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

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 30.04.2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Abrams tank costs roughly $10 million a piece.

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

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

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

May 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Interlocking of Strategic Paradigms

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

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

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

Professor Postol writes:

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

Furthermore:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 29, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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

By Timur Fomenko | RT | April 29, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 28, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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

The Cradle | April 24, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Revealed: Israel’s hidden history of attacks on Iran

By Robert Inlakesh | MintPress News | April 17, 2024 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US congress approves gifting seized Russian assets to Ukraine

RT | April 20, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 20, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

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

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | April 20, 2024

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

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

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

Debunking Iran’s so-called ‘evil intent’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debunking the West’s air defense ‘victory’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US house speaker announces ‘new axis of evil’

RT | April 19, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 19, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | 1 Comment

Operation True Promise

By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | April 19, 2024

In what CNN reported was the largest drone attack in world history, the Islamic Republic of Iran struck at the Zionist entity on Saturday, April 13. It was in response to the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus carried out a fortnight before. CNN also noted it was an operation which “seemed planned to minimize casualties”, in stark contrast to the previous six months of the Zionist genocide in Gaza.

According to the Zionists, the operation was ineffective in that 99% of the drones and missiles launched were intercepted. But of course, as the experience of the Resistance Axis shows, the most efficient way to defeat the Iron Dome system is to overwhelm and confuse it.

In addition, however, it is plain that the missiles which did strike home – in particular at the Nevatim air base near Bir Al-Sabe’ and at the Ramon base some 90 km to the south – caused significant damage to the base as satellite imagery showed. F35 aircraft departed from here to bomb the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

Western media are very reluctant to even mention the other major target –  an intelligence base for Israeli military intelligence, known as Unit 8200. The Zionists tried their best to suppress all mention of the attack on the top secret base, which as the Israeli press has previously noted, is the “first line of defense in preventing surprise attacks” and is an outpost that has been labeled “the eyes of the nation.”

The Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammed Bagheri noted that it was from there that the operation against Iran in Damascus was directed. The outpost ”is located literally inside the mountain, in tunnels dug in the 1980s” in the illegally occupied Golan Heights. It’s not only the Palestinian Resistance that has tunnels.

The Islamic Republic quoted the right to self-defence from Article 51 of the UN Charter. The Russian Foreign Ministry cited Article 51 in its own response, failing to accede to Zionist demands to condemn Iran. China too did not condemn Iran, calling its response “restrained”.

Though it was condemned by the West, some Western figures conceded its legitimacy, albeit grudgingly. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron was asked what the UK government would do if a hostile nation flattened one of Britain’s consulates. He answered, “We would take very strong action”. He also appeared to simply take issue with the proportionality of the strike, saying, “Countries have a right to respond when they feel they have suffered an aggression.  Of course they do.”

Operation True Promise was the first direct military strike on “Israel” by the Iran. It’s unlikely to be the last. It utilised a tiny fraction of the available armaments and it showed that it can successfully penetrate the much vaunted air defence systems of the Zionist entity.

The Iranian operation was widely welcomed in the region. In Tehran, crowds gathered in Palestine Square to celebrate. They lit flares and set off fireworks. The Iranian Parliament stood as one to cheer the strike.

Meanwhile, Palestinians gathered in the West Bank chanting “God is Great” as Iranian missiles soared overhead. In Jordan, while the government collaborated with the Zionist entity, the citizens were out on the streets.

In Gaza, there were relieved observations that for the first time in months there were no drones overhead, and bombing in Rafah and the rest of Gaza was suspended.

The next day, three bakeries opened their doors in Gaza for the first time in six months.

These had reportedly been authorised by the Zionist regime, itself a scandalous indication that they had been forcibly closed by the Zionists. In the West Bank, Palestinians took matters into their own hands and tore down sections of the apartheid wall.

Unfortunately, genocidal Jewish settlers also launched a mass pogrom against the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah. The sooner the settlers are driven out, the sooner peace can come. But the Iranian retaliation has certainly given confidence and increased morale to Palestinians all over the world.

Overall, it is clear that the Iranian response was a major strategic defeat for the Zionists. While they crowed about 99% of the drones and missiles being intercepted, it is clear that the main targets were hit. But the degree of destruction caused was also not the point of this demonstration. The point was to indicate that despite the much-vaunted air defence systems and the direct military support given by the US, UK, and Jordan, with indirect help from France and Saudi Arabia, among others, the Islamic Republic can evade the defences of the Zionist entity at will. As a result, a “new equation” of deterrence is being spoken of. It was reported that Iran “decided to create a new equation,” said the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, in a television interview on Sunday. “From now on, if Israel attacks Iranian interests, figures, and citizens anywhere, we will retaliate from Iran.”

An immediate indication of the new equation is that it was reported that the planned invasion of Rafah had been postponed. Amos Yadlin, a former director of Israeli military intelligence who advises opposition leader and war cabinet member Benny Gantz, reportedly said, “Last night’s attack could lead to a strategic change in the war and even to its end,”

Another sign was that the US let it be known that it “is privately telling officials there: If Israel strikes back militarily, it will do so alone.” The goal for Iran, as British commentator Batool Subeiti has argued, was to strike back but not to provoke a regional war, as that will simply take attention away from Gaza, where it needs to remain.

April 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran’s air defenses down drones over Isfahan, Tabriz

Al Mayadeen | April 19, 2024

No external aggression on Iran occurred after Friday midnight, Iranian sources informed on the matter told Al Mayadeen.

Following circulating news on Western-based media outlets, regarding a supposed Israeli attack on Iran, sources told Al Mayadeen that such an event did not occur. Instead, Iranian air defenses repelled a relatively small drone attack in Tabriz and Isfahan, which were likely launched domestically.

What is being circulated about an Israeli attack on Iran are lies and are part of a misinformation war, according to our sources.

Iranian sources also added that complicit United States media outlets are waging a proxy war of disinformation on behalf of the Israeli occupation.

This comes after Iran’s Space Agency confirmed that several drones, of unspecified origin, were downed over Iranian airspace. The agency said that no missile attack on Iran occurred on Friday.

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) said that short-range and medium-range Iranian air defense batteries repelled the attack.

Earlier, Iran’s Mehr News Agency, citing the Director General of the Iran Airports and Air Navigation Company, said that all air traffic was suspended in Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tehran. Iranian media outlets reported that air defense systems were activated in Isfahan, as explosions of an unknown cause were heard.

Al Mayadeen’s correspondent, citing the spokesperson of the Iranian Space Agency, said that air defense batteries responded to three targets over Isfahan. He added that reports indicate that air defenses responded to threats in Qahjavarestan, northeast of Isfahan, as no aerial objects hit ground targets.

Our correspondent stressed that all of the explosions heard on Friday were a result of air defense interceptions.

The Islamic Republic News Agency reports that air defenses were activated in Tabriz, in northern Iran, resulting in a series of explosions. The agency added that no aerial objects hit ground targets in Tabriz and that all loud sounds were a result of interceptors exploding over Tabriz’s sky.

April 19, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

IRGC: Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor not among Operation True Promise’s targets

Press TV – April 18, 2024

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) dismisses reports of affliction of damage to the Israeli regime’s Dimona nuclear reactor during the Islamic Republic’s recent Operation True Promise against the occupying regime.

“The Dimona reactor has not been among the bank of targets of the Islamic Republic’s recent punitive measure against the Zionist regime,” IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif said on Thursday.

“Publication of this news is a big lie and a malignant effort in line with the enemy’s psychological operation towards deception of the public opinion,” he added.

The remarks came after the Israeli regime’s Ma’ariv newspaper claimed satellite images had allegedly shown that one of the reactor’s buildings had been struck at least once during the Iranian operation, adding that up to two hits had also taken place in its vicinity.

The Corps launched the operation late on Saturday in response to a deadly attack by the regime against the Islamic Republic’s diplomatic premises in the Syrian capital Damascus on April 1.

The Israeli attack had resulted in the martyrdom of Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, his deputy, General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, and five of their accompanying officers.

In retaliation, the IRGC targeted the occupied territories with a barrage of drones and missiles. The retaliatory strikes inflicted damage on Israeli military bases across the occupied territories.

Amid speculation about fresh potential Israeli aggression, senior Iranian political and military leaders, including President Ebrahim Raeisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, have warned of a stronger and more severe response.

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

From October 7 to April 13: the era of Liberation has begun

By Sayed Hasan | Resistance News | April 18, 2024

While it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the operation launched by Hamas and the factions of the Palestinian Resistance on October 7, a feat that forever annihilated the prestige of the Israeli army, the strikes launched by Iran on the night of 13 to 14 April are truly historic, and perhaps even more significant. For the first time, the backbone and only State of the Axis of Resistance targeted Israel directly from its territory, launching the largest missile attack ever recorded against Israel, and the largest drone attack in history. We have entered a whole new phase in the Arab-Israeli and Persian-Israeli conflict, and this is the final one, as all the taboos have now been broken and new equations have been established.

Here are the main achievements of this unprecedented attack:

  • Israel’s deterrence capacity no longer exists: since October 7, Hamas, Hezbollah, AnsarAllah and the Iraqi Resistance had shattered it, but these were Resistance movements, not a State with much more to lose; and this direct action by Iran is all the more significant as Israel has been threatening to bomb Iran for decades without ever daring to do so, while the Islamic Republic very quickly carried out its threats;
  • Iran launched its strike despite US and Western threats, demonstrating unparalleled courage and a readiness to enter into a regional war, going as far as directly threatening the United States and its Arab vassals in the region with direct strikes in the event of complicity with any kind of reaction from Israel: this audacity foiled the bluff of the Biden administration, which officially declared that it would not support an Israeli response from which it disassociated itself in advance;
  • Iran’s military prowess was clearly demonstrated: despite the fact that this attack was known in advance, and that the capabilities, aviation and/or anti-missile defenses of no less than 5 powers were directly assisting Israel (the United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and perhaps even Egypt), Israel’s defense systems were saturated, hundreds of sirens sounded from north to south for hours and ten to twenty direct hits were recorded;
  • Iran also demonstrated its moral superiority: it strictly applied Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of force in self-defense, targeted only military targets (three air bases that were destroyed according to Iran, and damaged according to Israel), and gave advance warning of its strike, which enabled the neighboring countries to close their airspace, thus protecting the civilian airliners that Israel had been endangering for days by massively jamming GPS signals throughout the region;
  • finally, as Marwa Osman put it, the failure of Israel’s 5 layers of defense was compensated for by a 6th layer of media defense, with journalists repeating that Israel and its allies were able to intercept 99% of the projectiles: in view of the direct impacts recorded, this would mean that Iran fired 1,000 to 2,000 drones and missiles, whereas all the data puts the figure below 500; the aim of this deceit was obviously to save Israel’s face and enable it to claim an illusory victory.

“Those who make threats should have realized that military threats or attacks against Iran – in the sense of hit-and-run attacks – are no longer possible. Those who invade us will have to suffer from the devastating consequences of their actions”, said Sayed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, back in 2007. While this statement has been mocked many times, particularly in view of the numerous Israeli attacks on Iranian bases in Syria that have cost the lives of many members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with relative impunity, no one today doubts the seriousness of this assertion: when its territory is hit, as was the case with the blatant Israeli strike against its consulate in Damascus on April 1st, the aggressor is hit directly. And from now on, as Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, has stated, any open attack against Iranian interests will be met with the same retribution: “We have established a new equation with the Zionist entity, responding directly from Iranian territory to any aggression on its part against Iranian interests, property, personalities and citizens in any part of the world. We have opened a new chapter in the confrontation with the enemy”. This is a truly tectonic shift in the equations of power and deterrence.

Those who play down the importance of the Iranian attack ignore its long-term political and strategic significance, which is in line with Iran’s vision, shared by the entire Axis of Resistance, of the form, scale and timing of the struggle against Israel. As Fadi Quran points out,

“the scale of Iran’s attack, the diversity of locations it targeted, and weapons it used, forced Israel to uncover the majority of anti-missile technologies the US and it have across the region. The Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn’t know it had, it just used a lot of them. But the Iranians likely now have almost a full map of what Israel’s missile defence system looks like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the US has installations. It also knows how long it takes to prepare them, how Israeli society responds… etc This is a huge strategic cost to Israel, while Arab regimes now are being blasted by their peoples, particularly the Jordanian monarchy, for not doing anything to protect Gazans but then going all out to protect Israel. Crucially, Iran can now reverse engineer all the intel gathered from this attack to make a much more deadly one credible. While the US and Israel will have to re-design away from their current model which has been compromised. Its success in stopping this choreographed attack is thus still very costly.”

While Israel proved barely capable of defending itself (at an exorbitant cost of two billion dollars) against an attack that was limited in scope and lacked the element of surprise, and cost Iran a measly 35 million, there is no longer any doubt in anyone’s mind that in the event of a regional war, Israel’s defense capabilities would quickly be saturated, leaving its territory devastated and its population decimated. The Israeli population is now clearly aware of this, and the de-population process that has already cost the occupying entity hundreds of thousands of nationals since October 7 is only set to increase.

For their part, the Palestinian people, abandoned by the whole world, and the Arab regimes in particular, were able to enjoy a brief respite, Gaza having experienced its first hours of calm since October 7 during this unforgettable night. The Palestinians were able to let their joy burst forth when they saw the epic images of the Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset and the Al-Aqsa mosque before striking the heart of the Zionist entity. Like the psychological shock of October 7, that of the night of April 13 is engraved forever on people’s consciences, and will galvanize the Resistance while speeding up the process of “reverse migration” of the Israeli settlers who have lived through a night of terror and nightmare, and are now convinced that their army is incapable of protecting them. The myth of the “land of milk and honey” is gone for ever, replaced by an unspoken promise of “blood, toil, tears and sweat” without any prospect of victory.

With the senseless act of attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Netanyahu sought to escape the ineluctable reality of the bitter military failure of the army of occupation, despite 6 months of unfathomable genocide and destruction, and to restore Israel’s illusion of power. The result is the opposite of what was expected, with Israel weaker and more isolated than ever, and its Western backers disgraced beyond return, Biden having already lost the next election because of his unwillingness to end the massacre in Gaza. Israel now has only one alternative: end the war or go forward with a suicidal escalation that will set the whole of West Asia ablaze. The United States has clearly announced its desire to calm tensions and reach a ceasefire, even if the US taxpayer money & military industry keeps fueling the conflict. The question now is whether Netanyahu will put the interests of Israel, whose very future is at stake, before his own personal instinct for self-preservation, as his political career will be over the minute the war ends.

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 1 Comment

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