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The State of Western Warcraft

Deep Dive with Lee Slusher | January 12, 2025

In early 2023, the head of the US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Christopher Cavoli, remarked, “precision can beat mass.”1 This is true; precision can beat mass. But some countries now have the capability to render Western precision much less precise, both by “hard kill” (kinetic) and by “soft kill” (electronic). More to the point, these countries now possess both precision and mass, whereas the West is left to rely on a degraded version of the former and has long since abandoned the latter.

Power Projection versus National Defense

The “unipolar moment” of the post-Cold War period has led to thoroughly misguided notions about the nature of military power. Here it is important to understand the difference between power projection and national defense. Most militaries exist to provide the latter, i.e., the means by which to protect their nations from threats in their respective regions. Very few ever hold the ability to project power far from home.

But the US military primacy of recent decades, specifically the ability to wage and sustain war in far-flung locations, has become to many the hallmark of military power writ large. In this view, any nation unable to project power globally—essentially everyone except the US—is therefore inferior on the whole. This view is incorrect. What matters ultimately in war is the force that can be brought to bear, both the attacker’s and the defender’s, at the specific time and place it is needed.

Consider the conclusion many drew about Russia in the wake of the Assad regime’s collapse. “Russia is a paper tiger with nukes!” According to such thinking, Russia’s inability to continue propping up Assad, or its decision not to do so, somehow translated into weakness elsewhere, most notably in Ukraine. This, too, is incorrect.

When Russia intervened in Syria in 2015, it was entirely uncontroversial to conclude that this operation was likely the limit of Russia’s power projection capabilities. Yes, the country has formidable strategic air, naval, and rocket forces, but these serve mainly as a deterrent. The primary focus of all other Russian forces is to defend Russia, especially on its Western and Southern borders opposite NATO. Here Russia remains incredibly strong. Similar logic applies to China. For instance, those who mock the country’s lack of a true “blue water” naval capability overlook the potency of that force in the waters that line China’s shores.

Operation Desert Storm was the watershed moment for the brief period of US military primacy. It occurred shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is an ongoing debate in military circles over the significance of Desert Storm. Both critics and supporters continue to misunderstand several key takeaways.

Critics point out that the US-led coalition had many months to amass a force in Saudi Arabia, did so uncontested (save the Scud missile attacks), and then smashed an inferior enemy. These things are all true. What critics fail to realize is that the ability to do all of this—diplomatically, economically, logistically, militarily, etc.—was itself an expression of extraordinary power. Moreover, they downplay the fact that this coalition really did possess operational technologies that others, including Russia and China, did not have at the time, as well as the innovations these asymmetries would prompt in weapons development in the years to follow. This was especially the case in Moscow and Beijing.

The primary failure of the war’s admirers, including many current rank and file in the US defense establishment, is to think such an operation is replicable today. They brush aside the fact that most members of the coalition still maintained their enormous Cold War-era forces, but have long since abandoned them. They exaggerate the current reach Western diplomatic influence and industrial capacity. Lastly, they cling unflinchingly to the notion of superior Western military technology. Such people are frozen in the amber of 1991.

The Fluid Nature of Capability Gaps

For decades, the US effectively had monopolies on many decisive capabilities, particularly in terms of deploying them at scale and with broad geographic reach. These included precision-guided munitions, night-vision, global strike, and others. The absence of high-intensity conflict between the US and other nations underscored this reality.

But the list of nations with advanced capabilities continues to grow, and capability gaps continue to narrow. In some cases, these gaps have closed, particularly in missile technology (including hypersonics), air defense, electronic warfare, and, more recently, unmanned systems. More importantly, and to the persistent disbelief of naysayers, some countries now have an edge over the US and its allies in some areas.

Push back hard enough on the arguments of NATO evangelists and one will find, eventually, the sole pillar on which their belief system rests. Such an exchange might begin with their boasting about Tomahawk cruise missiles. By the time these projectiles lazily make their way to their intended targets, and assuming most are not shot down or defeated electronically, Russian missiles—superior in speed, range, and payload—will have already been launched. Some will have already struck, and the others will trail behind them.

Consider the Oreshnik, for which there are no publicly known countermeasures. The prevailing theory is that the Oreshnik is a redesigned intermediate-range ballistic missile that carries six multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, each of which carries six projectiles. It is capable of striking targets across Europe, and elsewhere, within minutes. Although the Oreshnik is nuclear capable, such warheads would be unnecessary—short of Armageddon—given the missile’s range, speed, and destructive power. This is a key point. Russia is trying to achieve strategic overmatch while removing the need for nuclear weapons. Perhaps it already has. This would be checkmate, at least in terms of a conventional war.

Of what use is the Oreshnik? There are the obvious answers, like striking NATO’s missile systems, bases, and factories, but there is a much more significant target set. Central to NATO’s plan for a defense of Europe is the expectation that American and Canadian troops and materiel would reinforce the continent, and the US was always the long pole in this tent by far. But how would they get there? Airlift would be insufficient; it simply lacks the necessary throughput. Such a conflict would require mass, and mass moves by sea. One could assume Russia keeps European ports under persistence surveillance, including on the ground. With the Oreshnik and other missiles, Russia could destroy the ports within a half hour, supplying follow-on strikes as necessary. The continent would be left with whatever it had on hand. The weakest link would become the primary one, and everything in Europe would remain vulnerable to continued strikes from Russia’s over-the-horizon systems.

Here NATO’s defenders play their perceived trump card, airpower. However, many of these aircraft are outdated while many of Russia’s have grown more advanced. Furthermore, along its periphery with NATO, Russia has the most advanced air defense network and electronic warfare complex in existence. The latter has already proven effective against many of the very technologies on which NATO’s entire way of war depends, particularly GPS-guided bombs.

All of their hopes appear to be pinned on the F-35. It all comes down to this plane, an aircraft dubbed Lightning even though it has demonstrated difficulty flying in that very weather. Could the F-35 defeat all these many threats? No one knows and that is the most honest answer anyone could provide. Neither the US nor anyone else has flown against such formidable threats—ever. Doing so would be an extraordinary gamble and ought to be understood explicitly as such. Here many suffer from a potentially terminal case of “F-35 brain” for which catastrophic defeat might be the only remedy.

Anyone who thinks China lacks similar capabilities, perhaps with the exception of an Oreshnik analogue, is a fool. Consider the possibility of a US-led defense, or even a resupply, of Taiwan in the event of a war with China, a wildly popular fantasy within the US foreign policy establishment. China has built a robust sensor-to-shooter capability that links spaced-based and terrestrial surveillance with many thousands of missiles capable of striking targets well into the adjacent skies and seas. Even if the US had sufficient armaments to support such a war (it does not), the country lacks the sealift and the ability to penetrate Chinese defenses. The entire notion of such an operation is militarily and logistically illiterate. It belongs mostly to the polished history obsessives with no real-world operational experience who populate the thinktank ecosystem.

Contrary to Western talking points, Iran possesses at least some of these capabilities. Yes, much of Iran’s war machine is rickety, but these lackluster elements coexist alongside advanced capabilities. Western governments and media celebrated the “defense” of Israel in April and October of 2024. They derided Iran’s missiles as “crude” despite the fact that the projectiles penetrated Israel’s air defense en masse and struck sensitive targets. That Iran did not execute a wide-ranging, catastrophic assault was wrongly interpreted as a lack of ability instead of as a sign of restraint. Iran responded to Israel’s provocations by messaging that it did not want a wider war and, critically, by previewing some of its high-end offensive capabilities. Regarding Israel, one should also consider the Houthi’s ability to send missiles to Tel Aviv even in the presence of the US’s premier air defense systems, known as THAAD.

Forces and Sustainment

It is common in the West, particularly among NATO member nations, to point to charts that display collective strengths in men and materiel. These graphics depict total personnel, including reservists, and tallies of a range of vehicles, artillery pieces, aircraft, and other tools of war. Such things display nicely on a PowerPoint slide. The assumption here is that synergy would occur in a conflict, that together these disparate factors would form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. While the thirty-thousand-foot view can be instructive in some instances, this is not one of them.

Individually, most Western militaries possess combat power similar to or only marginally greater than that of gendarmeries (militarized police forces capable of dealing with extensive, internal civil disturbances). As such, their suitability for foreign deployment is limited to peacekeeping operations and the provision of humanitarian aid—and, even then, only under conditions in which the warring parties are sufficiently weak or disinclined to engage them in combat. The ability of such militaries to defend their own countries from foreign threats faces similar limitations. Even the once-mighty British Army could field, at most, three brigades.

To be clear, a handful of Western militaries are larger and more capable than their anemic brothers, though none possesses its former mass. What then of their collective ability, the large and the small? Such a thing is difficult to establish, much less to maintain, without frequent, large-scale exercises in which participants stress-test every step of the “road to war” and do so as a collective. This would include: the mobilization, training, and equipping of reservists; the deployment of forces from garrisons to staging areas to front lines; fire and maneuver across wide geographic areas; and many other things. This last happened during Exercise Campaign Reforger (Return of Forces to Germany) in 1993. NATO has since opted for small, infrequent exercises, often involving only command elements or limited operational forces. Even then, the exercises revealed further deficiencies. Yes, these countries have since gained many years of experience in peacekeeping in the Balkans and in low-intensity combat in Afghanistan, but such experiences occurred under ideal conditions, most notably air superiority and uncontested supply lines.

A far more pressing problem is the current state of defense industrial production throughout the West. Though some of us have made this point for years, reality has finally begun to make its way into the mainstream discourse beyond the confines of the defense and foreign policy commentariat. In December 2024, The Atlantic published an article titled, “The Crumbling Foundation of America’s Military.”2 The piece noted, correctly, that the US is incapable of supplying Ukraine with sufficient weapons and ammunition to sustain high-intensity combat against Russia. This would be true even if Ukraine had the necessary manpower (it does not). It went on to question, again correctly, whether the US could manufacture enough materiel to fight a high-intensity war of its own. The US could not do this at present or at any point in the immediate years to come, and its allies are in an even more perilous position.

Like with the charts that show aggregate strengths in Western manpower, vehicles, etc., many derive the wrong conclusions from total Western economic might. Think of this as “collective delusion over collective GDP.” The years of fighting in Ukraine have revealed shortfalls in both production and stockpiles throughout the West. Yet, many persist in the belief that the sum of Western economic power means victory against Russia—whether in the proxy war in Ukraine or a potential direct war with NATO—is assured. “Russia is an economic dwarf!,” they shout.

GDP is but one measure of economic mass, and often a misleading one. For instance, except in extreme comparisons between the richest and poorest nations, GDP says little about the economic wellbeing and day-to-day quality of life of a regular person. It says even less about a country’s capacity to make war. Again, what matters in combat is the force that can be brought to bear and at the specific time and place it is needed. A similar logic applies to the production and distribution of armaments. In Western nations, GDP consists largely of things like professional services, real estate, and non-military government spending. In other words, collective GDP cannot be loaded into a howitzer and fired at the enemy.

The relationship between GDP and military power exists only to the extent a nation can turn wealth into weapons. The height of America’s ability to do this was during World War II, a conflict from which incorrectly-derived lessons continue to plague us. The US turned Detroit into a massive armaments factory, and did much the same throughout the rest of the country. Not only did the US have the factories at the time to do this, it also had the know-how. With the loss of domestic manufacturing came the disappearance of many of its necessary skill-sets. Then there are the supply-chain realities, which are just as stark. Those who claim the US could fight a war against China need to explain how the country could produce sufficient weapons and ammunition while also relying on its enemy for so many of the necessary material inputs. Then, of course, there is the question of how to pay for all of this.

Reckoning with Reality

A common criticism of arguments such as mine is the supposed implication that the West’s adversaries are somehow omnipotent or invincible. This is a misunderstanding at best and a strawman at worst. Again, one must consider the intended purpose of a military and its associated design. The US’s post-World War II military was sufficient to contest Soviet influence. The post-Cold War era enabled the growth of the “rules-based international order,” particularly as former foes struggled through the stages of domestic strife and economic reorientation. But the game has changed.

In more recent years, the US’s most powerful competitors built formidable national defenses capable of contesting Western power projection. These nations correctly identified and adapted to the asymmetries between their own forces and those of the hegemon. They did not dismantle and outsource the industrial machinery necessary to sustain the defense of their respective homelands. Thus, their rise occurred in tandem with imperial decline. But throughout the West, so strong was the perception of perpetual US military primacy that America’s allies willingly accepted their own decades-long slide into military impotence.

The current balance of military power between the US and its adversaries reveals a symbiosis. The US is incapable of projecting power sufficient to subjugate its adversaries, but these adversaries are even less capable of projecting power against the US homeland—at least for n

This piece belongs to the thematic series, “Flipping the Board.”

(1) https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-war-scale-out-of-proportion-with-nato-planning-cavoli-2023-2

(2) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/weapons-production-munitions-shortfall-ukraine-democracy/680867/

January 15, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

What will a “European Armenia” bring?

By Erkin Oncan | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 14, 2025

The Armenian government has approved a draft law to initiate the country’s accession process to the European Union (EU). This proposal will be discussed in parliament before being put to a referendum.

European Parliament rapporteur Miriam Lexmann celebrated this development, stating, “I wholeheartedly welcome the Armenian government’s decision to begin the EU accession process.”

However, the Russian side has reacted negatively to this decision. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declared that Armenia cannot simultaneously be a member of both the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk also commented, “We interpret this as the beginning of Armenia’s withdrawal from the Eurasian Economic Union. The Russian Federation will shape its economic policy toward Armenia accordingly,” comparing EU membership to “purchasing a ticket for the Titanic.”

Armenia’s Journey Towards Europe

Armenia and the EU have a long history of interaction.

In 1996, Armenia signed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, and in 2001 it became a member of the Council of Europe. Moreover, Armenia has benefited from the TACIS program, a European Commission initiative that provided technical assistance to former Soviet states to adapt to market-oriented economic systems.

In 2004, Armenia strengthened its ties with the EU under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), joined the Eastern Partnership initiative in 2009, and, despite joining the Eurasian Economic Union in 2013, approved the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the EU in 2017. In 2018, the Velvet Revolution brought Nikol Pashinyan to power, accelerating democratic reforms.

Armenia has now become the seventh former Soviet country to initiate European integration. This political shift mirrors the tug-of-war between the EU and EAEU, as well as NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

Can Armenia Join the EU?

Although Armenia is not geographically part of Europe, like Georgia, it strives to align itself with “European values and cooperation processes.” From a European perspective, Armenia’s significance stems not from its adherence to these values but from its geographic proximity to Russia and Iran.

EU membership is a challenging and lengthy process—a path that only three former Soviet states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) have successfully completed. Other countries like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia have long been politically shaped by their EU aspirations, experiencing intense internal conflicts between pro-Russian and pro-EU factions, often tied to so-called “color revolutions.” These parallels suggest that Armenia’s membership process could also stretch over many years. Furthermore, Armenia’s economic ties with Russia present significant challenges.

According to data from the Armenian Statistical Committee covering January-April 2024, trade between Armenia and Russia increased 3.1 times, while trade with EU countries decreased by 24.3%. During this period, Armenia’s trade volume with Russia reached $6.3 billion, whereas its trade volume with the EU was $695.5 million—making trade with Russia nearly nine times greater than that with the EU. Military ties between Armenia and Russia also remain a major topic of public debate.

For Armenia to fully “Europeanize,” it must entirely overhaul its economic system. However, the insistence of both the EU and Pashinyan’s administration on this path could lead to a deep economic crisis and political instability. This might result in Armenia entering the EU as a weakened state, perceived as a burden by EU leadership.

The EU’s primary objective appears to be not Armenia’s full membership but the continuation of the accession process, using it to advance strategic interests. A “European” Armenia would serve as a geopolitical defeat for Russia.

Broader Implications

Discussions around Armenia’s regional and international dynamics are often shaped in Turkey by nationalist narratives sown by imperialist forces, perpetuating historical prejudices that undermine solidarity among neighboring peoples. However, developments in Armenia carry significant clues about the future of the broader region.

Erkin Öncan, Turkish journalist focusing on war zones and social movements around the world.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/erknoncn Telegram: https://t.me/erknoncn

January 14, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Will Trump Deliver Peace?

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:

January 12, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran plans $120bn worth of investment in petroleum projects

Press TV – January 11, 2025

Iran is planning to invest up to $120 billion in petroleum projects as the country seeks to increase its oil and gas production to respond to a rising demand for energy.

Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said on Saturday that Iran will invest some $50 billion to increase its oil production to 4.6 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2028, from a current output of 3.3 million bpd.

Paknejad said that Iran’s natural gas production should also increase from 1 billion cubic meters (bcm) per day to 1.35 bcm per day in the next four years, adding that the country will need to invest more than $70 billion to hit the target.

He said investment in gas fields will also cover projects to boost pressure at South Pars, the world’s largest gas field which straddles the maritime border between Iran and Qatar in the Persian Gulf.

The minister said seven pressure-boosting projects with a total investment of $18 billion will be executed in South Pars to help stabilize the output from the giant reserve.

Paknejad said Iran also seeks to increase its refining capacity by 0.5 million bpd per day until 2028 while trying to raise the output capacity of its petrochemical sector.

He said the development projects will be funded partly through finances provided by Iran’s sovereign wealth fund and partly through investment from foreign companies.

Iran’s plans to expand its petroleum sector come as the country is still subject to an extensive regime of US sanctions that bans the provision of technology and investment from abroad.

Since the sanctions were imposed in 2018, the Iranian Oil Ministry has mostly relied on domestic resources to develop the oil and gas fields in the country.

January 11, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Multipolar world’s tech edge grows, leaves political West trailing behind

By Drago Bosnic – January 10, 2025

The end of last year saw some pretty incredible breakthroughs in military technologies, the most impressive among which is the first “Oreshnik” strike, demonstrating Russia’s growing dominance in hypersonic weapons. Apart from the “Oreshnik”, Moscow also started the large-scale deployment of its unrivaled S-500 SAM/ABM (surface-to-air missile/anti-ballistic missile) systems that can track and down all sorts of targets (including hypersonic). Multiple sources are also reporting that the Eurasian giant is speeding up its “sixth generation” program, with both the Sukhoi and MiG developing their own designs. In the meantime, existing and proven Russian fighter jets, such as the Su-30 (multirole), Su-34 (strike fighter), Su-35S (air superiority) and Su-57S (next-generation multirole) are not only conducting regular missions, but in the case of the Su-35 are also helping countries like Iran maintain security amid constant US/NATO threats.

Then we have China, which presented not one, but two working “sixth-generation” jet prototypes, named Chengdu J-36 and Shenyang J-50 by the media, respectively. The two aircraft show what can only be described as a quantum leap for Beijing, which is now ahead of Washington DC in jet technologies, an unimaginable prospect until just a few years ago. In fact, this was such a shock for the US-led political West that the mainstream propaganda machine is now openly engaging in a rather pathetic denial, claiming that the Pentagon supposedly “flew its own prototype years ago”, something for which there’s zero evidence. However, this development sent Lockheed Martin’s stocks crashing as concerns for the troubled F-35’s future in the USAF started emerging. However, to make matters worse for Washington DC, there are also reliable reports that China also flew the H-20, its first stealthy strategic bomber.

In addition to this aircraft, which the Pentagon expects to enter service in the next five years, Beijing also inducted a number of other weapon systems, including the KJ-3000 AEW&C (airborne early warning and control) aircraft and Type 076 carrier (named “Sichuan”). What’s more, China is also helping several other countries to strengthen their armed forces in the wake of the US-led aggression against the world. This includes Algeria, which got a license to locally produce the Chinese Type 056 corvettes, as well as Serbia, whose HQ-22 SAM systems acquired from Beijing just became fully operational. Thus, just like in the case of Russian Su-35 fighter jets for Iran, these Chinese systems will help others maintain security and sovereignty, which is greatly contributing to global peace by deterring war criminal organizations such as NATO, by far the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel.

To that end, North Korea is also updating its already impressive arsenal, including the “Hwasong-16B” IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missile) armed with an HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle). The weapon was test launched on January 6, demonstrating that Pyongyang is still ahead of the US in hypersonic technologies. Just like in the case of Chinese next-generation jets, the mainstream propaganda machine is also engaging its coping mechanisms with ludicrous claims that the Pentagon will “soon outpace” Russia and China in hypersonics, a laughable (and extremely unlikely) prospect given just how far behind the US is. In the meantime, North Korean Russian-derived ATGM (anti-tank guided missile) systems, specifically the “Bulsae-4”, are obliterating Western weapons in NATO-occupied Ukraine, which is yet another embarrassment and humiliation for the political West which regularly mocks Pyongyang.

India is also upgrading its armed forces with Russian missile technologies, specifically the “BrahMos” supersonic cruise missile which is set to be updated and deployed on a ground-based launcher. The weapon is based on the Russian P-800 “Onyx” supersonic cruise missile, one of the deadliest in its class, as proven by its superb performance during the special military operation (SMO). Inspired by Chinese advances, Delhi is also expected to invest heavily in next-generation aircraft, likely in cooperation with Moscow, while supporting and helping its domestic military industry. This also includes hypersonic technologies, based on both Russian and homegrown designs.

All these developments stand in stark contrast to America’s growing technological ineptitude. It turns out that its much-touted ABM systems aren’t exactly working as marketed.

Namely, military sources report that the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system deployed in Israel failed to intercept Houthi missiles fired from Yemen. In addition, the Pentagon is reconsidering the future of its V-22 “Osprey” tiltrotor aircraft amid numerous crashes and operational faults. However, such failures don’t seem to deter the US and its vassals and satellite states from engaging in threats of more aggression against the world. There are numerous reports that Washington DC is preparing to attack Iran, with both the outgoing Biden and upcoming Trump administrations poised to do so regardless of their supposed differences in foreign policy approach. What’s more, there’s talk of the US annexing not just Canada, but also Greenland and even attacking Panama. What started out as a “joke” turned out to be anything but, once again confirming America’s aggressive nature.

Such developments demonstrate that expecting groundbreaking changes in American foreign policy is overoptimistic, to put it mildly. The outgoing Biden administration is making sure that some of the worst people on the planet, including unrepentant war criminals such as Hilary Clinton and Victoria Nuland still have major influence in US politics even after Trump takes office.

Namely, Clinton was recently awarded the so-called “Presidential Medal of Freedom”, along with the no less infamous George Soros. Individuals like Clinton, Nuland, Soros, etc. are extremely dangerous for sovereigntist nations and the multipolar world as a whole. Their activities, much akin to political (and, in many cases, literal) terrorism, aim to destabilize non-compliant countries that want to break free from the political West’s extremely malignant influence. All this makes the development of adequate defenses all the more important.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

January 10, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran Accuses US of Violating UN Charter Over Nuclear Facilities Strike Discussions

Sputnik – 07.01.2025

TEHRAN – US threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities are a gross violation of international norms, the UN Security Council must hold the US accountable internationally, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baghaei said.

Three days earlier, US media reported, citing three informed sources, that incumbent US President Joe Biden had discussed with his team, in particular with White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, plans to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Biden ultimately made no final decision on the issue. The discussion was not prompted by new intelligence, but was aimed at working out possible scenarios, the publication’s sources noted.

“This issue has been raised repeatedly. From the point of view of international law, threats to use force by any country are a gross violation of international law and the UN Charter. This issue is doubly a violation of international agreements,” Baghaei said.

This US threat is a threat against the country’s peaceful nuclear infrastructure, he stressed.

“The UN Security Council should intervene and hold the United States internationally accountable for these statements,” Baghaei added.

On January 4, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that the Iranian authorities were ready to immediately enter into constructive negotiations with Western countries on their nuclear program if they lead to a new agreement. According to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi, a new round of consultations between Iran and Europe on the nuclear deal will take place on January 13.

January 7, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Cecilia Sala, or the stupidity of the western narrative

Western propaganda made of distortion and manipulation has a new face of the month: Cecilia Sala

By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 4, 2025

Facts and… misdeeds

It is a familiar and perfectly functioning pattern that has been adopted in the case of Cecilia Sala, a mainstream Italian journalist, who arrived in Iran on 13 December on a journalistic visa and was arrested on the 19th ‘for violating the law of the Islamic Republic of Iran’. The event occurred a few days after the arrest in Italy, at Milan’s Malpensa Airport, of Iranian engineer Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi.

So far, nothing strange. These things happen for many reasons. People are arrested every day and this is not news.

The oddities, however, begin when you explore the background.

Let’s start with Abedini: an engineer specialising in drone design, who was on a business trip. He is arrested not for breaking any laws, but because… the United States of America asked for it. The master orders, the servant executes. Now the US has asked for his extradition and one can guess that they have no intention of treating Mr Abedini politely. The charge, of course, is international terrorism.

As far as Cecilia Sala is concerned, things are even more captivating. Her CV leaves little doubt. Born in 1995, she studied at Bocconi but did not graduate. She started working for Vice Italia, then went on to work for other magazines all from the same publisher and then appeared on television. The interesting thing is that he always passed under the aegis of Rupert Murdoch, one of the ‘oligarchs’ of British intelligence and politics, who in Italy invested a lot of money first in football and then in telecommunications, but also the man who owns Fox, News Corp and Disney. One of the richest men in the world, whose first interest is obviously to do independent and truthful journalism, right?

Curious that his numerous employees, especially journalists, have constant collaborations with the intelligence agencies of the USA, the UK and Israel, with offices appearing as veritable ‘schools’ of infowarfare and human intelligence; curious how there have already been convictions in this regard, as there were for the Sunday Times in the late 1970s and in 2011 with the News of the World ; equally curious that a good slice of mainstream information is in the hands of this man and his empire. And even more curious is that we should think of Cecilia Sala as a ‘clean’ person working for the universal good.

Since we are in the realm of fantasy, let’s try an imaginative suggestion: let’s think for a moment of Cecilia Sala as an advisor or intelligence agent, perhaps under a British or American flag, who goes to Iran, a country notoriously hostile to the two empires mentioned above, and is arrested. If we see it for just one minute like this, we immediately realise that there is nothing strange about it. If Abedini can be considered a ‘terrorist’ and arrested just because he deals with drones, why should we not be able to consider Sala a ‘spy’ who goes on a mission in a foreign land to do something she has been asked to do?

Let’s add another biographical detail: Cecilia Sala’s father was an executive at Monte dei Paschi di Siena and is Senior Advisor for Italy at J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and has been a member of the Greenmantle Think Tank since 2017. He is one of the Founding Members of the Canova Club in Milan. He is currently CEO of Advisor S.R.L. JP Morgan Chase & Co.

What a curious coincidence… because it is a coincidence, isn’t it?

A few blots on the Curriculum

It must be pointed out that Cecilia Sala was a well-known anti-Russian, anti-Chinese, anti-Palestinian and anti-Iranian propagandist, coincidentally a journalist for Il Foglio, in contact with the Zionist sectors of the anti-Iranian opposition, and despite this she was freely allowed to enter Iranian soil by the government in Tehran. This is not the case, for example, for Russian journalists.

After Abdeini’s anomalous arrest, since Ms Sala had all the elements to be detained by the Iranian justice system, culturally collaborating with part of that opposition that has carried out terrorist attacks on Iranian soil, even deadly ones, it did not follow that the government in Tehran, not being the monster depicted today by the western and Italian media, but simply a sovereign nation that does not accept interference, proceeded to detain the goliardic journalist.

We reiterate this for those who had not grasped the ‘subtle’ difference: Abedini’s arrest at Malpensa is entirely arbitrary, while Sala’s is justified under the laws in force in the Islamic Republic.

The Italian press immediately turned to somersaults worthy of the Olympics to attack Iran, ignoring both the truth of the facts – a subject, the truth, that most Western journalists have not been interested in for years – and how certain ordinary diplomatic protocols between hostile countries work.

Diplomatic bodies and intelligence agencies are in constant contact with each other and carry out such activities every day.

A journalist with Cecilia Sala’s CV does not just happen to be arrested. Is that clear?

We know nothing about the circumstances of her arrest. However, those who know a little about the country know that it is unlikely that she was arrested for her work as a reporter on women’s movements or for her opinions, which may transpire from her writings, which were certainly scrutinised by those who granted her the visa. Under normal conditions, i.e. not in this geopolitical context that has taken shape in the last year, and not with Iran as a ‘live’ and perhaps imminent target of the US, UK and Israeli administrations, we could have assumed a classic detention due to active participation in political demonstrations or more likely any photos at military, government or nuclear installations; however, it is very likely that Cecilia Sala knew these things very well and did not do this kind of journalism. Perhaps there is much more behind it.

The point is that this ‘more’ is not the subject of journalistic comment. The vast majority of western journalists are talking out of their ass about things they do not know.

The US ordered the capture in Italy of an Iranian engineer who was travelling, Iran arrested a journalist with a respectable resume to find a job with MI6 and the CIA because she violated the laws of the Republic. Incidentally, in America one can be arrested on the free initiative of a policeman, who can also shoot at a distance of 21 paces on his own free initiative. This, in Iran, is illegal. But the Western press does not know this and writes nonsense anyway.

The newspapers have spoken of the shadow of an Iranian ‘blackmail’, but if we are to accept it as such, we must remember two things: it is also American blackmail to countries called upon to arrest Iranian civilians on the basis of embarrassing and specious US laws, according to imposed sanctions that magically take effect even in vassal states; how it got to this point, after 20 years of assassinations of Iranian scientists and physicists, that is, to the point where Iran, under threat of bombing by Israel, uses even with a country considered a ‘friend’ like Italy the methods of diplomatic soft power to get a break in the interminable Western attack.

The point is that Iran is not a country born yesterday, nor is it just any old colony that can be exploited at will. Iranians still enjoy two things that are bitterly lacking in the West: sovereignty and dignity.

From slogan to slogan

In the sum of the parts, Cecilia Sala’s case is a great gimmick for anti-Iranian propaganda and will be used for a long time to come.

All this, of course, with the usual Western hypocrisy.

It is full of journalists who on social networks (sick!) are indignant about the arrest and write posts about the importance of free journalism, but not one of them has been tearing their hair out over all the crimes committed against freedom of the press and information in the West or in Israel, for example, with more than 200 journalists killed in Palestine in one year, even with targeted killings

Juicy news for the western press: much worse has come into Iran, Il Foglio fortunately counts for nothing in the world, and those who have come in have written much worse things than Cecilia Sala who, let’s be honest, is not worth a lira as a journalist (this is proven by her own articles and posts, many of which will remain in the annals of propaganda vileness).

In Iran, and elsewhere, as a foreigner they stop you or arrest you if they suspect you are a spy, and this is a fact we should learn to understand and keep in mind, because at home these terms and definitions or accusations belong only to the cinematic dimension but in certain quadrants of the world they are anchored in tangible reality.

In the past few days I read a brilliant commentary on the matter, which I quote from memory: ‘We have agreed to participate in the American sanctions festival – which began well before last year – and to consider as a ‘global threat’ even those who are not, or who are at worst for Israel, and not for us; we have agreed to harass, detain, interdict Iranian citizens who until proven otherwise are civilians and not guilty of any crime that has not been configured ad hoc in the American ‘acts’; we have even agreed at certain times to interrupt supplies of stocks of goods that have already been paid for, just as the USA has reserved the right to withhold tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian state property for decades; we have decided to join a belligerent and hostile coalition, without yet having understood what role to play, other than that of paper-pusher. We should, however, be careful in the future about which cards we pass on to the next one’.

Once again, from slogan to slogan, the truth that journalism is supposed to investigate and tell will be of no interest to anyone. On the other hand, no one is interested in reporting on what is happening in Gaza, but there has never been a shortage of time to post some new hashtag to win the war against Russia, China, Iran and any other enemy, evidently terrified by the use of social network posts with a few well-functioning keywords for psy ops marketing.

Once again, we will have to settle for the words of Seneca: ‘Magis veritas elucet quo sepius ad manum venit’.

January 5, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Neocon Sanctions Architect Beats Drums of War With Iran Amid Trump’s Looming Return

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 02.01.2025

Donald Trump will be back in the White House in less than three weeks. While he’s expressed opposition to regime change in Iran, and pride in being the first president in decades not to start any new wars during his first term, his adamant support for Israel, and the tapping of hawks for his new administration have sparked fears of US aggression.

The United States “should give diplomacy a final shot – while preparing to use military force” against Iran to destroy its nuclear program, prominent Iran sanctions cheerleader and former State Department deputy special envoy Richard Nephew has suggested.

In a new piece for Foreign Affairs magazine, Nephew argues that while there are plenty of “good reasons not to bomb Iran,” like engulfing the Middle East in even greater turmoil and “undermin[ing] US credibility if the attacks don’t succeed,” the “case against military action is not so neat,” given Washington’s paranoia about ‘Iranian nuclear weapons’, and the limited prospects for sanctioning Tehran into submission given its newfound economic and security partnerships with BRICS allies.

Unless the Trump administration is “prepared to live in the world that Iranian nuclear weapons would create, it may have little choice but to attack Iran – and soon,” Nephew claims, even while admitting that “Iranian nuclear weapons would not present a near-term existential threat” to the US as much as it would its regional “partners” (i.e. Israel).

Nephew isn’t the first to float an attack on Iran following Trump’s reelection in November, with DC Beltway media running opinion pieces like “Israel should strike Iran now, paving way for Trump 2.0,” and sources telling the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s transition team is weighing an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. In November, former CIA chief Leon Panetta warned that Trump could give Israel a “blank check” on Iran and ultimately spark a war between the regional powers.

The brainstorming about a direct attack on Iran comes in the wake of the abject failure of the US’s 40+ year strategy of crushing the Islamic Republic through sanctions, saber-rattling and attempts at regime change, which have pushed the country to strive for economic and military self-sufficiency, and to expand its strategic footprint regionally.

Will Trump Attack Iran?

Trump is a well-known Iran hawk, pulling the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal in 2018 at Israel’s behest, and expressing full-throated support for Tel Aviv amid its conflict with the Iran-led Axis of Resistance over the past 15 months. He’s also staffed his new administration with a number of avowedly pro-Israel Iran hawks, including Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz.

At the same time, Trump’s past frustrations with Benjamin Netanyahu, who rushed to congratulate Joe Biden after the highly contentious 2020 election, combined with resistance to advice from aides to escalate militarily against Iran, and support for initiatives to scale back the US military footprint in the Middle East during his first term, make the future of US policy vis-a-vis Iran and the Middle East region uncertain.

January 2, 2025 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US judge awards pro-regime change journo Shane Bauer $113 million seized from Iran

By Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal · The Grayzone · January 1, 2025

UPDATE: U.S. District Senior Judge Richard J. Leon has awarded pro-regime change journalist Shane Bauer a whopping $113 million in money seized from Iran by the US sanctions regime.

Together with his ex-wife, Sarah Shourd, and their friend, Joshua Fattal, Bauer sued the Iranian government for millions in damages they claim to have incurred during their two year-long imprisonment in Tehran. The three Americans were arrested by Iranian soldiers near the border of the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2009. At the time, Bauer was studying in Damascus, Syria on a US Department of Defense-sponsored fellowship. Judge Leon ruled that “Iran is liable for false imprisonment,” and “for intentional infliction of severe emotional distress as to all plaintiffs.”

Leon has awarded Bauer, Fattal, Shourd and their families more than $500 million in seized Iranian state funds which could have been used to purchase medicine, sanitation equipment and food for citizens of the heavily sanctioned nation. As The Grayzone reported below, “Bauer and his ex-wife, Shourd, posed as staunch opponents of US sanctions against Iran and other nations. In 2016, for example, Bauer characterized Hillary Clinton’s call for Iran sanctions as ‘totally irresponsible.’ Shourd, for her part, condemned sanctions against Iran for ‘hitting the poorest of Iranians the hardest.’”

Bauer is currently reporting from Damascus, where the former Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has toppled the Syrian government and assumed power – a development he appeared to support. He and his fellow plaintiffs have not commented on the judgment they received against Iran.

Judge Leon’s full decision can be viewed here.

Below, in their initial August 30, 2022 report on Bauer’s lawsuit against Iran, Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal detail his history of agitation for Western-sponsored regime change operations across the globe, and his record of sordid attacks on The Grayzone, including his promotion of a failed frivolous lawsuit that aimed to destroy this publication.

Over a decade since he rose to prominence as a protagonist in an international drama of espionage and imprisonment, American journalist Shane Bauer and his family filed suit against Iran’s government in a Washington DC-based US District Court, seeking compensation for $10 million in damages resulting from his two year detention in Tehran.

Bauer’s ex-wife Sarah Shourd and their friend, Joshua Fattal, filed simultaneous lawsuits, seeking $10,000 and $10 million respectively.

The trio’s cases were filed in a Washington DC federal court with Judge Richard J. Leon – the same justice who ordered the Iranian government to pay the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian $180 million in damages for his 18-month detention in the country.

In 2011, an Iranian court sentenced Bauer and Fattal to a total of eight years in prison each after they were convicted of illegally crossing the country’s border and spying for the United States. The two each served a total of two years, while Shourd was granted a compassionate release from Iranian prison after 13 months of detention.

Before his imprisonment, Bauer trekked throughout Africa and the Middle East while working as an English teacher and roaming reporter, racking up an impressive collection of passport stamps. Following his 2011 release, he established himself as a journalist specializing in undercover investigations, working a stint as a senior reporter for Mother Jones magazine in between various freelance gigs.

Bauer simultaneously emerged as a prolific apologist for US-backed regime change operations from Syria to Nicaragua, while justifying the US assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. A relentless antagonist of anti-interventionist public figures, he has pushed for big tech platforms to censor media personalities that challenged Washington’s regime change agenda.

Bauer has even promoted a failed legal action against The Grayzone by a fellow journalist who had received a large sum of assets seized by the US government from Iran.

In 2018, Bauer’s book of undercover reporting, “American Prison,” which saw him take a job as a prison guard to gain inside access to a private prison, wound up on former President Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2018.”

By the following year, as Bauer’s journalistic output declined, his attacks on anti-war media figures only escalated. Today, many of his most malicious tweets have been scrubbed, he is no longer employed by Mother Jones, and he says he is “working on a book about Americans in the Syrian war.” If Bauer scores a lucrative payout in US federal court, however, he may never need to worry about a freelance fee again.

And if successful, he and his former cellmates will ultimately be paid out with Iranian government assets seized by the United States through its international sanctions regime. In other words, the trio plans to benefit from looted public funds which Tehran could have otherwise used to purchase medicine, food, or fund social programs for its people.

Studies have found that the “Iranian economy and households are affected enormously” by sanctions targeting the country’s oil exports. In one particularly egregious instance of theft, the US government seized an Iranian oil tanker in 2021 and hauled it to Texas, where it sold the stolen crude for $110 million.

Before launching their lawsuits, Bauer and his ex-wife, Shourd, posed as staunch opponents of US sanctions against Iran and other nations. In 2016, for example, Bauer characterized Hillary Clinton’s call for Iran sanctions as “totally irresponsible.” Shourd, for her part, condemned sanctions against Iran for “hitting the poorest of Iranians the hardest.”

Bauer’s sudden bid for millions of dollars seized from the Iranian people by the US government raises new questions about a character whose journalistic career was shrouded in suspicion.

Long before his arrest in Iran, Bauer’s moves throughout Africa and the Middle East tracked closely with US foreign policy initiatives, and were sponsored by a US Department of Defense fellowship for several years.

To top it off, the lawyer Bauer enlisted to secure millions from Iran’s government counts one of Washington’s most infamous spies among her previous clients.

“the lack of coordination on the part of these hikers… indicates an intent to agitate”

The background to Bauer’s lawsuit originates in a July 2009 expedition he, his then-girlfriend Sarah Shourd, and their friend Joshua Fattal took to the Iranian border, where they were subsequently arrested.

The three Bay Area natives and self-described social justice activists insisted that their incursion into Iran was the result of an honest mistake. They claimed to have crossed the border unknowingly during a hiking trip near the Ahmad Awa waterfall in Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah Province, a region which fell under control of US-backed Kurdish militias following the US invasion of 2003.

According to Bauer’s legal complaint, when Iranian border guards arrested him and his companions, “Shane and Mr. Fattal instead became limp, as they would often do when protesting.”

While in Iranian custody, Bauer’s captors discovered photographs on Shourd’s camera showing they had visited Tel Aviv, Israel. The two said they traveled to Israel to visit an American friend, Tristan Anderson, who had been badly wounded and hospitalized by an Israeli teargas canister during a protest against Israel’s apartheid wall.

During Bauer’s trial, an Iranian judge listed each of the entry stamps on his second passport. They included Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Israel.

Iran’s government was not the only party that rejected the trio’s excuses for their presence on the border. An Iraqi police officer claimed to the Iranian TV station Al-Alam the hikers were “working with the CIA.”

Meanwhile, a classified 2010 US military report stated that “the lack of coordination on the part of these hikers, particularly after being forewarned [of their proximity to the Iranian border], indicates an intent to agitate and create publicity regarding international policies on Iran.”

While Shourd denounced the US military assessment as “ridiculous,” her and her friends’ visit to the Iranian border came at a precarious time for the country’s government.

Indeed, their arrest occurred just weeks after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a firebrand personality considered hostile to the West, secured reelection by a nearly 30 percent margin. The result sparked massive demonstrations in Tehran and gave way to the so-called “Green Movement,” a sustained protest campaign against Ahmadinejad’s mandate that eventually aided the 2014 electoral victory of Iran’s reformist bloc.

Throughout the summer of 2009, Western media granted the “Green Movement” wall to wall coverage, crediting it with drawing the largest protest crowds since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. In her memoir of captivity, Shourd recounted that during a trip to Sweden, “Stockholm’s sizable expatriate Iranian community protested in solidarity with the uprising in their home country.”

“My brother, Alex, and I documented the anti-Iran rally in Sweden,” she recalled.

Shourd later wrote that while imprisoned in Iran, the Green Movement “made me want to participate in undermining the regime that was causing me and my family so much pain.”

When the story of “Three American Hikers Held Hostage in Iran” emerged in July 2009, their tale was presented as further proof of the embattled government in Tehran’s anti-American sentiment and lack of regard for human rights. Shourd later expressed gratitude to the Iranian government “for using us to further deepen your own crisis of legitimacy around the world and with your own people.”

Their detention also corresponded with the launch of President Barack Obama’s economic assault on Tehran, a strategy which saw Washington levy hefty financial sanctions against Iran’s government in a bid to force it to negotiate limits on its domestic nuclear program.

Bauer’s lawyer represented top US spy jailed in Cuba

Bauer’s lawsuit accused the Iranian government of a slew of crimes against both himself and his family. Notably, it claims Bauer was subjected to torture, assault, and battery while in Iranian custody.

Bauer’s 2014 memoir, “A Sliver of Light,” which he co-authored with Shroud and Fattal, offers a strikingly different narrative, however. In the book, Bauer recalled taunting a prison guard to assault him and acknowledged that Iranian authorities were reluctant to do so.

“If he can’t frighten me, all he can do is hit me, and if he does that, he will be hurting himself,” Bauer explained.

“We are hostages, and hostages are currency, and currency is not to be damaged. Making him beat me is my only way to fight back,” he continued, after saying he repeatedly screamed at the guard: “Hit me!”

While Bauer’s lawsuit appeared to contradict the account offered in his memoir, it is far from an amateurish legal complaint. He and his family are represented by Emily P. Grim, a partner at the elite Gilbert, LLP law firm, which is located just blocks from the US Capitol.

Grim’s biography on Gilbert’s website boasts: “Her clients include Alan Gross, an American jailed in Cuba from 2009 to 2014 for his work on a U.S. Government project to increase Internet access in Cuba’s Jewish community, and Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine imprisoned in Iran from 2011 to 2016 on false charges of espionage.”

Before he became Grim’s most famous client, Alan Gross was arrested by Cuban security officers in 2009. At the time, Gross was working for the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, a soft power arm of American foreign policy that has overseen countless destabilization plots around the globe. The USAID program that sponsored Gross’ work in Cuba was funded through the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, a US law that explicitly called for regime change in Cuba.

When Cuban authorities apprehended Gross during his fifth trip to the country, they discovered his phone was linked to a SIM card that was distributed exclusively by the Pentagon and the CIA. The USAID employee had previously smuggled large amounts of illicit technology into Cuba, apparently as part of an effort to establish a network of covert internet access points throughout the country.

Amir Hekmati is the second-most notable client of Bauer’s lawyer, Emily Grim. A former marine, Hekmati helped develop a translation system financed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA. Iran jailed Hekmati and sentenced him to death after convicting him on espionage charges. Following the diplomatic breakthrough of the Iran-US nuclear deal, he was released in 2016 as part of a prisoner swap.

Though Hekmati was initially rewarded a $20 million payout of seized Iranian assets, the Department of Justice eventually cut him off when the FBI became suspicious that the American had traveled to Iran to sell classified information about US operations in Afghanistan to the government, and not to visit his grandmother as he claimed.

Despite angry protestations, Grim’s firm has been unsuccessful in persuading the courts to complete her client’s payout.

Gilbert LLP has not responded to multiple emailed requests from The Grayzone regarding Bauer’s lawsuit. Bauer and Shourd have also ignored requests for comment delivered by Twitter and email.

Bauer sponsored by Pentagon grant that mandates “contributing to the national security of the United States”

Shane Bauer has lashed out at anyone who has accused him of having worked with the US government. However, his memoir raised more questions about his relationship with Washington than it has answered.

In one particularly revealing section, Bauer recalled an interrogation he experienced at the hands of an English-speaking Iranian he nicknamed “Weasel.”

“In our other sessions, you listed twenty-four countries that you have been to. Who funded those trips?” Weasel asked Bauer, who was 29 at the time.

“I know what he is getting at,” Bauer recalled, “and it is a legitimate question. If I can’t account for my funds, how can I prove that I am not being funded by the CIA? The problem is, I don’t think my honest answer is that believable.”

Bauer ultimately told Weasel that he saved money while “working as a welder” until he was 19 before traveling “through Europe and the Middle East.”

“Does this asshole believe a word I’m saying?” Bauer recalled wondering.

The line of questioning proceeded with Weasel asking whether the US government paid for any of Bauer’s trips.

“Shit! He knows about the grant…” wrote Bauer. ‘No,’ I say.”

Bauer was referring to the Boren Award, a Department of Defense sponsored grant that covered his Arabic studies in Yemen and Syria. When “Weasel” asked who funded the program, Bauer once again admitted to lying, telling him it was the State Department.

From Bauer’s co-authored account of captivity in Iran, “Sliver of Light”

Boren fellowship recipients are required to pay back their award through governmental service by “contributing to the national security of the United States in the Department of Defense, any element of the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, or the Department of State.”

From the Boren Awards website

In less common instances, Boren recipients are allowed to fulfill their obligations to the US government in other departments. However, the overwhelming majority of grantees do so with the aforementioned agencies. Bauer never specified whether or not he fulfilled his obligation to the fellowship – or how he did it. He did claim, however, that the professor who encouraged him to apply for the grant stated none of their students actually went into government.

Yet when journalist David Ravicher inquired with a Boren representative about the program, he was informed “that 98 percent of its recipients fulfill this requirement and the rest receive deferments. Otherwise, the Treasury Department hunts them down.”

Before stepping into Iran, Bauer winds strange trail through the region

Shane Bauer entered journalism while enrolled at the University of California-Berkeley’s Peace and Conflict Studies program, which he graduated in 2007. It was at UC-Berkley where he met Shourd.

Bauer’s first dabbled in undercover journalism while in Yemen in 2005. At the time, the Houthi movement had just launched its insurgency against the Yemeni government. The civil conflict eventually triggered a brutal and ongoing military intervention by the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to crush the Houthi advance.

According to the UC-Berkeley Alumni Association’s newsletter, Bauer was employed in Yemen by “a pro-government, English-language paper.” While the Alumni Association did not say which paper that was, Bauer earned a byline in 2005 from the Yemen Observer, a paper founded by the longtime press secretary to then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Bauer eventually “decided to sneak into a city occupied by Houthi rebels which no Western journalist had visited,” the newsletter wrote. While disguised in local garb, Bauer and a British pal were detained by local authorities in the city of Saada and released a day later.

Bauer also spent two summers in the Darfur region of Sudan while enrolled at UC-Berkeley. At the time, between 2006-07, Darfur-based rebel groups from the Sudanese Liberation Army, or SLA, were facing international pressure to enact a peace deal with Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who was labeled a state sponsor of terror by the US.

In 2007, Bauer managed to score an interview with the vice intelligence director for SLA General Secretary Minni Minnawi, who had signed the deal. According to the Institute for International and Strategic Relations, a French think tank, Minnawi had been backed by the CIA as the only rebel faction leader to ink the agreement with Khartoum. He was later flown to Washington to meet with President George W. Bush. Today, he serves as the governor of Darfur while his forces fight in Libya under the command of Khalifa Haftar, another former CIA asset.

SLA General Secretary Minni Arko Minnawi and President George W. Bush

In his memoir of captivity in Iran, Bauer wrote that his interrogator demanded to know how he entered Sudan in 2007. The inquiry caused Bauer to worry that Iran may have been aware of his “history of government funding and my history of illegally crossing borders,” he recalled. Bauer told his interrogator that he “entered [Sudan] as a guest of the Sudanese Liberation Army.”

Not long after his jaunt into Darfur, Bauer arrived in Damascus, Syria with his then-girlfriend, Shourd, for several months. At the time, Washington was cultivating opposition to the government of President Bashar al-Assad through civil society networks around the country.

Bauer and Shourd said they studied Arabic at Damascus University, taught English to Iraqi refugees, and used the country as a base for reporting around the region. (On her personal webpage, Shourd says, “In 2007, I moved to Damascus, Syria…” In an interview with the Pulitzer Center, however, she states, “In 2008, I moved to Damascus, Syria…”)

A confidential November 2008 cable by Maura Connelly, then the Charges D’Affaires for the US Embassy in Damascus, identified English teachers and visiting Fulbright scholars in Syria as important cogs in US “public diplomacy” efforts against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The US embassy’s “English Language Fellow (ELF) for 2008-2009 remains in country and is using her numerous contacts among Syrian English teachers to conduct training in Damascus and country-wide,” Connelly noted.

Bauer and Shourd’s teacher in Damascus, Majid Rafizadeh, happened to have been on a Fulbright scholarship at the time. A Syrian-Iranian academic, Rafidzadeh has since emerged as a fervent supporter of Iranian regime change who has supplied testimony to Congress advancing the interventionist goals of hardline neoconservatives.

Bauer later reflected “how, back in 2009, my Syrian friends would fantasize about being rid of the dictator and his secret police, but no one could have imagined that the Arab Spring would come two years later.”

Bauer escalates online attacks, enters Syria under US occupation

Years after the so-called Arab Spring swept through the region like a hurricane, leaving unimaginable ruin in its wake, Bauer was still pumping out online attacks against prominent critics of US meddling.

By 2019, his attacks on opponents of the US-backed dirty war on Syria had grown so unhinged, his detractors began to taunt him with the refrain: “Take a hike.”

Bauer also took aim at former US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for daring to criticize the US military occupation of northeastern Syria, insisting it was a noble anti-terrorist mission. In fact, Dana Stroul, a senior Biden Department of Defense official, has openly stated that the US military “owns” the “resource rich” region of Syria in order to exploit its wealth and starve Damascus into capitulating to the West’s agenda.

At the time, Bauer had recently returned from a visit to the US-occupied northeastern region of Syria for a series of field reports lamenting Washington’s refusal to remove Assad by force. Published in the May/June 2019 issue of Mother Jones, the series opened with a quote by a Kurdish border guard practically begging the US to plunder Syria’s natural wealth: “We have oil, so much oil. Let them stay and take the oil.”

Careful readers may be wondering whether Bauer entered the country legally or not. In fact, Syria’s government denied Bauer’s visa, prompting him to “sneak in” through the border controlled by the US military and its Kurdish allies.

Since Bauer’s reports from US-occupied Syria in 2019, he has produced only one article: a profile of a rogue local US police force for The New Yorker. That was nearly two years ago.

With no known sources of income apart from his two published books and the one apparently on the way, Bauer turned to the US government and the funds it seized from the Iranian people for a massive payday.

View the initial legal complaint, Shane Bauer v. the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, here.

January 2, 2025 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US imposes sanctions on IRGC entity over alleged election interference

Press TV – December 31, 2024

The United States has announced sanctions on an entity it says is affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) over its alleged interference in the 2024 US presidential elections.

The designation was announced by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday and targeted the IRGC subsidiary, which it identified as the Cognitive Design Production Center (CDPC).

A statement on the Treasury’s website claimed the CDPC had planned influence operations since at least 2023 to incite tensions among the US electorate on behalf of the IRGC.

Iran has repeatedly rejected accusations it has interfered in elections in other countries, including in the US.

Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations issued a statement in late August to reject such allegations.

“Such allegations are unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing,” said the Mission after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other American intelligence agencies claimed that Iran had been involved in the hacking of the campaigns of Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris.

“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the US presidential election,” said the statement.

Iranian authorities say that Washington’s policy of imposing numerous sanctions on the country is solely aimed at forcing the country into accepting political and military concessions.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran expects boom in trade after gaining EAEU’s observer status

Press TV – December 29, 2024

Iran expects a major boom in trade ties with members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) after the country gained observer status in the bloc and just months before the two sides enter into a free trade agreement.

Iran’s trade minister Mohammad Atabak said on Sunday that observer membership in the EAEU will enable Tehran to increase its presence in the bloc’s meetings and exchange more trade and economic information with its members.

Atabak made the remarks after returning from an EAEU Supreme Council meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he signed the agreement for Iran to become an observer member in the bloc on December 26.

During the meeting, EAEU members also gave their final endorsement to a free trade agreement signed between Iran and the bloc last year. The agreement, which has been ratified by parliaments of both Iran and five EAEU members, will officially come into effect in the next two months after Iran’s Guardian Council, which vets legislation passed by parliament, approves the deal.

Atabak said that the free trade deal with the EAEU will eliminate tariffs on nearly 87 percent of Iranian exports to members of the bloc, namely Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia.

He expected that trade between Iran and the EAEU would increase several times with the implementation of the free trade deal.

“The Eurasian region is a very good market for Iranian goods. Iranian technical and engineering companies can also expand their activities in these countries,” he said.

The minister said that Iran is planning to hold a major trade exhibition in Tehran in the coming months to showcase its economic and trade potential to EAEU countries.

December 29, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran FM: China visit marks ‘new chapter’ in strategic ties, heralds ‘golden’ era

Press TV – December 27, 2024

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says his visit to China will open a “new chapter” in strategic cooperation between the two countries and herald a “golden” era for bilateral relations.

Araghchi made the remarks in an article published by China’s official People’s Daily newspaper on Friday, on the day that he was to head to Beijing at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

“The next golden 50 years of Iran-China relations will demonstrate that this visit marks the beginning of a new chapter of strategic cooperation between the two countries,” he wrote.

The top Iranian diplomat also noted that Iran and China have long engaged in “practical cooperation” to promote multilateralism and develop indigenous values, adding that both sides have defended each other’s fundamental interests in international forums.

He also hailed “pragmatic” Iran-China ties, citing close political and defense coordination, exchange of high-level delegations, as well as cooperation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS group of emerging economies, and the Beijing-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023.

“Iran and China share common interests and concerns not only at bilateral and regional levels, but also at the trans-regional and international levels,” he emphasized.

“While firmly believing in the significance of multilateralism and the benefits of joint cooperation towards the prosperity of human society, both countries keep cooperating closely in multilateral mechanisms, including the SCO and the BRICS.”

China is Iran’s largest trade partner. Both states are subject to different levels of illegal sanctions imposed by the US.

The two countries signed the long-term strategic partnership deal in March 2021 to reinforce their long-standing economic and political alliance.

In his article, Araghchi said that West Asia is facing numerous challenges, the core of which is the Palestine issue.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza, caused by the Israeli genocide and supported by some world powers, has been exacerbated by the inaction of the international community and irresponsible behavior of some parties, he noted.

Iran and China believe that an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the delivery of humanitarian aid are now the most important priorities, he said.

The Iranian foreign minister further referred to the recent developments in Syria, urging respect for the country’s unity, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

Tehran, he pointed out, believes that the Syrian people should decide the future of their country without destructive intervention or external imposition.

“We are witnessing unprecedented changes in the world that have simultaneously created complex “opportunities” and “challenges” and put countries at a historical crossroad, where they must choose between confrontation/cooperation, exclusion/inclusion, closeness/openness, chaos/peace,” he said.

“Some states are trying to restrict and force others to choose their desired values ​​and interests by distorting the facts, falsely dividing the world into democratic and non-democratic, and resorting to sanctions, pressure and double standards. However, Iran and China will always stand on the right side of history and by the side of development, prosperity, cooperation, and friendship between the countries of the Global South in a bid to counter unilateralism and bullying.”

December 27, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

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