Top Russian pundit calls for Palestine talks in Moscow
By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | June 6, 2018
In an interview with the influential Russian daily Izvestiya, the well-known “Orientalist” scholar and establishment figure, Vitaly Naumkin, has floated the startling idea that Moscow must play a role in resolving the Palestinian problem. He said, “Moscow has long urged for [organizing] a top-level meeting between Palestinians and Israelis in Russia, on a Moscow platform. It is necessary to turn Moscow into a venue for such talks.”
Naumkin explains that Moscow has unique credentials to kickstart peace talks, since it is a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council with an obligation to pursue the implementation of relevant UN resolutions on Palestine and is also a member of the Middle East Quartet. Alas, US obduracy has stalled the Quartet, while Washington is stonewalling by casting its veto in the Security Council. He lamented that the US is hobnobbing with extreme right-wing elements in Israel who are not even representative of Israeli opinion.
The idea of Russia acting as a mediator in talks on the Palestinian problem dates back to the Soviet era. It’s been a non-starter due to the West’s dogged determination to keep the Soviets out of the strategic Middle East region. But although Cold War has ended, any Russian attempt to highlight the Palestine problem as the core issue in the Middle East will run into strong headwinds from Tel Aviv and Washington.
So, why is Naumkin, a top establishment pundit (who heads the Russian Academy of Science’s hallowed Institute of Oriental Studies), wading into the whirlpool? In a manner of speaking, he is actually using an “objective co-relative” to clarify the real state of play in the Russian-Israeli ties.
In the interview, Naumkin dispels any notion that Russia and Israel are in any “strategic alliance.” He prefers to call it a “normal trust-based relationship,” which enables the two countries to “fight terror together” and maintain excellent economic ties. Period. Quintessentially, as he puts it, the two countries “no longer see each other as enemies.”
Naumkin points out that Israel’s stance on Ukraine is helpful insofar as it refuses to join western sanctions against Russia, and, secondly, Israel is in harmony with Russia as regards attitudes toward World War II and fascism. But does it mean that Moscow and Tel Aviv have identical stance on everything under the sun? For heaven’s sake, no!
What makes Naumkin’s remarks very interesting is not only his subtlety of mind but that he belongs to the great Soviet tradition of scholar-diplomats who are on the frontline of Russian foreign policy. Quite obviously, Naumkin has marked some distance between Russia and Israel at a complicated juncture when the self-serving western narrative would be that the two countries have struck a deal at the highest level of leadership regarding the future of Syria, leaving Iran out in the cold.
Moscow feels that poison is being injected into Russia’s complex equations with Tehran and Damascus. Who else but Naumkin could provide the perfect antidote? The heart of the matter is that Russia has substantially improved relations with most countries in the Middle East in recent years after a decade of limited cooperation through the first decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian diplomacy has shaken off the Soviet-era ideological baggage and is highly pragmatic. Thus, although Saudi Arabia and the UAE significantly contributed to the bleeding of the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and had covertly fostered “jihadism” in Chechnya in the 1990s, the Kremlin today is eager to build relations with them. In fact, Saudi Arabia is Moscow’s strategic partner in the so-called “OPEC+ deal” aimed at stabilizing the world oil market.
Again, Qatar, which has been called the “Club Med for terrorists” and was a latent ally of Chechen rebels, is currently negotiating the purchase of Russia’s advanced S-400 missile defence system.
Moscow’s diplomacy aims to convey the impression to its Middle Eastern interlocutors – be it Israel, Jordan, Iran or Saudi Arabia – that Russia keeps its end of a mutually beneficial bargain. But if anyone adds mystique to the bargain and elevates it to a Faustian deal, Moscow may be left with no option but to bring it down to terra firma.
Plainly put, Naumkin, (who, interestingly enough, also happens to be Russia’s advisor to the UN Special Envoy for Syria Steffan de Mistura) knows perfectly well what Russia is attempting in southern Syria – namely, to eliminate the remaining strongholds of terrorist groups ensconced in that region bordering Jordan and Israel. Indeed, if Israel could persuade Washington to shut down the base in Al-Tanf (which makes no sense from a military point of view anyway), it will help the overall Russian efforts. On the other hand, Israel has no reason to worry, because Iran does not intend to participate in the liberation of the provinces of Daara and Quneitra that straddle the Golan Heights.
Besides, it is no secret that Russia has nothing to do with Iran’s policy of resistance against Israel. But then, to put two and two together to shout and dance in jubilation that Russia is muzzling Iran is completely unnecessary – and can turn out to be counterproductive. Of course, if anyone tries to create confusion, Moscow will clarify. That is what Naumkin has ably done.
Iran to boost production of uranium enrichment material – state atomic agency
RT | June 5, 2018
Iran has begun preliminary work on infrastructure for advanced centrifuges, the country’s Atomic Energy Organization has confirmed. The announcement comes after Tehran said it would revamp its uranium enrichment program.
The infrastructure project is being carried out at a facility in Natanz. Iran also plans to boost production of UF6, a gas needed to produce fuel for nuclear reactors and weapons. But the country’s nuclear activities will remain within the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal, Ali Akbar Salehi, the director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), has stated.
A spokesman for the organization said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which oversees Iran’s compliance with the 2015 JCPOA deal, will be notified of Iran’s activities on Tuesday.
“In a letter that will be handed over to the International Atomic Energy Agency … Iran will announce that the process of increasing the capacity to produce … UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) … will start on Tuesday,” he said.
The spokesman said it was being done on the orders of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said in a speech on Monday that AEOI must promptly prepare to start uranium enrichment “up to a level of 190,000 SWU for the time being within the framework of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).”
SWU or “separative work unit” is a standard measure of the effort needed to separate isotopes of uranium during an enrichment process. 1 SWU equals 1 kg of such effort.
Previously, Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency estimated that its enrichment capacity will reach 190,000 SWUs by the 15th year after the deal comes into effect. For that purpose, Iran planned to gradually increase its number of centrifuges, while staying within the scope of the deal.
Speaking to ISNA, Kamalvandi stressed that, by boosting its nuclear program, Iran does not seek to develop nuclear weapons. “Our goals are not to achieve a nuclear weapon, and it’s against our religious stance.”
“The message of our actions is that we will maintain our capacity for activation at a high level, and if we agreed to limit it now, it is because the parties must adhere to their commitments,” he said.
After the US exit from the deal on May 8, other parties to the landmark agreement, including France, the UK, and Germany vowed to abide by the deal and keep it intact, despite the US withdrawal. However, European nations followed the lead of Washington in demanding that Iran’s missile program and its regional posture must be a part of any future negotiations for a post-deal security framework. Iran has vehemently refused to tie its ballistic missile program, which has not been a part of the original agreement, to the deal and has called on Europe to compensate it for the impact that the reimposed US sanctions will have on its economy. On Monday, Khamenei said Europe should not expect Teheran to stay in the deal if it does nothing to shield it from the brunt of punitive measures coming its way.
“It seems from what they say that some European governments expect the Iranian nation to both put up with sanctions and give up its nuclear activities and continue to observe limitations [on its nuclear program]. I tell those governments that this bad dream will never come true,” he said.
He again ruled out that Iran might agree to curtail its ballistic missile development, saying that it’s wishful thinking by Europe if it believes otherwise.
“I am telling the Europeans, ‘Limiting our missile work is a dream that will never come true,” Khamenei stressed.
One of the major points of Iran’s ultimatum to Europe is that it must offset the damage inflicted on its energy industry by buying Iranian oil and protecting trade with the Islamic Republic by providing banking guarantees.
Last week, a senior adviser to Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, told Iranian media that the continuation of the talks would depend on Europe’s readiness to meet these demands.
“We will preserve Iran’s regional and missile power to kill US with envy,” he added.
Israel intelligence minister proposes ‘military coalition’ against Iran
Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Press TV – June 5, 2018
Israel has proposed that “a military coalition” be formed against Iran in case Tehran pursues “military-grade” uranium enrichment, suggesting that the military force would comprise of the Israeli regime, the US, the Western states and their Arab allies.
Speaking to media on Tuesday, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz claimed that Iran had once been running an “unsupervised” enrichment scheme with the potential of arming the country with nuclear weapons.
The allies will need to issue a statement against the Islamic Republic “if the Iranians don’t surrender now, and try to return,” he said, adding that the statement would be threatening Iranians that “a military coalition will be formed against them.”
“There should be a clear statement by the president of the United States and all of the Western coalition” if Iran returns to enriching “military-grade” uranium, the minister said. “The Arabs and Israel surely would be there too,” he added.
Washington and Tel Aviv, and to a lesser extent their Western and Arab partners, have claimed that Tehran’s nuclear energy program harbors military aspects.
Iran has strictly and in all circumstances denied pursuing any military ambitions through its nuclear work.
The country asserts that under a fatwa (religious decree) issued by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, its long-established policy is to oppose the acquisition, production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons.
In December 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board voted overwhelmingly in favor of a draft resolution, which closed the so-called possible military dimensions (PMD) case in Iran’s nuclear program.
The vote brought an end to a 12-year investigation into the “past and present issues” regarding Iran’s nuclear activities, which the United Nations nuclear watchdog had been probing under pressure from the Israeli regime, the US and their allies.
The vote came after Iran and the P5+1 group of countries signed a nuclear agreement in 2015.
The US, however, withdrew from the accord last month, emboldening Israel in its efforts to try to kill the deal and rally more support for its anti-Iran campaign.
Despite Tel Aviv and Washington’s hostile endeavors, European states have vowed to keep respecting the deal and try their utmost to preserve it.
The Israeli minister’s comments come as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embarked on a tour of Europe to persuade European leaders to follow the US and ditch the Iran deal.
This is while Iran is currently in talks with the other signatories on the future of the deal. Tehran has said it will stay in the JCPOA if the Europeans give guarantees that a deal without the US would still protect the Iranian interests.
Merkel agrees with Netanyahu that Iran is a ‘concern’ for Israel’s security
RT | June 4, 2018
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that she agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran’s activities in the Middle East are a concern, particularly for Israel’s security. She made the statement after a meeting in Berlin.
“We agree that the question of Iran’s regional influence is worrying, especially for Israel’s security,” the chancellor said.
Netanyahu’s European tour this week follows the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal which France, Germany and Britain have said they will continue to respect.
The Israeli leader is also expected to meet French President Emmanuel Macron and possibly British Prime Minister Theresa May to discuss ways to stop what Netanyahu called “Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional expansionism,” Reuters said.
Iran rejects US report on religious freedom as ‘politically motivated’
Press TV – May 31, 2018
Tehran has dismissed the allegations put forth in a recent US report on religious freedom in Iran as “baseless” and “politically motivated,” saying the document offers a “distorted picture” of the realities in Iran and other countries.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, was reacting to the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2017, which was released on May 29.
The Iran section of the report claimed that “non-Shia Muslims and those affiliated with a religion other than Islam” residing in the Islamic Republic faced “societal discrimination and harassment.”
Besides Iran, the report also targets Washington’s other foes, including Russia, China and North Korea.
Qassemi said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran views this report as unrealistic, baseless and biased, which has been compiled merely with the aim of serving certain political goals.”
The US, he added, has “no accurate and realistic evaluation” of the situation inside other countries, stressing that this report, which presents yet another distorted picture of religious freedoms in Iran and levels untrue allegations against the Islamic Republic, is “undoubtedly unacceptable and rejected.”
The official said history shows that the great people of Iran, from all faiths and ethnicities, have peacefully coexisted for millennia.
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, “followers of all religions have performed their religious traditions in various religious centers across Iran based on the articles of the Constitution and within the framework of law,” Qassemi said, adding that Iranian law “protects all such freedoms.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman also called on the United States to avoid politicizing the issue of religion, warning that offering “delusional, self-made and unfounded readings of different religions” could only lead to more interfaith clashes in the world.
The official religion of Iran is Shia Islam under the Constitution. The Islamic Republic recognizes Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian religious minorities, among others.
The Constitution states that “the investigation of individuals’ beliefs is forbidden,” and that “no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief.”
US imposes new sanctions against Iran
Press TV – May 30, 2018
The United States has imposed sanctions on several Iranian individuals and organizations, including Evin Prison and the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), over “human rights abuses” and “censorship.”
The US Treasury Department announced the sanctions Wednesday on its website, saying the listed persons and entities will be blocked from the US financial system.
Individuals and companies who do business with the targeted Iranians could face sanctions from Treasury as well.
“Iran not only exports terrorism and instability across the world, it routinely violates the rights of its own people. The Iranian regime diverts national resources that should belong to the people to fund a massive and expensive censorship apparatus and suppress free speech,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
Iran has rejected US and Western accusations of human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic as “untrue” and “politically-motivated.”
On Thursday, the US Treasury imposed new sanctions against nine Iranian and Turkish individuals and companies as well as a number of aircraft providing goods and services to four Iranian airlines.
The move by Washington was part of President Donald Trump’s plans to impose harsh sanctions against Tehran after pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Many countries, including America’s European allies, have said that they would not back Trump’s new plan.
The UK, France and Germany– all signatories to the deal– are already in talks with Iran to protect their businesses from possible punishment by the US.
Russia and China have also expressed willingness to back the deal and even fill the void should any European companies leave Iranian markets.
MEK’s Money Sure Can’t Buy Love
But it can buy a lot of politicians
Maryan Rajavi
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 29, 2018
Iran’s radical Marxist cult Mohajedeen e Khalq, better known by its acronym MEK, is somewhat reminiscent of the Israel Lobby’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in that it operates somewhat in the shadows and is nevertheless able to punch well beyond its weight by manipulating politicians and understanding how American government functions on its dark side. MEK promotes itself by openly supporting a very popular hardline policy of “democratic opposition” advocating “regime change” for Iran while also successfully selling its reform credentials, i.e. that it is no longer a terrorist group. This latter effort apparently convinced then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 2013 as she and President Barack Obama responded to the group’s affability campaign by delisting MEK from the government list of terrorist organizations.
This shift in attitude towards MEK was a result of several factors. First, everyone in Washington and the Establishment hates Iran. And second, the Executive Order 13224, which designates Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, ipso facto defines any group fighting against it as one of the good guys, justifying the change
MEK is best described as a cult rather than as a political movement because of its internal discipline. Its members are, according to the testimony of those who have somehow escaped, subjected to considerable indoctrination best described as brainwashing. Though not exactly imprisoned, adherents are kept isolated and separated insofar as possible and cannot contact their families. Their possessions are collectivized so they have no money or other resources. If they are in contravention of the numerous rules that guide the organization they are punished, including physically, and there are reports of members being executed for trying to escape.
The current head of the group is Maryam Rajavi, the wife of the deceased co-founder of MEK, Massoud. She is reported to be politically savvy and speaks excellent English learned in part to enable her to communicate with adoring American politicians. The group itself was founded in 1965. Its name means “People’s Holy Warriors,” derived from its Marxist/populist roots and its religiosity. It was not unlike the Taliban which developed in adjacent Afghanistan. During the 1970’s it rebelled against the Shah and was involved in bombing and shooting American targets. It executed U.S. Army Lt. Col. Lewis Hawkins in 1973 as he was walking home from the U.S. Embassy and in 1975 it killed two American Air Force officers in their chauffer driven car, an incident that was studied and used in CIA training subsequently as an example of how not to get caught and killed by terrorists. Between 1976 and 1978 the group bombed American commercial targets and killed three Rockwell defense contractors and one Texaco executive.
MEK welcomed the Iranian revolution and also the occupation of the U.S. Embassy but soon fell afoul of the Ayatollah Khomeini regime. It eventually moved to join Iran’s enemy Saddam Hussein in Iraq and participated on the Iraqi side in the bloodletting that followed when the two countries went to war in 1980-8. For that reason alone, MEK is particularly hated by most Iranians and the repeated assertion that it is some kind of “Iranian democracy” alternative is ridiculous as the people in Iran would never accept it. In terms of the duplicity surrounding its marketing, it is reminiscent of Iraqi con artist Ahmed Chalabi, who also had little following inside Iraq but was able to convince Pentagon geniuses like Paul Wolfowitz that he represented some kind of democratic movement. At the time Chalabi was also secretly working for Iran.
MEK was protected by Saddam and later by the U.S. invaders who found a weapon to use against Iran useful. They were housed in Camp Ashraf near Baghdad, and later, after Ashraf was closed, at so-called Camp Liberty. In 2013, when the Iraqis insisted that they go elsewhere the President Barack Obama facilitated their removal to Albania under the auspices of the United Nations refugee program, with the $20 million dollar bill being footed by Washington. The organization’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance or Iran (NCRI), meanwhile established itself in Paris under the control of Maryam Rajavi, in part to place it closer to the American and European sources of its political legitimacy and financing. In 2001, to make itself more palatable, the group had renounced violence.
The MEK folks in Albania have become a bit of a problem. Through various additional migrations they have multiplied and now number around 3,000 and have largely adhered to their cultish ways even though one of the original objectives of the move into Europe was to somehow deprogram and “deradicalize” them in an environment far removed from Iran-Iraq. Part of the problem is that the Albanian government likes the U.N. subsidies used to support the MEK associates, but it will not let them work as they have no legal status and they cannot resettle or lead normal lives. So they resort to criminal activity that includes promotion of fraudulent charities, drug trafficking and even a form of slavery in which their own people are sold and traded as laborers. The temporary solution has been to move the MEK out of a rundown university property in the capital Tirana to a more remote site in northern Albania dubbed Ashraf-3, but local people believe that that is just kicking the can down the road and that MEK should be forced to go somewhere else, preferably in the United States, which seems to like them so much.
Also, Albania is majority Muslim and has been subjected to the same Saudi Arabian ultra-conservative wahhabi promotion backed by lots of money that has plagued many states in the Middle East. Albanians accustomed to the mild form of Turkish Islam suddenly found themselves confronting the Sunni-Shia divide and also the MEK as agents of both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Many outraged Albanians see the unreformed MEK in their midst as a terror time bomb waiting to go off, but the government, under pressure from the U.S. Embassy has not sought their removal.
Meanwhile back in the United States everything involving the non-deradicalized MEK is just hunky dory. MEK and the NCRI are enemies of Iran and also seem to have plenty of money to spend, so they buy high ranking American speakers to appear at their events. Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton have appeared regularly, as have Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Jeanne Shaheen. At a 2015 appearance in Paris, Giuliani brought the crowd to its feet by calling for “Regime change!” after shouting out that the “Ayatollah must go!” In August 2017, Senators Roy Blunt, John Cornyn, Thom Tillis and Carl Levin met with Rajavi in Paris. Newt Gingrich also considers himself a friend of the Iranian resistance while Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor and wife of Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell spoke in Paris for five minutes in 2015 and was paid $50,000. The payments made to the other politicians have not been revealed.
And then there is the Saudi and Israeli angle. Saudi Arabia is now the major funder of MEK/NCRI. It’s intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal spoke before the group in 2017. Israel funded the group in its early days and its external spy service Mossad continues to use MEK stay-behinds in Iran to assassinate scientists and tamper with computer systems. The CIA, which recently expanded its anti-Iran task force, it also working closely with MEK. And Giuliani, Bolton, Chao are all in the White House inner circle, which, not coincidentally, is baying for Iranian blood.
Lost in all of the above is any conceivable American interest. It is difficult to even make the claim that Iran threatens the United States or any vital interest and the drive to decapitate the Mullahs, both literally and figuratively, really comes from Riyadh and Tel Aviv. And there is potential collateral damage where it really might matter as MEK cultists continue to sit and fester in a holding pattern maintained by Washington in the heart of Europe. What comes next? War of some kind with Iran is appearing to be increasingly likely given recent remarks by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, threatening to crush the Iranians. Is Washington intending to send the MEK warriors on sabotage missions inside Iran, something like the resistance to the Germans in World War II? Maybe Giuliani and Bolton know the answer to that question.
“Skirmishes” – Israel’s Syria Blitz
Media Lens | May 23, 2018
A key ‘mainstream’ media theme in covering the Israeli army’s repeated massacres of unarmed, non-violent Palestinian civilians protesting Israel’s military occupation in Gaza – killing journalists, a paramedic, the elderly and children – has been the description of these crimes as ‘clashes’.
This has been a clear attempt to obfuscate the fact that while two groups of people are involved, only one group is being killed and wounded.
To the casual reader – and many readers do not venture beyond the headlines – a ‘clash’ suggests that both sides are armed, with both suffering casualties. One would not, for example, describe a firing squad as a ‘clash’. There was no ‘clash’ in New York on September 11, 2001, and so on.
Following Israel’s massive blitz on more than 100 targets in Syria on May 10, ‘mainstream’ coverage offered similarly questionable frameworks of understanding.
A Guardian headline read:
Israel retaliates after Iran “fires 20 rockets” at army in occupied Golan Heights (Our emphasis)
For moral, legal and public relations reasons, the issue of which side started a conflict is obviously crucial. If the public recognises that the case for war is unjustified, immoral or illegal – that a country has chosen to launch a war of aggression – they will likely oppose it, sometimes in the millions, as happened in 2002 and 2003 in relation to the Iraq war. It is thus highly significant that the Guardian described Israel as retaliating.
The BBC reported of Israel’s attacks:
They came after 20 rockets were fired at Israeli military positions in the occupied Golan Heights. (Our emphasis)
Reuters took the same line as the Guardian and BBC:
Iran targets Israeli bases across Syrian frontier, Israel pounds Syria
Iranian forces in Syria launched a rocket attack on Israeli forces in the Golan Heights early on Thursday, Israel said, prompting one of the heaviest Israeli barrages in Syria since the conflict there began in 2011. (Our emphasis)
The New York Times also reported:
It was a furious response to what Israel called an Iranian rocket attack launched from Syrian territory just hours earlier. (Our emphasis)
And yet, the report buried a challenge to its own claim that Israel had retaliated in the second half of the piece:
Iran’s rocket attack against Israel came after what appeared to have been an Israeli missile strike against a village in the Syrian Golan Heights late on Wednesday. (Our emphasis)
According to the BBC (see below), the Israeli missile strike had targeted an Iranian drone facility killing several Iranians.
So, actually, it might be said that Iran was retaliating to Israeli attacks – a more reasonable interpretation, given recent history also described by the New York Times:
Israel has conducted scores of strikes on Iran and its allies inside Syria, rarely acknowledging them publicly.
Nevertheless, the corporate media theme has been that Israel retaliated, part of a long-term trend in media coverage. In a 2002 report, Bad News From Israel, The Glasgow University Media Group commented:
On the news, Israeli actions tended to be explained and contextualised – they were often shown as merely “responding” to what had been done to them by Palestinians (in the 2001 samples they were six times as likely to be presented as “retaliating” or in some way responding than were the Palestinians).
Was Iran Skirmishing?
But was Iran even involved at all? The opening, highlighted sentence in a front-page BBC piece by diplomatic editor Jonathan Marcus left the reader in no doubt:
These are the first skirmishes in a potential war between Israel and Iran that promises a fearful level of destruction – even by the standards of the modern Middle East.
So this was a ‘skirmish’, a clash involving Israel and Iran – they were both involved in the combat. And yet, in the second half of the article, Marcus wrote:
The alleged Iranian attack last night – I say alleged because at this stage there is no confirmation from Iranian sources as to the precise authors of the attack – involved a single and relatively short-range system, what appears to have been a multiple-barrelled rocket launcher.
How can the Iranian attack be merely ‘alleged’ half-way down the article but a bald fact in the highlighted opening sentence?
In fact, not only has there been ‘no confirmation’, there has been outright Iranian rejection of the claims. Abolfazl Hassan-Baygi, deputy head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, commented:
Iran has nothing to do with the missiles that struck the enemy entity yesterday.
Associated Press (AP ) reported Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi commenting that Israel’s attacks were based on ‘fabricated and baseless excuses’, and were a breach of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria.
AP quoted a senior Lebanese politician and close ally of Syria and Iran, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, as saying: ‘this time the Syrian retaliation was in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights but next time it will be in Israel proper. (Our emphasis)
Later in his BBC piece, Marcus wrote:
The immediate tensions stem from an Israeli air strike on what they claimed was an Iranian drone facility at the so-called T-4 air base, near Palmyra, on 9 April, which reportedly killed several Iranian military advisers.
This again challenged the idea that Israel had ‘retaliated’, but again it was not given the kind of prominence that could challenge Israel’s version of events.
So the ‘skirmishes’ may actually have consisted of Israel first attacking an Iranian drone facility killing Iranian personnel, and then launching a massive attack against Iranian positions across Syria, without Iran responding at all. And yet Marcus wrote:
It is a conflict that needs to be averted and the time to do it is now. However Israel and Iran remain on a collision course.
Despite the uncertainty on whether Iran had attacked, Marcus concluded:
Iran’s strategic intent is clear… it is unlikely to be dissuaded from its efforts.
He added:
Israel has drawn its red lines and it is clearly not going to back down either.
Obama also famously drew his ‘red line’ in Syria in 2012, threatening a massive attack in the event of Syrian government use of chemical weapons. But for Marcus, Israel’s actual launch of a massive attack merely constituted the drawing of ‘red lines’.
And again, ignoring his own doubts about what had happened, the required warmongering ‘balance’ was favoured:
For the immediate future, the pattern of strike, attempted riposte, and counter-strike is likely to continue.
If it had started at all! Marcus concluded his article with three ominous lines identifying another threat alongside the danger of Israel drawing more ‘red lines’ with more massive attacks:
One clear danger is that Iran may seek to exact its revenge outside the Middle East.
Pro-Iranian factions have in the past attacked Israeli tourists abroad or Jewish organisations, notably in Latin America.
A successful terrorist attack of this kind would inevitably alter the picture, pushing Israel and Iran to the brink of a full-scale war.
The word ‘terrorist’ thus made its first appearance in the last line of Marcus’s piece, in reference to a hypothetical Iranian atrocity.
The idea that Israel might already have committed terrorist atrocities in Syria by launching unprovoked attacks, by illegal bombings committed completely outside of international law, is unthinkable.
Iran: Morocco’s false claims aim to please third parties
Press TV – May 24, 2018
Iran has hit out at Morocco for accusing Tehran of interference in the African country’s affairs, saying the “false claims” are aimed at pleasing certain third parties.
Morocco has close ties with Saudi Arabia which has accused Iran of meddling in Arab affairs, with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita repeating those claims in a recent interview with Fox News.
“The Moroccan foreign minister knows himself well that the unjust charges he is making are utterly wrong, false and based on delusions and fictions written by those who resort to such provocations only in line with their illegitimate interests,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Thursday.
Bourita first made the accusations against Iran early this month as he announced Morocco’s decision to sever diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic over what he called Tehran’s support for the Polisario Front.
The Polisario is a guerrilla movement fighting for independence for the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara which is claimed by Morocco after colonial Spain left the territory.
In his interview with Fox News aired on Wednesday, Bourita claimed that Hezbollah members had met with senior Polisario military leaders recently and that the Iranian embassy in Algeria was used to fund the Polisario.
“The Moroccan authorities’ insistence on repeating their false claims for cutting diplomatic ties with Iran and repeatedly raising baseless allegations against our country is merely a bid to please certain third parties,” Qassemi said.
Bourita also claimed that Iran was in part trying to destabilize the area due to Morocco’s good relations with the US and Europe.
Earlier this month, he had said that Iran and Hezbollah were supporting Polisario by training and arming its fighters, via the Iranian embassy in Algeria.
Algeria, Iran and Hezbollah were all quick to reject the claims as baseless back then.
Iranian Foreign Ministry said there was no cooperation between Tehran’s diplomatic mission in Algiers and the Algeria-backed movement.
Hezbollah also blamed the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia for the diplomatic tensions, saying Rabat had cut ties with Tehran under pressure from the trio.
In turn, Algeria summoned Morocco’s ambassador to protest the “unfounded” claims.
Rabat annexed Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, in 1975, and has since been in conflict with Polisario, which demands a referendum on self-determination and independence.
The movement, which aims to end Morocco’s presence in the Saharan region, recently said they sought to set up a “capital” in the region, prompting Rabat to caution it would respond with force.
Iraqi voters undermine Trump’s Iran strategy
Muqtadar al-Sadr and Hadi al-Amiri, both anti-American, finished first and second in elections held on the day Trump scrapped the Iran nuclear deal
By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | May 24, 2018
In an ironic twist, May 12, which was the deadline for US President Donald Trump’s decision on the Iran nuclear deal, also happened to be the day the Iraqi parliamentary elections took place.
Yet no one seemed to take note of the symbolism. In the event, the Iraqi election results seriously hinder Trump’s agenda of rolling back the Iranian presence in the northern tier of the Middle East comprising Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Of these three countries, Iraq is arguably the most crucial theatre of contestation between the United States and Iran. The fate of the Iranian presence and Iranian capacity to influence the politics of the entire Shi’ite arc will be critically dependent on its standing and influence in Baghdad. The stakes have never been as high as they are today.
To be sure, the Iraqi election results that were formally announced on Sunday constitute a stunning setback for Trump’s containment strategy against Iran. Washington had bet heavily on the alliance led by Prime Minister Heidar al-Abadi to win, but it has been relegated to third place, winning only 42 seats in the 329-member parliament.
Anti-American tilt
Worse still, two staunchly anti-American alliances – led by Muqtadar al-Sadr and Hadi al-Amiri – secured first and second places respectively.
Coalition making will be a long drawn out process, but what is clear is that the next government in Baghdad will have a pronounced anti-American tilt and the probability is high that it could evict US troops and contractors totaling 100,000 in Iraq.
While Amiri leads the powerful Iran-aligned militia groups known as the Popular Mobilization Force, Sadr’s surge is really bad news for the Americans. Sadr’s Mahdi Army has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Brits on its hands.
In the expert opinion of the Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution: “His (Sadr’s) victory has turned America’s Iraq policy upside down, and Washington now faces a severe political crisis in a country where it has invested substantial blood and treasure … His movement gave rise to many of the Shiite militia groups that committed atrocities against Americans and that today dominate Iraq – as well as the front lines of the war in Syria, where they have fought US forces. These groups have been pivotal to securing the Assad regime’s survival as well as enhancing Iran’s influence in the region.”
In the coming weeks and months, Tehran will play a key role in the negotiations for the formation of the next government in Baghdad. During earlier such moments, Tehran and Washington had tacitly agreed on compromise candidates – prime ministers Abadi and Nouri al-Maliki respectively – but the scope for such accommodation is non-existent today.
Western analysts make much out of Sadr’s nationalistic outlook to give it an anti-Iranian tweak, but that betrays wishful thinking. Sadr is indeed a mercurial personality and tends to lean toward “red Shi’ism” in his outlook on Iraq’s political economy. His alliance partners are communists and secularists.
The Iran-Sadr connection
But significantly, he met Amiri on Monday and said later in a statement: “The process of government formation must be a national decision and importantly, must include the participation of all the winning blocs.”
Again, much has been made out of Sadr’s visit to Saudi Arabia last year and his meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but in reality, the warming relationship between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf states – Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar – runs only skin deep.
On the other hand, Iranians and Sadr’s family go back a long way. Sadr lived in Tehran in exile for many years. Meanwhile, reports say Tehran is bringing on board the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties – KDP and the PUK – who feel aggrieved that the US connived with Abadi’s crackdown in Kirkuk last October, to align with Amiri.
All in all, Tehran can afford to weigh the pros and cons of many options open to it.
It is entirely conceivable that Tehran might even choose to settle for another government led by Abadi as the figurehead of a staunchly pro-Iranian power structure. Ever since the regime change in Baghdad following the US invasion in 2003, Tehran has made sustained and intense efforts to cultivate wide-ranging political partnerships with Iraqi groups across the religious, ethnic and political spectrum.
It is preposterous to fantasize that Baghdad is about to move out of Iranian orbit.
The bottom line is that a new coalition government in Baghdad over which Iran enjoys political leverage may well set a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. The Trump administration must prepare for such an eventuality since it has left Tehran in no doubt that continued US military presence in Iraq poses an existential threat of “regime change.” Trust Tehran to pull out all the stops – short of directly targeting US troops – to undermine the American influence in Iraq.
On the other hand, a well-grounded military footing in Iraq is an absolute pre-requisite for the Pentagon to conduct its operations at the present scale in northeastern Syria, given the imponderables in Turkey’s continued cooperation. In these circumstances, it is hard to see how Trump is going to realize his dream to get Iranians to vacate from Iraq or Syria.
Pompeo Claims Iran Conducts Assassinations in Europe, Bewilders Experts
Sputnik – 23.05.2018
Speaking on May 21 at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, Pompeo said some pretty strange things in his speech, “A New Iran Strategy.”
“Today, the Iranian Quds Force conducts covert assassination operations in the heart of Europe,” he said nonchalantly, between calling out Iran’s Taliban support in Afghanistan, support for Yemen’s Houthis and the holding of US citizens hostage.
He never elaborated on that passage.
These are some strange accusations, considering that for the last two decades, there have been no assassinations in Europe linked to Tehran in any way. As the Guardian points out, the last people whose violent death was in any way connected to Iran were Shapour Bakhtiar, the former Persian prime minister under the Shah, who was assassinated in France in 1991, and four Iranian Kurdish dissidents who were shot in Berlin the next year.
There was also a bombing of a bus with Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in 2012, but it was Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, that was blamed for the incident. The former president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, was ordered late last year to stand trial for allegedly helping cover up Iran’s alleged role in the 1994 Jewish center bombing that killed 85 people in the country. That connection has never been proven.
What were you talking about, Mr. Pompeo?
As per the Guardian, other journalists were also pretty puzzled by the statements and turned to Heather Nauert, the department’s spokesperson, for comments. That didn’t help.
“He has information and access to information that I do not,” she said during a press briefing on May 22. “I am not able to comment on that in particular but I can tell the secretary has assured me that there is a basis for that point in his speech and he stands firmly behind that.”
US diplomats specializing in Iran were equally surprised by Pompeo’s allegations.
The claim was also questioned by Iraj Mesdaghi, a Sweden-based Iranian political activist who was jailed in Iran for a decade between 1981 and 1991.
“There is no evidence to back the claim that currently they are carrying out such operations in Europe,” he said pointing out that the shooting of Kurdish dissidents in Berlin was never blamed on Quds Force or the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in general.
There was one case worth pointing out, though: last year, Ahmad Mola Nissi, an Iranian dissident, was killed in the Hague. He was a leader of an Iranian separatist group, whose armed wing was responsible for several attacks in Iran.
But, according to the Guardian, the Dutch investigation has not publicly blamed the IRGC. If that is what Pompeo was talking about, then he just disclosed previously classified information.
“There is no public evidence to weigh these claims and European officials have been silent,” says Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
According to Mesdaghi, Tehran gave up on the idea of assassinating people after a 1997 court case on the Berlin shooting made it clear the EU would not tolerate the practice.
“It would be very unusual for Iran to have carried out his killing, given the relationship they have with Europe now and the fact that Nissi was not influential, nor important enough,” he said.
Featured Video
Trump Announces Operation To Escort Ships – Fmr. CIA Analyst Larry Johnson
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Who Runs Our World?
Netanyahu addresses US Congress
By Richard Hugus | January 4, 2019
Our world is run by oligarchs, the holders of vast wealth from monopolies in banking, resource extraction, manufacturing, and technology. Oligarchs have such power that most of the world doesn’t even know of their influence over our lives. Their overall agenda is global power — a world government, run by them — to be achieved through planned steps of social engineering. The oligarchs remain in the background and have heads of state and entire governments acting in their service. Presidents and prime ministers are their puppets. Bureaucrats and politicians are their factotums.
Who are politicians? Politicians are people who work for the powerful while pretending to represent the people who voted for them. This double-dealing involves a lot of lying, so successful politicians must be good at it. It’s not an easy job to make the insane agenda of the powerful seem reasonable. Politicians can’t reveal this agenda because it almost always goes against the interests of their constituents, so they become adept at sophistry, mystification, and the appearance of authority. For example, wars for Israel have been part of the agenda of the powerful for years. Since 2001, wars for Israel have been sold as “the war on terror” and lots of lies had to be made up as to why the war on terror was a real thing. The visible faces promoting the war on terror were neoconservatives in the US, almost all of whom were advocates for Israel, or Zionists. Zionists are not the only members of the oligarchy, but they seem to be its lead actors. ... continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- New KC-46 Supertankers Promise Israel Conventional Samson Option Strike Сapability
- No, New York Times, We Don’t Need to Dam the Bering Strait
- Gates-Funded ‘Big Catch-Up’ Delivers 100 Million Vaccine Doses — Including High-Risk DTP Vaccine Not Used in U.S.
- No commercial ship or oil tanker transited Strait of Hormuz in past hours: IRGC
- Russia warns of escalating NATO military activity in Baltic region
- Government Kills the Spirit
- How ‘Israel’s’ Iran regime change plot failed – again
- 1977 Influenza Pandemic Sequence Shows Signs of Laboratory Creation: Journal ‘Cell’
- China issues first prohibition order to safeguard international trade order under rule of law
- Iran rejects Trump’s ‘Project Freedom,’ warns US over Hormuz role
- If Americans Knew
- New Member of Trump’s Iran Negotiating Team Comes From Notoriously Pro-Israel Think Tank
- Israeli army demolishes Christian monastery, nuns’ school in southern Lebanon
- Tokenizing Christians In Israel
- One Gaza is not enough: Israel is turning southern Lebanon into another Gaza – Daily Update
- As Palestinians die, Ben-Gvir celebrates birthday with golden noose cake – Daily Update
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- US set to sell $1B “Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System” to Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- No Tricks Zone
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
Aletho News 