week praised the country’s deep state, named Russia, China, and Iran as an “axis of evil,” and vowed to put his job on the line to funnel more than $60 billion to Kiev.

For months, Johnson has resisted bringing a $95 billion foreign aid bill to a vote, arguing that neither he nor his fellow Republicans could support such a bill – which would give $14 billion in military aid to Israel and $60 billion to Ukraine – without it being tied to an overhaul of US border security.

However, after a series of recent meetings with US intelligence chiefs, Johnson has changed his tune.

“This is a critical time right now, a critical time on the world stage,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. “I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important. I really do. I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten.”

“I believe [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil,” he continued. “I think they’re in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed.”

Johnson’s comments represented a break with the Republican Party’s pro-Trump wing. These supporters of the former president – most prominent among them Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz – view the country’s intelligence agencies as arms of the anti-Trump “deep state,” and have called for the flow of money to Kiev to be halted.

“Fighting a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, which is a non-NATO member nation, is not protecting America’s national security interests, it doesn’t protect the United States of America, as a matter of fact, it pushes us closer and closer to world war three,” Greene told journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this month.

Johnson’s reference to an “axis of evil,” however, invokes the more interventionist GOP of the past. Coined by speechwriter David Frum, the phrase was first used by George W. Bush to refer to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton later added Cuba, Libya and Syria to the list.

Despite resistance from some of its Republican members, the House Rules Committee agreed on Thursday to split the foreign aid bill into three separate bills – one each for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The house voted in favor of this move on Friday, leaving Johnson free to schedule a vote on each bill for Saturday, even as Greene filed a motion to remove him from the speakership.

Johnson said on Wednesday that he anticipated such a move, telling reporters that he was willing to “take personal risk” to pass the bills.

April 19, 2024 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Russophobia | China, Iran, Russia, United States | 1 Comment

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World War Two Was Not a Just War

By David Swanson | September 20, 2016

Excerpted from the just released book War Is Never Just.

World War II is often called “the good war,” and has been since the U.S. war on Vietnam to which it was then contrasted. World War II so dominates U.S. and therefore Western entertainment and education, that “good” often comes to mean something more than “just.” The winner of the “Miss Italy” beauty pageant earlier this year got herself into a bit of a scandal by declaring that she would have liked to live through World War II. While she was mocked, she was clearly not alone. Many would like to be part of something widely depicted as noble, heroic, and exciting. Should they actually find a time machine, I recommend they read the statements of some actual WWII veterans and survivors before they head back to join the fun.[i] For purposes of this book, however, I am going to look only at the claim that WWII was morally just. … continue

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