First, since we now have more reliable data about what happened, let me recap a few key points:
It is has now become pretty clear that Iran took several steps to make sure that the US would know when and where the strikes would happen. Specifically, Iran warned the Iraqi government and the Swiss diplomats who represent US interests in Iran.
Yet, at the same time, Iran issued the strongest threat it could possibly issue: it told the US that *any* counter-strike aimed at Iran would result in a strong Iranian attack on Israel.
The US quite clearly took the decision not to retaliate and to “forget” Trump’s promise to strike at 54 Iranian targets. I want to stress here that this was the correct decision under these circumstances.
It also appears that the Iranians were able to somehow retrofit some kind of terminal guidance capability on missiles which originally lacked it.
The level or precision of the strikes was absolutely superb and quite amazing.
Trump declared that Iran decided to stand down and that the US had prevailed. This notion is, of course, prima facie ridiculous, but not for folks getting their news from the corporate media.
The Iranians declared that this specific strike was now over, but immediately added that this was only a first measure and that others would follow.
Next, I want to share a few interesting photos with you.
First, here is a photo of the base following the strikes sent to me by a friend:
Here is what my friend added:
The key idea is really simple and understandable for anybody who has thought about statistics (even in an everyday context). In number terms, it’s almost like rolling dice and getting a 6 three times in a row, because the probability of rolling a 6 with an ideal dice is 16.67% (and the probability to roll 3 sixes in a row is less than 1%) as opposed to roughly 18% probability for a hit on a building within the map area in the CNN screenshot (if we assume the missiles to be unguided within this area). To be even more precise, the probability for hitting 3 *different* buildings 3 times in a row is actually even slightly lower than 0.62%, as one would have to substract the area being hit from the total area covered by buildings (I ignored that for simplicity). A less than 1% probability for a one-off event like this means that it is really highly UNlikely – to use the British Skripal case expression in its inverted state – to have happened randomly, as we assumed in our hypothesis. Which means that the missiles were, indeed, guided, and guided very accurately, striking targets of less than ~50m size with a high degree of reliability (in this particular area 3/3, in others probably 1/1 as in the runway case, etc). Perhaps, some of them, not covered by the satellite images, missed the target, but it does not substantially change the high degree of accuracy that potential Iranian opponents within reach of these missiles will have to assume from now on. The people most interested in this were probably the Israelis, as they are probably the main potential target for this type of missile in the case of a future escalation.
Please note that neither my friend nor I are professional imagery analysts and that this is just something my friend shared with me in a private email and which I now want to share with you.
If any professional imagery analyst could either confirm/refute my friend’s conclusions, I would be most grateful.
Next, I want to share with you the following image which shows Iranian IRGC General Ali Amir Hajizadeh reviewing results of recent Iranian missile strikes on Ain al-Assad airbase in Iraq during a press conference:
Clearly, the Iranians are very proud of their capability to conduct true precision strikes with an accuracy every bit as good as any Russian and/or US missile.
Finally, check out this image of the Iranian general making a press conference in front of a very interesting row of flags:
These flags include the following: The Iranian flag, the IRGC flag, the flag of IRGC’s Aerospace Force, the flag of the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthi Ansarullah flag, the flag of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), the Palestinian Hamas, the Afghan Liwa Fatemiyoun and the Pakistani Liwa Zainebiyoun
I find this very interesting: when Trump (or any other US politician) makes a solemn pronouncement, he typically has a number of aides, advisors, generals, Congressmen or Senators, etc. This is supposed the show the determination, resolve and unity of Uncle Shmuel, especially when Uncle Shmuel does something illegal or immoral.
The Iranian show of unity does not show more Iranians, they show the unity of all the forces in the Middle-East who have now officially united and whose goal is clear and very official: kick Uncle Shmuel out of the Middle-East.
You tell me which you find more impressive!
Next, the issue of casualties. Frankly, and while this is only my best guess, I do not believe the Iranian official casualty figures. Why? Well, first the Iranians did not try to maximize casualties (more about that option below), and they informed the US by several back-channels. But even if they had not, while the performance of the Patriot missile is pretty awful, the US does have a lot of top of the line technical intelligence means which would allow them to first detect the launch of the missiles from Iran and then to calculate their ballistic trajectory. As far as I know, now I might be wrong here, Iranian missiles do not have terminal maneuvering capability (which is different from terminal guidance). I can’t image why US commanders could not announce a incoming missile alert and then get all the local personnel into shelters. Again, I might be missing something, so if any reader can correct me, I would be grateful.
So what happened, really?
Here are a few of my current working hypotheses:
1) BOTH the USA and Iran don’t want a full-scale war. But for VERY different reasons:
The US probably understands that it cannot win a war against Iran.
The Iranians definitely understand that while the US cannot “win”, it most definitely can kill Iranians by the thousands and inflict immense damage upon the Iranian society.
2) What just took place was the single most dangerous moment since 14 April 2018 when Russia and the US came very, very close to a full-scale war. In the current situation, the US and Iran also came very, very close to a full scale war. The only reason I rank this latest crisis lower than the April 14th is that in one case we risked a planetary nuclear war whereas in this case we “only” risked a regional war which, by the way, could have seen nukes used by the US and Israel.
3) There STILL is a risk of full-scale war between the US and Iran, however, and barring a major unforeseen event, I will lower it now down from 80% to a much more tolerable 50%. Why 50%? Because Israel and the Israel Lobby will continue to push for a US attack on Iran and because while I trust the Iranians to keep their anti-US operations right below the threshold of “plausible deniability”, I cannot be sure that all Iranian allies will show similar restraint. Finally, the chances of an Israeli false flag as still sky high.
4) I expect anti-US operations to continue and even expand throughout the Middle-East. I don’t expect that these operations will be executed from Iran and I don’t expect Iranian forces to be involved, at least not officially. The Iranians know that the US has lost every single counter-insurgency war it was involved in and they know that their best chance is now to engage in all forms of asymmetrical operations.
Finally, I want to spell out what we could call the new Iranian threat.
We have to assume that Iran now has terminal guidance capability on many (most?) of its ballistic and cruise missiles and that they can destroy one specific building among many more buildings. Now, remember the Iranian reply that it had 35 US bases within missile range? Now imagine this first one:
Iran fires 10-12 missile on each and every one of the 35 US bases listed and targets barracks, fuel and ammo dumps, key command posts, etc. How many casualties do you think that such a strike would result in?
Next, let’s try the same thing with Israel:
Iran fires 2-3 missiles but carefully aims them as Israeli air force bases, personnel barracks, industrial sites (including chemical and nuclear sites, not even necessarily military ones! Dimona anybody?), the Knesset or even Bibi’s personal residence. Can you imagine the panic in Israel?
How about the KSA?
Iran fires a large amount of missiles aimed at *truly* crippling the Saudi oil installations, National Guard barracks, airfields, etc. We already know what the Houthis could do with their very limited resources. Just imagine what Iran could do to the KSA (or the UAE and Kuwait) if it wanted to!
I think that the bottom line is clear: Iran can inflict unacceptable damage upon any party attacking it. Furthermore, and unlike having “a few” nukes, Iran has hundreds (or even thousands) of cruise missile and ballistic missiles, and you can bet that they are well distributed and well protected, as shown by this short video released by the IRGC and posted by the FARS news agency:
and that means that a disarming first strike against Iran is not possible.
There are two basic ways to respond to an attack: denial and punishment. In the first case, you have the means to deny your enemy his attack, this is what happened when the Syrians intercepted almost all the cruise missiles fired by the US. Punishment is when you cannot prevent an enemy attack, but you do have the means to inflict unacceptable damage in retaliation.
The key notion here is “unacceptable damage”.
What do you think constitutes “unacceptable damage” to the (terminally hedonistic) Israelis?
What do you think would be “unacceptable damage” to the KSA, or the world markets (especially oil)?
What about “unacceptable damage” in terms of losses for CENTCOM?
And, finally, what do you think “unacceptable damage” means to the Iranians?
There is such a huge asymmetry in how the parties to this conflict see “unacceptable damage” that it largely compensates for the asymmetry in force. Yes, sure, the US+Israel are more powerful than Iran (well, not Israel really, but Israel hiding behind the back of the US forces) but Iran is far more capable of absorbing devastating attacks than either the US or Israel.
Finally, in my last post I offered a definition of what constitutes success or failure for Iran: “anything which makes it easier for the US to remain in the Middle-East is a victory for the Empire and anything which makes it harder for the US to remain in the Middle-East is a victory for the rest of the planet.”
At this point my personal opinion is that the way the Iranians conducted their first anti-Empire operation is nothing short of brilliant: they achieved a truly phenomenal result with very little means and, most importantly, without forcing the Empire to counter-attack.
Has the US-Iran war really begun? Yes, I think so. In fact, it began in 1979, but now it has reached a qualitatively new level. The outcome of that war is absolutely evident to me. The cost, however, is not.
This war has relatively cooled down, but that is an illusion and we should most definitely not take our eyes off the situation in the Middle-East: expect the initiation of asymmetrical anti-US operations very soon.
In the interest of understanding recent events, we have quickly put together a partial timeline of US-Iran relations, beginning in 1953 through the present. This is a quick, somewhat cursory timeline, but we feel it’s important that a general outline become available as soon as possible.
Many thousands of American families are heavily invested in the situation – according to U.S. Central Command, between 60,000 and 70,000 U.S. troops are currently in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
* 1800s to 1951: Relations between the US and Iran began in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Initially, while Iran was very wary of British and Russian colonial interests, it viewed the United States as a more trustworthy great power.
During World War II Iran was invaded by Britain and the Soviet Union, both US allies, but relations with the US continued to be positive. This changed in 1953:
* 1953: UK and US orchestrated a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh.
Mossadegh had denied the British further involvement in Iran’s oil industry. Britain then appealed to the US for help, which eventually led the CIA to orchestrate the overthrow of Mossadegh and restore power to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.
The Shah became known for “his autocratic rule, corruption in his government, the unequal distribution of oil wealth, forced Westernization, and the activities of SAVAK (the secret police) in suppressing dissent and opposition to his rule.”
SAVAK had been formed in 1957 under the guidance of US and Israeli intelligence officers.
Today’s Iranian Supreme Leader was one of those tortured in a Savak prison.
* In 1979 the Shah was overthrown by a popular revolution. He then traveled to the US, which had supported him.
The rebels eventually converted the form of government from a monarchy to an elected government based on a strict interpretation of Islam: The Islamic Republic of Iran. This was a backlash against the authoritarian Shah’s forced westernization and denigration of the traditional religion (more on the revolution & aftermath here and here and here).
* The new Iranian government begins its support of Palestinian rights against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Muslim and Christian inhabitants of what had originally been called Palestine.
* Iran also supports Hezbollah, armed resistance groups in Lebanon against Israel’s invasions of Lebanon.
Ha’aretz: Iran’s mentoring of Hezbollah’s insurgency of the 1980s and 1990s forced Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon.
* Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in the US – which plays a major role in US Mideast policies – has opposed Iran ever since the new Iranian government was created.
The Oded Yinon plan (“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East) provides some information on the Israeli role through the years in destabilizing many countries in the Middle East.
* Since the Shah’s regime had tortured many dissidents, his victims wanted him to return to Iran to face justice, but the US would not extradite him. Iranian students then seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took hostage more than 50 Americans, demanding the extradition of the shah in return for the hostages’ release. Extradition was refused and the hostages were held for 444 days.
* Washington then froze about $12 billion in Iranian assets, including bank deposits, gold, and other properties. Most of those were released in 1981 as part of the Reagan release deal.
* Some assets—Iranian officials say $10 billion, but US officials say much less—remain frozen, pending resolution of legal claims arising from the Revolution. The money that the Obama administration returned to Iran as part of the JCPOA agreement was Iran’s own money.
* The next year, in September 1980, Iraq launched a war against Iran that lasted until 1988. The death toll was an estimated 1 million for Iran and 250,000-500,000 for Iraq.
U.S. officials later acknowledged that American arms, technology and intelligence helped Iraq kill Iranians and avert defeat and eventually grow, with much help from the Soviet Union later, into a major regional power.
* The administrations of Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous “dual-use” items, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax.
* In 1988 a US Navy ship shot down a commercial Iranian airliner, killing 290 men, women, and children. The Pentagon at first denied it was involved, and then said it was an accident.
* in 1992, Netanyahu told the Israeli Knesset that Iran was “three to five years” away from reaching nuclear weapons capability, and that this threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the U.S.”
* In 1996 Israel’s Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress and claimed that Iran was getting “extremely close” to getting nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu makes this claim again and again in the coming years.
* After the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan and attacked the Taliban. Iran assisted the US in this fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, with Soleimani playing a major role.
Earlier, the U.S. had supported Islamic forces against the Soviet Union, which the Carter administration had drawn into invading Afghanistan.
* In 2002 Israel began a campaign claiming, falsely, that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.
This campaign has continued and escalated through the years, as documented here.
• In 2003 the US invaded Iraq based on what turned out to be a false claim that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.”
The invasion was promoted by Israel and its partisans. As a result, 5,000 Americans died and approximately 288,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians. The unprovoked invasion and occupation, including the Abu Ghraib atrocities, destabilized the region and fueled the rise of extremism that led to ISIS.
Iran has been in the forefront of fighting ISIS. General Soleimani led this. At times, the US and Iran cooperated in this fight.
* The US, under the influence of the Israel lobby, supports Israeli actions. Over the years, it labels resistance fighters “terrorists” and condemns Iran’s support of Palestinian rights.
The pro-Israel lobby in the US has long been working against Iran in order to improve Israel’s strategic position. In 2004 AIPAC officials stole US Defense Dept secrets, intending to channel them to the Washington Post to convince Americans that it was time for troops fighting in Iraq to pivot to Iran. (It is not rare for the Post to be used by Israel partisans.)
* In 2007, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad quoted an old saying of Ayatollah Khomeini calling for ‘this occupation regime over Jerusalem” – meaning Israel – to “vanish from the page of time.” (As Juan Cole explains, many mistranslated his words as “wiped off the face of the map.”)
* Israel and its partisans continue to claim (as they have since 1991) that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. US intelligence find no evidence for the claim.
One was the 32 year old deputy head of Iran’s uranium enrichment facility. He was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was married with a young son. He wasn’t armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.
Another was a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter’s nursery.It appears that another had been murdered in 2007. A US Senator, Rick Santorum, called the murders “a wonderful thing.”
* February 2015 Supreme Leader Khamenei condemns ISIS beheading Christians, tweeting: “We don’t forget how much Iranian #Christians have taken pains to render services & some of them have martyred in Saddam’s war against #Iran.” He advised Muslims to help Christians in need while extolling what he said was the Islamic Republic of Iran’s equal treatment of people of different faiths.
* In January 2015 Khamenei publishes “Letter to Western Youth” on his official website. It is major news in Iran. In November he publishes a second one. They include the statement:
“… The pain of any human being anywhere in the world causes sorrow for a fellow human being. The sight of a child losing his life in the presence of his loved ones, a mother whose joy for her family turns into mourning…… Anyone who has benefited from affection and humanity is affected and disturbed by witnessing these scenes- whether it occurs in France or in Palestine or Iraq or Lebanon or Syria…. The issue, however, is that if today’s pain is not used to build a better and safer future, then it will just turn into bitter and fruitless memories…
U.S. media ignore the letters.
* In July 2015, the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” a detailed, 159-page agreement is reached by Iran and the P5+1 (China France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) aimed at halting Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program.
Nevertheless, Iran signs the agreement, giving up many rights in an attempt to diminish US-Israeli sanctions.
* Both Democrats and Republicans repeat the Israel-promoted false claim that Iran is the top sponsor of “terror.”
Recent events
Much of the following is excerpted from an Al Jazeera timeline, with a number of additions from diverse other sources (sources are provided in embedded links):
* Trump makes good on an election campaign promise, announcing on May 8, 2018 that the US is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA).
Trump’s action is influenced by pro-Israel multi-billionaire campaign donors Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus.
Adelson once said he regretted that he had served in the US army instead of in the Israeli military.
* In response, Iran calls this “unacceptable” and says it will bypass Washington and negotiate with the deal’s other remaining signatories: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia and China.
* May 21 Trump administration makes 12 demands, which Iran rejects.
* US on August 7 reimposes the first round of sanctions on Iran, originally lifted as part of the nuclear deal. They prohibit trade with a number of business sectors – from aviation and carpets to pistachios and gold.
* On November 5, the US announces a new round of sanctions, this time specifically targeting the key oil and banking sectors.
2019
* In March the US Treasury Department, under Israel partisan Steven Mnuchin, blacklisted 25 Iranian businesses and individuals.
[The individual under Mnuchin in charge of US actions regarding Iran is an Israeli citizen.]
Pro-Israel organizations had lobbied for the creation of this branch of the Treasury.
* On April 2, Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said: “I can announce today, based on declassified US military reports, that Iran is responsible for the deaths of 608 American service members. This accounts for 17 percent of all deaths of US personnel in Iraq from 2003 to 2011.”
Navy Commander Sean Robertson followed up with an email to media outlets pushing that same line. When author Gareth Porter asked Robertson for further clarification of the origins of that figure, however, Robertson “acknowledged that the Pentagon doesn’t have any study, documentation, or data to provide journalists that would support such a figure.”
* On April 8, Trump announces he is designating a powerful arm of the Iranian military, the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization.
It is the first time Washington has formally labelled another country’s military a “terrorist group.” The designation imposes wide-ranging economic and travel sanctions on the IRGC that will go into effect on April 15.
* Responding to the move, Iran immediately declares the US a “state sponsor of terrorism” and calls Washington’s forces in the region “terrorist groups.”
* On May 5, Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton announces the US is sending an aircraft carrier strike group and Air Force bombers to the Middle East “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings”.
* On May 8, Iransays it is preparing to increase enriched uranium and heavy water production as part of its decision to stop certain commitments made under the nuclear deal. (Iran continues to emphasize that it is NOT developing nuclear weapons, which are banned by a religious edict from its Supreme Leader.)
* Trump announces new measures against Iran’s steel and mining sectors.
* On May 12, the United Arab Emirates says four commercial ships off the coast of Fujairah, one of the world’s largest bunkering hubs, “were subjected to sabotage operations”.
The UAE did not name a suspect and there were no claims of responsibility. Unnamed US officials identified Iran as a prime suspect. But the officials offered no proof to back the claim.
Iranian officials expressed concern, saying the alleged attacks could have been carried out by third parties to stir up conflict between Washington and Tehran during the heightened tensions.
The US’s “maximum pressure” campaign had triggered an economic crisis in Iran.
* Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are locked in a long-running war with a Saudi-UAE-led military coalition, launch drone attacks on Saudi Arabia on May 14, striking a major oil pipeline and taking it out of service.
* Two days later, Riyadh, a key US ally, blames Iran for the attack.
* The US and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of arming the Houthis.
* Tehran denies the claim.
* On May 19, a rocket lands near the US embassy in Baghdad. No one is harmed.
It is not clear who is behind the attack, but Trump tweets: “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif responds by tweeting that Trump had been “goaded” into “genocidal taunts”.
* After meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who offers to broker dialogue between Washington and Tehran, Trump says on May 27 the US is “not looking for regime change” in Iran.
* On June 12, Abe arrives in Tehran in a bid to mediate between the US and Iran.
* Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei refuses to meet with him, saying: “I don’t consider Trump as a person worthy of exchanging messages with. I have no response for him and will not answer him.”
* On June 13, with Abe still in Iran, a Japanese and a Norwegian tanker come under “attack” in the Gulf of Oman, according to the Norwegian maritime authority and the Japanese shipowner.
Iran speaks initially of “accidents” and says it rescued 44 crew. Zarif calls tanker “attacks” during Abe’s visit “suspicious”.
* On June 17, the Pentagon authorizes the deployment of 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East.
* On the same date, Iran says it is 10 days away from surpassing the limits set by the nuclear deal on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium.
* Iran says it can reverse the move if the deal’s European signatories step in and make an effort to circumvent US sanctions.
* On June 20, Iranian forces shoot down a US military drone.
Both countries confirm the incident but offer diverging accounts about the location of the aircraft.
The US says it was flying above international waters, while Iran says the drone was flying in Iranian airspace.
* On June 21, Trump says he called off a military strike on Iran the night before, which was intended as retaliation against Tehran for the downing of the unmanned US drone.
Trump says he did so 10 minutes before the planned attack because of potential casualties, saying it was “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone”.
Trump says a US strike could have killed 150 people, and signals he is open to talks with Tehran.
* On June 22, Iran says it is ready to respond firmly to any US threat against it.
“We will not allow any violation against Iran’s borders. Iran will firmly confront any aggression or threat by America,” Abbas Mousavi, foreign ministry spokesman, says.
* On the same day, Iran orders the execution of a “defence ministry contractor” convicted of spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency,
* The US vows to impose fresh sanctions, adding that military action was still “on the table.”
* On June 25, Trump signs an order targeting Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and associates with additional financial sanctions
“Sanctions imposed through the executive order … will deny the supreme leader and the supreme leader’s office, and those closely affiliated with him and the office, access to key financial resources and support,” the US president says.
* Responding to the announcement, Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, tweets that hawkish politicians close to Trump were thirsty for war rather than diplomacy.
Rouhani dismisses the sanctions as “outrageous and idiotic”, adding that Tehran’s “strategic patience” should not be mistaken for fear.
* On June 29, the US Air Forces Central Command says in a statement that F-22 Raptor stealth fighters are being deployed in the region “to defend American forces and interests”.
* On July 1, Iran exceeds the limit on the amount of enriched uranium in its stockpile set out in the nuclear deal.
Zarif says the accumulation of more enriched uranium than permitted under the deal is not a violation of the pact.
* On July 4, British Royal Marines, police and customs agents in Gibraltar seize a supertanker accused of carrying Iranian crude oil to Syria in breach of European Union sanctions.
The Grace 1 vessel was boarded on Thursday when it slowed down in a designated area used by shipping agencies to ferry goods to ships in the UK territory along Spain’s southern coast.
* On July 8, Iran passes the uranium enrichment cap set in the nuclear deal, the second time in a week that it makes good on a promise to reduce compliance with the accord.
* On July 12, police in Gilbraltar arrest the captain and chief officer of an Iranian tanker that was seized by British forces the previous week.
* On July 19, the IRGC says its forces have seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Stena Impero tanker “was confiscated by the Revolutionary Guards at the request of Hormozgan Ports and Maritime Organisation when passing through the Strait of Hormuz, for failing to respect international maritime rules”, the force says in its official website.
* On July 25, the UK announces the country’s warships will escort all British-flagged vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, a change in policy that takes place amid rising tensions in the Gulf.
* On August 1, the US imposes sanctions on Zarif for acting on behalf of Ali Khamenei.
“Javad Zarif implements the reckless agenda of Iran’s Supreme Leader, and is the regime’s primary spokesperson around the world,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says in a statement.
* Zarif brushes off the move on Twitter, saying it indicates Washington saw him as a “threat”.
“It has no effect on me or my family, as I have no property or interest outside of Iran,” he says.
* On August 23, Rouhani inducts a locally built air-defence system into the country’s missile defense network at an unveiling ceremony in Tehran.
Iran began production after the purchase of Russia’s S-300 system was suspended in 2010 due to international sanctions that have barred it from importing many weapons.
Speaking at the ceremony, Rouhani says the mobile surface-to-air system was “better than S-300 and close to [more advanced] S-400”.
* On August 26, Iran’s top diplomat holds talks with France’s President Emmanuel Macron at the sidelines of a G7 summit following a surprise invite to the gathering in Biarritz.
“Iran’s active diplomacy in pursuit of constructive engagement continues,” Zarif says. “Road ahead is difficult. But worth trying.”
On the same day, Iran says it has sold 2.1m barrels of crude oil on board the tanker that was seized in Gibraltar the previous month, adding that the vessel’s new owner will decide on its next destination.
* On August 30, the UN says Iran is still exceeding limitations set by its nuclear deal with world powers, increasing its stock of enriched uranium and refining it to a greater purity than allowed in the agreement.
The quarterly report from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency confirms Iran is progressively backing out of the pact in retaliation for the US’s withdrawal from the accord and the subsequent renewal of sanctions that have hit Iranian oil sales.
* On September 3, the US imposes sanctions on Iran’s civilian space agency and two research organizations, saying they were being used to advance Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
The measures imposed by the US Department of the Treasury target the Iran Space Agency, Iran Space Research Center and the Astronautics Research Institute.
* On September 4, the US turns up the economic pressure on Iran, blacklisting an oil shipping network that Washington alleges is directed by the IRGC.
The blacklisted group of firms, ships and individuals stands accused by the US Treasury of breaching sanctions by supplying Syria with oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
* The Trump administration, meanwhile, says it will not accommodate a proposal by France to throw a financial lifeline to Tehran.
* The US offers several million dollars to the Indian captain of an Iranian oil tanker suspected of heading to Syria, the State Department confirms.
The Financial Timesreportson September 5 that Brian Hook, the State Department point man on Iran, [who spoke at the 2019 AIPAC conference and the American Jewish Committee conference] has sent emails to captain Akhilesh Kumar in which he offered “good news” of millions in US cash to live comfortably if he steered the Adrian Darya 1, formerly known as Grace 1, to a country where it could be seized. (Captain Kumar rejected the offer.)
* On September 7, Iran starts injecting gas into advanced centrifuges to increase its stockpile of enriched uranium and warns time is running out for the nuclear deal’s other signatories to save the landmark pact.
Spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi says Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation has started up advanced centrifuges at the enrichment facility in Natanz, the third step by Tehran in scaling back its commitments under the crumbling pact following Washington’s withdrawal.
* Trump on September 10 announces via Twitter that he has fired Bolton, his national security adviser, saying he has “strongly disagreed” with many of his hawkish positions.
Bolton’s sacking is reportedly linked to a fundamental disagreement over the possible easing of US sanctions on Iran.
* On September 14, Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim responsibility for drone attacks on two major Saudi Aramco oil facilities: Abqaiq – the world’s largest oil processing plant – and the Khurais oilfield, in eastern Saudi Arabia. The pre-dawn strikes knock out more than half of crude output from the world’s top exporter.
* Pompeo swiftly blames Iran, saying it “has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply”.
* Iran dismisses the “meaningless” US allegations, saying they were meant to justify actions against the country.
* Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York, Trump on September 24 lashes out at Iran and calls countries around the world to tighten the economic noose around it.
“One of the greatest security threats facing peace-loving nations today is the repressive regime in Iran,” he says.
* Human Rights Watch finds that US sanctions are threatening Iranians’ health.
* In October Trump called the Iraq war “the single worst mistake this country has ever made” and said: “These wars, they never end. And we have to bring our great soldiers back from the never-ending wars.”
* The US on November 4 imposed new sanctions on the inner circle of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, including one of his sons.
The US Treasury said that the nine people sanctioned included Khamenei’s chief of staff, the head of the judiciary and senior military figures. It said it also blacklisted Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff.
* Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi described the sanctions as “a sign of the desperation and inability of this regime in benefiting from a diplomatic and logical approach” to important international issues, according to the official IRNA news agency.
* Iran on November 6, began the process of injecting uranium gas into centrifuges at the underground Fordow facility.
* A US-led naval coalition officially launched operations in Bahrain on November 7 to protect shipping in the troubled waters of the Gulf, following a string of attacks that Washington and its allies blamed on Iran.
* Iran, which denied any responsibility for the mystery attacks, put forward its own proposals for boosting Gulf security that pointedly excluded outside powers.
* Iran’s state news agency IRNA says air defence forces shot down an “unknown” drone on November 8.
* The United States Central Command released a statement later that Friday saying that the downed drone was not one of theirs, and that all military drones were accounted for.
* Unrest in Iran erupted on November 15 after the government abruptly raised fuel prices by as much as 300 percent.
Iranian forces reportedly kill several hundred protestors. Iran denies this.
* The US on November 22 imposed sanctions on Iran’s communications minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi for his role in “widespread censorship”.
* Addressing thousands of demonstrators in the capital, General Hossein Salami on November 25 accused the US, the United Kingdom, Iraq and Saudi Arabia of stoking unrest in the country.
* The official news agency IRNA reported on November 27 that Iranian security agents arrested at least eight people linked to the CIA during deadly unrest over petrol price increases.
* The Pentagon on December 4 denied a report that the US was weighing sending up to 14,000 more troops to the Middle East to confront a perceived threat from Iran.
* A US Navy warship seized advanced missile parts on December 4 believed to be linked to Iran from a boat it had stopped in the Arabian Sea.
* In a rare act of cooperation, Iran and the US on December 7 exchanged prisoners.
Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born US citizen held in Iran since 2016, was exchanged for Massoud Soleimani, an Iranian scientist detained in the US.
* On December 11, the US Treasury imposed new sanctions on Iran’s biggest airline and its shipping industry, accusing them of transporting lethal aid to Yemen.
* On December 19, the US announced that it would restrict visas for Iranian officials for their alleged roles in suppressing peaceful protests and imposed sanctions on two Iranian judges.
The sanctions imposed by the Treasury froze any assets the two judges have in the US, and barred US citizens from dealing with them.
* On December 27, a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk killed a US contractor and wounded several US service members and Iraqi personnel.
In its statement confirming the attack, the US-led coalition against ISIL (the ISIS group) did not specify who might be responsible, but US officials later blamed Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia, for the attack.
* Two days later – on December 29 – the US military carried out “defensive strikes” on sites in Iraq and Syria belonging to Kataib Hezbollah that Washington said were in retaliation for the killing of the US contractor.
* Iraqi security and militia sources said at least 25 fighters were killed and 55 others wounded following the air attacks in Iraq on Sunday.
* Iran strongly condemned the attacks, with a government spokesman saying: “America has shown its firm support for terrorism and its neglect for the independence and sovereignty of countries and it must accept consequences for its illegal act.”
* On December 31, enraged members and supporters of pro-Iranian paramilitary groups in Iraq broke into the heavily fortified US embassy compound in Baghdad, smashing a main door and setting parts of its perimeter on fire.
* On January 2, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said there were “some indications” that Iran or groups it supports “may be planning additional attacks” on US interests in the Middle East.
* On January 3, in a predawn air raid at Iraq’s Baghdad airport, the US struck and killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, or PMF.
According to Iraq’s prime minister, Soleimani had arrived to ease tensions in the region, after Trump had asked the prime minister to help mediate.
Trump notified Israel ahead of time, but did not notify the US Congress. … Israeli security officials had recommended the assassination of Suleimani last year.
Former top US intelligence officials point out that Israel is the country that most benefits from hostilities between Iran and the US. Others, also, feel Israel was connected to why Trump, who had a few months ago opposed Mideast wars, authorized the assassination.
Pompeo said Soleimani was planning an “imminent” attack on Americans, but did not supply the evidence for this.
* The Iraqi prime minister and parliament condemn the attack and demand the US forces leave Iraq.
Trump threatens major sanctions against Iraq if that occurs. (Previous US sanctions against Iraq had cost the lives of a million Iraqis, half of them children.)
* On January 5th, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah declared that the assassination of Soleimani was a “turning point in the history of the region,” and that the US would receive a “just punishment” for the crime. He specified that the target would not be American citizens, but the military.
*Iran threatens retaliation.
Soleimani had been widely respected throughout Iran; a million mourners turn out. Analysts around the world are concerned that this escalation will result in major violence.
President Trump tweets that if Iran harms any Americans, he will attack Iranian cultural sites.
While Secretary of State Pompeo had claimed the action would make Americans “safer,” on January 4th the government issued a security alert.
This reportedly marks the first time that today’s Iranian government has directly struck U.S. military or other state targets and acknowledged doing so.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted: “Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of U.N. Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched.”
IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh Thursday briefed the media outlets on the Iranian missile strike on US military base in Iraq, stressing that it managed to undermine US awe.
General Hajizadeh stressed that since WWII there has not been any attack on a US target that keeps unanswered, adding that Iran managed to eradicate this horror formula.
General Hajizadeh pointed out that the Iranian forces fired 13 missiles at Ain Al-Asad base and had been able to fire hundreds of others had the US forces responded.
The Iranian missiles hit the command chamber and positions used to prepare the combat helicopters at the US base, according to General Hajizadeh, who added that Iran decided to strike the US base in Iraq that is the largest and the farthest from the Iranian border.
“Unlike the Americans, we are not criminals; we could have struck the dormitory areas of the US troops at Ain Al-Asad base and killed 500 of them had we decided that.”
General Hajizadeh stressed that the missile strike left US human losses, adding that nine jets moved the injured US soldiers to the Zionist entity.
General Hajizadeh emphasized that the US existence in the region is in danger, calling on Washington to learn from what happened and start a voluntarily withdrawal.
General Hajizadeh addressed the Gulf countries, reiterating that the US forces may never protect them.
“The Iranian forces planned to strike the US bases in the Gulf countries.”
General Hajizadeh stressed that the assassination of General Suleimani will cause a tsunami that will expel the US forces from the region.
On January 3, a US drone attack targeted a vehicular convoy for the head of the IRGC Al-Quds Force General Qassem Suleimani and the deputy chief of Hasd Shaabi Committee Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, claiming both of them in addition to a number of their companions.
On January 8, the Iranian rocketry forces responded by firing 13 ballistic missiles at the US military base of Ain Al-Asad in Iraq’s Anbar, causing heavy losses upon it.
Just like that, it was over. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called it ‘a kerfuffle’. A letter was sent to their Iraqi peers that the U.S was repositioning troops out of Iraq in accordance with legislation from Iraq ending the U.S military presence in the war-torn country, and suddenly then it was retracted by higher-ups. Running interference, Mark Esper backed Milley and said it was ‘an honest mistake’. It all went down within a day of the irrational assassination of Iran’s Soleimani.
The immediate termination of Chewning and Sweeney, at the same time as the assassination of Soleimani and Iran’s response raises some big questions. In the near future it will be of critical importance to get to the bottom of any possible relationship that Esper and his subordinates Chewning and Sweeney – who both served as Defense Secretary Esper’s Chiefs of Staff – had to the assassination of Soleimani. The assassination and any number of possible Iranian responses, can push the U.S into a broad and open military conflict with Iran. Such a war would also be Trump’s undoing.
We might otherwise be led to believe that Chewning and Sweeney’s sudden departure has something to do with Ukraine and the recent release of unredacted emails relating to L3Harris Technologies and funding in Ukraine. These of course also relate to the case against Trump and any possible impeachment. But the timing and symbolism of these as concurrent with the provocation against Iran and the blowback, as well as Esper’s backing of the ‘Kerfuffle theory’, lends strong credence to an Iran connection.
The connection to impeachment cannot be denied, but the necessity of uncovering its potential relation to Iran is tremendously important because it directly relates to larger constitutional and practical questions of the president’s ability to have a Department of Defense that works either for or against U.S strategy as formulated and executed by its democratically elected leadership, as opposed to its permanent bureaucratic administration. This is what Trump and his supporters quite rightfully refer to as the ‘Deep State’.
Were elements in the defense department working towards a heightened brinksmanship that the president did not really want? It would be far from the first time in history that such was the case.
Because the proverbial excrement rolls down-hill, was Esper involved in ordering Soleimani’s assassination which Trump was not informed of until it was too late, or until after? Chewning and Sweeney’s fate may be understood here. The ‘kerfuffle’ which was the withdrawal statement would then be a simple ruse to distract from the actual reasons that Chewning and Sweeney were terminated – acting without orders, insubordination, and even treason.
Trump’s Balancing Policy on Iran and America’s leadership crisis
One undeniable point is that a war with Iran works entirely against Trump’s middle-east policy and his prospects for re-election.
What the Trump administration seeks most now is a de-escalation with Iran. Given that Trump has fueled a rumor mill including the possible ending of sanctions if Iran doesn’t respond, or that there will be no further attacks if Iran’s response is ‘reasonable’, all exists in the unspoken framework that Trump inherently recognizes the ‘guilt’ of the U.S in its irrational act, while it is nevertheless politically impossible to frame it overtly as such.
Impeachment against Trump has now been used several times to push him to act aggressively in the middle-east, contrary to his policy and self-interest. On all the ‘impeachment threat – then strike’ occasions, Trump ordered strikes on predictable targets – targets so predictable and oddly executed, that Syrian and Iranian forces barely felt them. There appears to be at the very least an ‘unspoken communication’ at play, where strikes are made to assuage political needs but not to inflict serious damage. If Trump really wanted an excuse to strike Iran, he’s had it before.
There was precisely such an opportunity when subversives in government hatched a plan to push Trump into a war with Iran, when two planes were sent to violate Iranian airspace – one manned, the other unmanned – flying in close proximity. This created the chance that Iran’s downing of either plane could be used as a pretext for a major war-creating strike on Iran.
Despite Trump’s acting reasonably, government actors and media attempted to create a sensation where Trump was ridiculed for ‘calling off’ a planned retaliation in the aftermath of the downed drone. The same liberal media and Democratic Party establishment that attacked Trump’s de-escalation then from a hawkish perspective, today manifest as doves who suddenly oppose Trump’s reckless hawkishness.
Here, in the aftermath of the drone incident, a Trump policy was formulated – and it’s a policy that figures prominently in de-escalation in the aftermath of the assassination of Soleimani and Iran’s measured response.
The policy is this – if Iran kills Americans, then the U.S escalates. If the U.S does something provocative, then Iran is actually allowed to respond militarily, so long as American personnel are not killed.
Iran’s striking of the al-Asad airbase was predictable. That Trump has decided to officially declare that there were no U.S casualties has indicated his real stance. In all reality, the predictability of the target was such that American soldiers would have been repositioned out of that base, so that Iran could assuage its own popular-democratic needs in terms of legitimacy, without forcing the U.S. to respond again further.
Between an AIPAC rock and an Anti-War Hard-spot
A war with Iran would push the anti-war sentiments of independent voters away from Trump, and towards a more revitalized and mobilized Democrat Party anti-war base. Trump needs an anti-war base to be re-elected, and war with Iran pushes that base towards nearly any Democrat candidate.
At the same time, Trump also needs the continued support from America’s Christian Zionist evangelical ‘Israel Firsters’, as well as the infamous AIPAC, not only to be re-elected, but to maintain the support in the senate against impeachment.
That conflict between Trump’s two greatest populist strengths – between Trump’s anti-war base and his Christian Zionist base – largely defines his weakest political spot. That’s why it’s the best place to attack him.
Trump for his part, has a frenemy relationship with AIPAC, and has worked hard to build his profile with Christian Zionist voters even to the extent that this might limit AIPAC’s influence on them. He has purchased a lot of AIPAC support along the way by tearing up the JCPOA and recognizing the Golan Heights and Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This is capital he will have to spend to maintain support in the Senate.
All together this means that while Trump may or may not have personally sought the assassination of Soleimani, he must take credit for it for any number of reasons. In brief, these relate again to the Zionist base and AIPAC, as well as needing to appear in control of the very country that he is nominally the president of. When Trump refused to go to war over the downing of the un-manned drone, the liberal media monopoly accused him of being soft on Iran and indecisive.
Israel for its part is not tremendously happy with either of the two competing U.S policies. They have been pushing a ‘bomb Iran’ line for years, so that Israel’s conquest of Iraq may come to be. They are also not happy that the U.S presence in the region will come to an end. Trump may or may not have green-lit Soleimani’s assassination, but in either event its result will be the purchase of political capital that he can use towards ending the anti-ISIS campaign in Iraq. The reality is that the U.S is being pushed out either way. Soleimani’s assassination has only strengthened that resolve.
Simultaneously, the anti-war sentiment in the U.S. is one that both led to Trump’s election and can lead to Trump’s undoing. Americans love sabre rattling and posturing. They also hate war.
To wit, in the immediate aftermath of the Soleimani assassination, the well-known American communist group – the PSL – and its anti-war front organization ‘ANSWER’ have already received incredible donations from deep-pocketed Democrat Party sponsors at the local party level, to stage the first significant anti-war demonstration since the Bush presidency. While PSL/ANSWER members and activists have been laudable in their consistent opposition to all American wars for capital and empire, they only seem to magically receive the funds for permits, advertising, organizing, and staging anti-war marches when a Republican is president. The secondary slogan of these mobilizations was ‘Dump Trump’. ‘Dump Obama’ was never a slogan seen at the non-existent mass mobilizations against the Libyan, Ukrainian, and Syrian wars. Trump’s refusal to take the Democrat-laid war bait, means he can pull off an end-run around the Democrat and deep-state plot.
Democrats also don’t want war with Iran, they only want that Trump loses the anti-war vote. They can force him into these compromised positions by coordinating with the ‘permanent administrative military-intelligence bureaucracy’, by coordinating with AIPAC. The Democrat’s plan is therefore pretty simple: use impeachment to force him to strike at Iran (or get Trump to take credit for a strike that the deep-state pulled off), and then use that entanglement to tank his re-election prospects. Then Democrats ride in on an anti-war ticket, restart JCPOA, and move towards integrating Iranian elites into the EU economy. Israel could ultimately guarantee its piece of Iraq and its Greek pipeline deal in due course, with a reformed and EU friendly Iran, ready to make major compromises with Israel. Maybe this is what Biden means by ‘restorationist’ – restoring the traditional left/right political divide which has empowered the Atlanticist status quo.
A Backroom deal? Iran’s Measured Response and Trump’s face-saving
The successful attack on the US’s al-Asad airbase in Iraq was characterized by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei has characterized as a ‘slap’.
Interestingly, Khamenei’s language used is strategic, and uses a sleight of hand to take the steam from possible opponents. It is clear that Khamenei has said today that while the attack on the airbase is just a slap, and that Iran’s full response will come in the future, he has in fact set up that the solution will be political and diplomatic. He did so in a creative way which appeals to hardliners, saying that any solution could not simply be political and diplomatic, but rather more than this. This sort of double-speak does not reflect any moral lapsus, but is necessary for Iran’s greater geopolitical aims and serves the greater good.
De-escalation requires that both parties save face, and can come away with tangible minor victories and agree that the real underlying dispute is resolved in the future.
This reluctance to engage militarily is beyond the mere politics of justifying American casualties, but points to broader considerations of U.S power projection in the region in the aftermath of the failure of the Obama administration policy of overthrowing the government of Syria.
To understand the events at play requires a multi-dimensional and realist understanding of motivations and relationships, and how relationships work at the level of statecraft. And so in a way that would be popularly understood – as in Game of Thrones – just because you’re invited to the banquet or receive a high-honored appointment, doesn’t mean that are you indispensable or even a friend. Trump’s ‘GoT’ relationship with Israel and even his own cabinet, needless to say any number of Pentagon bosses, is precisely this. Bolton and Pompeo are such frenemies, as have been any number of ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ members of the Trump administration, more or less foisted and forced upon the chief executive by Trump’s opponents in the permanent administration and his partisan opposition, and within the Republican Party itself.
Did Trump make a backroom deal with Iran? Probably not – there was a high public dimension to Trump’s offers, and a recent history where an unspoken language was developed. Iran has demonstrated a high level of intelligence, restraint, intuition, and strategic thinking in its several thousand year-old civilization. There is no reason to think that they wouldn’t have understood and inferred everything explained in this article, and much more, without needing a direct conversation with Trump which no doubt would have led to yet another impeachment fandango.
Social media sang praises of would-be US President Hillary Clinton as actual President Donald Trump seemed headed for all-out war with Iran – even though Clinton had been a much more enthusiastic participant in US wars.
After Iranian missiles struck several US bases Tuesday night, #Resistance twitter wasted no time disavowing the administration they blamed for the hostilities, running into the arms of his arch-rival with the #IVotedforHillaryClinton hashtag.
But claiming Clinton was the less warlike of the two candidates, or would have steered the country away from war with Iran, requires a serious divergence from history. The former Secretary of State once told an interviewer that “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran.”
That was during her 2008 campaign, and in the middle of a discussion about Iran possibly attacking Israel. Perhaps her stance on the Islamic republic had softened a bit by 2016, enough to justify viewing her as the lesser of two Iran hawks?
Nope. The months leading up to that election saw her parroting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-old talking points about Iran “racing toward a nuclear capability,” expanding “secret facilities,” and “defying their international obligations” before she swept in with the nuclear deal and solved all the problems.
Except the deal was negotiated after she was replaced as the top US diplomat by John Kerry. Clinton was on the same side as Trump, demanding ever more sanctions even as the nuclear deal took effect, this time as punishment for Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Beyond interventionist Democrats, she was courted by a bevy of neocons who couldn’t stomach Trump’s anti-interventionist rhetoric. Inveterate warmongers like Robert Kagan and Richard Armitage swooned over the ex-First Lady.
In short order, the infamous clip of Clinton mocking the brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – “we came, we saw, he died” – resurfaced on twitter. The so-called “humanitarian” intervention in Libya was largely a creation of Clinton’s State Department, complete with risible wartime propaganda about Gaddafi handing out Viagra so his soldiers could better commit mass rapes, and the continued chaos in that once-advanced state remains a testament to what the region (or world) might look like under her watch.
She wanted a repeat performance in Syria, calling for – and thankfully not getting – a no-fly zone, even while admitting it would “kill a lot of Syrians.”
While Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton, he handily beat her in the Electoral College, which ultimately decides who occupies the White House. Despite her massive advantage in political experience, his promises to bring US troops home attracted significant support. Nearly four years later, however, the US is poised on the brink of a catastrophic expansion of its Forever War.
Israeli occupation forces have confiscated the only vehicle available to a medical team serving the needs of some 1,500 Palestinians in an isolated region of the southern West Bank, reported Haaretz.
According to the paper, this is the second time that the vehicle – which serves the residents of Masafer Yatta in the south Hebron hills – has been seized within a year, “cutting off healthcare to an isolated and impoverished population” living inside an Israeli military firing zone.
The medical team make weekly visits to the area’s Palestinian communities, which lie roughly one hour’s drive on dirt roads from the nearest town of Yatta. The jeep in question “is the only vehicle available for providing medical services to these communities”.
Last Thursday, Haaretz reported, Israeli occupation forces intercepted the medical team at Khirbet Al-Majaz, claiming that they were not allowed there “without prior coordination”. The patrol then impounded the jeep and held the medics for half an hour.
In February 2019 the vehicle was confiscated “under similar circumstances”, stated the paper, and only returned six months later after the medical team paid a 3,000 shekel ($865) fine. On that occasion, the team were unable to provide medical care for the entire six months.
The Israeli military commented that “the vehicle was impounded by supervisors at the Civil Administration since it was traveling in a fire zone, a forbidden area for vehicles by law”.
The Israeli military’s “Firing zone 918” was established in the 1980s, and the army has repeatedly sought to remove Palestinians from the area.
At long last, Fatou Bensouda, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has uttered the long-anticipated conclusion that “all the statutory criteria under the Rome statute for the opening of an investigation (into alleged war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories) have been met”.
Bensouda’s verdict has been in the making for a long time and should, frankly, have arrived much earlier. The ICC preliminary investigations into Israeli war crimes began back in 2015. Since then, many more such war crimes have been committed, while the international community persisted in its moral inertia.
The ICC statement, issued on December 20, asserted that the court saw “no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice”.
But can the “interest of justice” be served while the United States government continues to wield a massive stick, using its diplomatic, political and financial clout to ensure Israel emerges unscathed from its latest legal scuffle?
There is little doubt that Michael Lynk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory, is absolutely right: A formal ICC criminal investigation into war crimes in Palestine is a “momentous step forward in the quest for accountability”.
He is also correct in his assessment, published in the United Nations Human Rights Officer of the High Commissioner website, that “accountability has, until now, been largely missing in action throughout the 52-year-old occupation.”
I would go even further and expand the timeline of the missing accountability to include the two decades prior to the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Otherwise, how is one to account for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-48, the numerous massacres and other wanton killings that accompanied and followed those defining years, or the fact that Israel was never held accountable for its violations of international and humanitarian laws between 1948 and 1967?
That issue notwithstanding, the Palestinian Authority and all political parties in Palestine should exploit this unprecedented opportunity of holding Israel accountable.
As soon as the ICC issued its statement, news reports surfaced conveying a sense of “panic” in Israel. The Times of Israelreported that an Israeli government meeting to discuss the ICC decision was held shortly after, with the aim of considering a proper response, including the possibility of preventing ICC investigators from reaching Israel.
This is eerily familiar. Israel has denied entry to – or refused to cooperate with – international investigators and observers on many occasions in the past.
Following a UN planned investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in 2002, the Israeli government quickly moved, and, sadly, succeeded in blocking the investigation altogether.
It has done so time and again, often demonizing the very individuals entrusted with the mission of examining the illegality of Israel’s behavior in the context of international law. Well-respected judges and international law experts, such as Richard Goldstone, Richard Falk, and John Dugard, were vehemently attacked by Israeli officials and media and, by extension, by the US government and media as well.
Israel has managed to survive dozens of United Nations Resolutions and countless legal reports and indictments by the UN and all UN-affiliated organizations, largely because of blind and unequivocal American support, which has shielded Israeli war criminals from ever answering to their horrific actions in Palestine.
“Remember, it was (then-Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton who took pride in the fact that she personally killed the Goldstone Report,” said US author, Norman Finkelstein, in a recent interview with the news website Mondoweiss.
The Goldstone report was issued in the wake of the Israeli war on Gaza in 2009, dubbed ‘Operation Cast Lead’. The campaign of intimidation and pressure on Goldstone, personally, has forced the once-respected judge to retract his accusations of Israeli war crimes and the deliberate targeting of civilians.
While Clinton did her part in torpedoing the Goldstone Report, former US President, Barack Obama, according to Finkelstein, went to great lengths to “neutralize international law against settlements and other Israeli crimes in the occupied territories”.
Worse still, on September 14, 2016, Obama handed Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, himself accused of carrying out numerous war crimes against Palestinians, the largest US aid package to a foreign country in modern history, a whopping $38 billion over the course of ten years.
This is not a new phenomenon, where the US enables Israeli crimes and simultaneously shields Tel Aviv from any accountability for these crimes before the international community. All US administrations, whether Republican or Democrat, have honored the same sinister maxim, thus ensuring Israel, literally, gets away with murder.
A particular case in point was in 2001, when 28 Palestinian and Lebanese survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre attempted to try, in a Belgian court, late Israeli leader and accused war criminal, Ariel Sharon. Intense American pressures and a brazen intimidation campaign, targeting the Belgian government and the judicial system, resulted in the dismissal of the case in 2003. To deny Israel’s victims the opportunity to seek justice everywhere in the country, Belgium revised its very law, to the satisfaction of Israel and the United States.
The high level of the ICC investigations places the legal push against Israel at a whole new level. This is uncharted territory for Israel, the United States, Palestine, the ICC and the international community as a whole. There is little doubt that some joint Israeli-American effort is already underway to develop strategies aimed at countering if not altogether dismissing, the ICC investigation.
It is clear that justice for Palestinians in the face of Israeli aggression, itself fueled by unconditional American support, is not at all possible if it is not accompanied by regional and international unity, and a clear and decisive decision by all parties concerned that Israel, once and for all, must pay for its military occupation, racist apartheid laws, protracted siege on Gaza, and the many massacres in between.
Without this kind of international will, the ICC investigation could become another sad case of justice denied, a non-acceptable option for any justice-seeking individual, organization, and government anywhere in the world.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU).
Iran’s anticipated retaliation for the US assassination of Qassem Suleimani sent a clear signal to Donald Trump that while the current round of violence may be over, Iran stands ready to respond to any future US provocation.
Tehran warned Iraq to spare US soldiers
On Tuesday night, the Iranian nation buried the body of Qassem Soleimani, the charismatic senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer assassinated by the US this past week. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, that task completed, Soleimani’s IRGC comrades, acting on the orders of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, launched some 22 ballistic missiles from Iranian territory into neighboring Iraq, targeting the huge US air base Al Asad, in western Iraq, and the US consulate in the city of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan.
In the hours following the announcement of these attacks, which were broadcast on Iranian television for the Iranian people, the world held its breath, waiting for the results. Shortly after the missiles were launched, Iran signaled its desire for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis through a tweet sent out by its Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, who described the attacks as “proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter.” Zarif concluded by noting that “We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.”
The ultimate decision to deescalate, however, was not Iran’s to make. War is not a one-way street, and the enemy always gets a vote. However, in launching its missile attack on US targets in Iraq, Iran appeared to go out of its way to signal that it considered the matter of retaliation for the assassination of Soleimani closed. First and foremost, Iran communicated its intent to strike US targets in Iraq directly to the Iraqi Prime Minister a full two hours prior to the missiles being launched; Iraq then shared this information with US military commanders, who were able to ensure all US troops were in hardened shelters at the time of the attack.
Showing off its new-gen ballistic missiles
But the most important aspect of Iran’s actions was the way its missiles were targeted. For years now, Iran has made significant strides in terms of the reliability, range and accuracy of its ballistic missile force. Gone are the days when Iran’s arsenal consisted solely of inaccurate Soviet-era SCUD missiles.
The missile attack on the US incorporated new, advanced missiles—the Qaim 1 and Fahad-110—possessing advanced guidance and control capable of pinpoint precision. Iran had used these weapons previously, striking targets inside Syria affiliated with the Islamic State. But this was the first time these weapons had been used against the US. From the US perspective, the results were sobering. The Iranian missile attacks resulted in no casualties among US, Iraqi or coalition forces stationed in either Al Asad or Erbil. But the lack of lethality, however, is actually Tehran’s way of proving the accuracy of its ballistic missiles.
Commercial satellite images of the Al Asad air base taken after the attack show that the Iranian missiles struck buildings containing equipment with a precision previously only thought possible by advanced powers such as the US, NATO, Russia and China. Iran fired 17 missiles at Al Asad, and 15 hit their targets (two missiles failed to detonate).
Iran also fired five additional missiles at the US consulate in Erbil; US commanders on the ground said that it appeared Iran deliberately avoided striking the consulate, but in doing so sent a clear signal that had it wanted, the consulate would have been destroyed.
Trump had to back down
This was the reality that President Trump had to wrestle with when addressing the American people regarding the state of hostilities between the US and Iran.
Trump had previously promised a massive retaliation should Iran attack any US personnel or facilities. Surrounded by his national security team, Trump had to back down from that threat, knowing full well that if he were to attack Iran, the Iranian response would be devastating for both the US and its regional allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The US might be able to inflict unimaginable devastation on Iran, but the cost paid would be unacceptably high.
Trump’s rhetoric was aggressive, however, and his message made it clear that the US still considered Iran to be a rogue state whose pursuit of nuclear technology, ballistic missiles, and regional dominance would be opposed by the US, with force if necessary. But the Iranian missile attack drove home the new reality that, when it came to Iran’s actions in the Persian Gulf, American Presidential rhetoric no longer held sway as it once did.
Ali Khamenei, the Iranian Supreme Leader, drove this point home in a series of tweets claiming to have “slapped” the US in the face for its assassination of Soleimani, emphasizing that the policies pursued by Soleimani seeking the withdrawal of the US from the Persian Gulf region were becoming a reality, citing the recent vote by the Iraqi parliament to evict all foreign troops, including those of the US, from its soil.
President Trump, in his address to the American people, certainly talked the talk when it came to articulating a strong anti-Iranian policy. The real question is whether Trump and the American people are prepared to walk the walk, especially in a world where Iranian missiles are capable of dealing death and destruction on a scope and scale previously unimaginable.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
The silence is deafening. The lack of response from U.S. allies around the world to President Trump’s assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani tells you things have fundamentally changed.
Normally when something like this happens the US has all of its allies lined up with statements at the ready. A gaggle of the usual suspects behind lecterns pledging support replete with the requisite hand-wringing and virtue signaling.
That didn’t happen this time. Only arm-twisting by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cajoled a few lukewarm responses from European allies stunned by Trump’s violations of International Law and escalation of hostilities.
It’s clear Trump stunned them into silence.
Because they know the world is more dangerous today than it was a week ago.
Pompeo’s whining that no one believed the White House’s ludicrous talking point that this strike was done to prevent a war rather than start one, betray epic levels of fatuousness.
But, make no mistake, Miracle Whip Mike got everything he wanted here.
The strategic errors the Trump Administration has piled up over the past twenty months since abandoning the JCPOA have reached a breaking point, especially with Europe.
Europe has taken the brunt of Trump’s belligerence with Iran and Russia.
Their businesses have suffered. Their energy security is threatened. The neocons have humiliated them and treated them like chattle. And to this point Europe’s leadership has been up to the task playing the part.
It’s obvious the Necons’ policy is to leverage Trump’s America Uber Alles mentality to get everything they want to subjugate Russia, China and Iran.
Trump’s instincts are the right ones, avoiding open warfare. Substituting economic leverage for tanks in the streets is still war, however.
Just because you don’t define it as war doesn’t mean it isn’t war.
Trump’s mistakes come from his believing sanctions are legitimate tools of terror, while simultaneously holding that Soleimani’s tools are not.
And that can no longer be an excuse to absolve him of the strategic and tactical errors he’s manipulated into by his staff or takes upon himself.
Pompeo’s whining about Europe betrays a solipsism and narcissism that reflects Trump’s madness and frustration. No amount of pressure on Iran seems to get the desired results.
He sees their attacks on US troops as personal affronts and thinks raising his threats to existential levels will finally make people see he’s serious.
Iran knew he was serious three years ago. It didn’t deter them. If anything, their discretion in the face of open hostility only emboldened Trump to go farther.
But now he’s just a madman with nukes, being pulled by betrayal, frustration, anger and fear towards making even more dangerous decisions than the ones he’s already made.
Because, when you realize that Soleimani was in Baghdad to deliver Iran’s opening terms for a negotiated peace with Saudi Arabia, this attack was a blunder.
When you further realize that Soleimani was there at Trump’s behest with Iraqi Prime Minister Mahdi as broker, this attack looks like patently insane.
The information that #Iran Qassem Soleimani had an appointment with the PM in Baghdad and came to #Iraq to meet him the next day with established appointment, following a request of Trump for mediation, has been read to all MPs today by the #Iraq/i PM himself. pic.twitter.com/IoELuzm4ag
Soleimani was in Baghdad to begin the peace process, again, at Trump’s request. He was uniquely positioned within the Iranian government to handle said negotiations because of his position as head of the IRGC Quds Forces.
If he brought these terms to the table, the militias and proxies he trained and tacitly commands would take them far more seriously than if they were brought by President Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani represents, to them, the failed diplomacy that led to the current crisis, thinking the US would honor their deals.
So, the meeting between Soleimani and the Iraqi Prime Minister would have been a major opportunity for peace.
Remember what both Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have said about the US It is ‘not agreement capable.’ Any deal made with the US government or military will be broken at the earliest possible opportunity to further its goals.
So, now the question is why did this happen? What’s the rationale here?
A New York Timesarticle detailed the situation in the White House in the days leading up to Trump’s decision. It reads like a Pentagon whitewash of its role in creating the atmosphere which led to Soleimani’s death.
It paints the picture of a president sinking into madness as the “attacks” on the US Embassy in Baghdad unfolded.
It tries to deflect all the blame onto Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were two of the most hawkish voices arguing for a response to Iranian aggression, according to administration officials. Mr. Pence’s office helped run herd on meetings and conference calls held by officials in the run-up to the strike.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and General Milley declined to comment for this article, but General Milley’s spokeswoman, Col. DeDe Halfhill, said, without elaborating, that “some of the characterizations being asserted by other sources are false” and that she would not discuss conversations between General Milley and the president.
But the big takeaway from this article isn’t just that the Pentagon is looking to deflect blame from Defense Secretary Mark Esper and CIA Director Gina Haspel onto Trump.
The big takeaway from this article is the Pompeo/Pence narrative of Soleimani was imminently primed to attack US diplomatic targets was complete fiction.
Unwritten by the Times but lurking between the words is who was really behind this narrative, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s clear over the past six months Netanyahu couldn’t accept the idea of peace breaking out around him. He consistently pushed the envelope of Israel’s belligerence into Iraq over the opening of the Iraq/Syria border crossing.
Now the Saudis were wavering? This cannot stand. War with Iran must happen.
This is the most likely scenario that pushed Trump into this action with Pompeo, Esper, and Haspel feeding him a steady diet of, at best, misleading information. Trump then does what Trump does best when the game gets too hard to figure out.
He filps the table.
Netanyahu worked so hard to manipulate events and people to get to that point. He needs a win back home to show voters he is the man to bring Israel salvation through the studious application of American exceptionalism.
Now, that he’s done so, he is abandoning Trump after pushing him into the pit.
BREAKING: Netanyahu told security cabinet that Israel wasn’t involved in the killing of Soleimani and stressed “it is a U.S. event and we should stay out of it”, according to 2 cabinet ministers who attended the meeting
So, given all of this, is anyone surprised the leadership in Europe isn’t happy here? They were instrumental in getting Iran to the table to agree to the JCPOA, which Israel was livid about.
It was in everyone’s interest for the deal to work, especially Iran’s.
Iran got sanctions relief and much-needed investment. Its heavy water reactor became a strong source of revenue. Europe got access to cheap Iranian oil and gas through that investment, securing its energy needs.
Moreover, with the deal in place, the undoing of the US/Israeli/Saudi plan to atomize Syria by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah ended the flow of refugees into Europe and began stabilizing the region.
That only happens because of the JCPOA.
Trump’s entire foreign policy is based on antagonizing everyone and subjugating them through dollar weaponization and energy dominance. That’s been his modus operandi.
He aligned himself with Israeli interests from the outset because 1) he wanted to and 2) it was the path of least resistance for him to stay in power.
At every critical juncture of his presidency Trump has knuckled under to the neocons in his office.
The biggest effect of killing Soleimani isn’t Iran’s response or even Iraq’s. Yes, they will impose costs which will change the geopolitical game board. How? We don’t know.
What we do know is this big effect; the realization that everyone around the world is thinking, “Are we next?” So far Trump has accepted no limits on who he will attack with sanctions. There is no rule he’s [un]willing to breach.
The neocons in the Senate now have the ultimate leverage over him — Pelosi’s sham impeachment. The half-men in the Senate like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio have been at full mast so long thanks to Trump’s bombing they need to see a doctor.
They got him to kill Soleimani, ensuring there will be no peace with Iran.
They’ve begun the upward escalation of tensions which likely ends with an airstrike on Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Facility.
If you don’t think that’s what that tweet means, then have either your eyes or your reading comprehension checked.
Many of Trump’s tweets are nonsense, bluff, and bluster to misdirect and/or stir the pot. This has been a clear message he’s sent since the campaign trail.
And this attack on Soleimani was the next step in that process. He’s hoping it brings Iran to the bargaining table.
But it won’t.
And that’s why this only ends with bombing Fordow.
The Israelis and neocons have used Trump’s animus towards Obama and Europe to try to subjugate them as well. It’s not that Europe is praiseworthy or anything. The EU leadership deserves their comeuppance for trying to build an Empire to replace the US.
But regardless of whether the EU sucks or not, this incident is your point of no return in US/European relations. They have no choice but to slowly back away from the insane man in the White House and break bread with the sober one in the Kremlin.
This has cost the US whatever moral status it has with the rest of the world. It stands alone now.
The only deals Trump will get from here on out are ones that don’t matter. He’s set the US squarely on the path to its own destruction as the world realizes the cost of doing business in the dollar just rose immensely.
I’ve been looking for that moment where Europe makes the decision to move out of the US’s orbit and into Russia’s. Their silence tells me this was it.
The Israeli military chief censor is in talks to join notorious Israeli cyber surveillance company NSO Group, which has been embroiled in a number of scandals over the use of its software to target human rights activists and political dissidents.
According to Globes, Brigadier General Ariella Ben Avraham is “negotiating” to join NSO Group as soon as possible; currently scheduled to be discharged from the military in June, Ben Avraham has “asked to bring her release forward”. The role “will apparently focus on regulation and media.”
Founded in 2010, NSO “has developed a range of cyber intelligence products”, reported Globes, with the company’s lead product, Pegasus, “described as a surveillance tool, and the company says that it is devised to help governments and espionage organizations prevent terrorist acts”.
However, as Globes noted, NSO Group has been embroiled in a number of scandals where their “software has allegedly been used to spy on journalists and opponents of unsavoury regimes”.
Just last month, the Guardianrevealed that the mobile phones of at least two dozen Pakistani government officials were allegedly targeted in 2019 with technology owned by NSO Group.
Last October, Facebook – as the owner of WhatsApp – filed a lawsuit against NGO, accusing the company of “unauthorised access and abuse” of its services.
The lawsuit claimed intended targets included “attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and other senior foreign government officials.”
Globes reported that a Tel Aviv court is currently “hearing a lawsuit against NSO seeking to find the company liable for spying on opponents of the regime in Saudi Arabia.”
“The court dismissed NSO’s petition to dismiss the claim,” the report added, and also dismissed NSO’s request “to bar publication of the legal proceedings against it.”
The court will thus hear “the question of the company’s responsibility for the use of its products.”
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh addresses a massive crowd of mourners during a funeral procession for General Qassem Soleimani in Tehran January 6, 2020. (Photo by Leader.ir)
General Qassem Soleimani is a “martyr of Quds” for he devoted his life to supporting the Palestinian people’s struggle against Israel and his assassination by the United States is in many ways similar to crimes committed by the Israeli regime, says Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.
General Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was assassinated in a US strike in Baghdad on Friday, alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s pro-government Hashd al-Sha’abi forces.
A huge sea of mourners, streaming from all the adjoining streets, descended on the iconic Engelab Square in central Tehran early Monday morning and rallied to Azadi Tower in the capital’s west as they chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei led the prayers over the general’s coffin and the remains of his companions at Tehran University, his voice cracking several times with emotion which caused the massive crowd to weep.
Speaking at the funeral procession in Tehran on Monday, Haniyeh condemned the US strike, which was personally authorized by President Donald Trump.
“We have come to Iran to condole with Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian government and nation,” Haniyeh said.
“He [Gen. Soleimani] was the commander of the IRGC Quds Force and he is a martyr of Quds,” the Hamas official said.
Haniyeh also sent condolences to General Soleimani’s family and described him as one of the “flag-bearers of resistance against Zionist and American plots.”
Haniyeh said he was in Iran “to express our true and sincere feelings about a dear brother and a martyred commander – a commander who made many sacrifices for Palestine and the resistance until he achieved the position he has today.”
‘A crime similar to Zionist atrocities in Palestine’
Haniyeh said this “brutal crime” by the Americans is representative of the “criminal mentality” that is at work in the occupied Palestinian lands.
“The criminal mentality that led to Commander Soleimani’s assassination and martyrdom is the same mentality that drives the minds of the Zionist regime’s thugs, the same mentality and policy that assassinates and kills Palestinians every day,” he said.
He said Hamas owes its current prowess to General Soleimani’s wisdom. The Palestinian resistance, he said, won’t back away from combating Israel and the fight will continue “until we purge all enemies from the noble Quds.”
New Quds Force chief pledges vengeance
Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, who was named the new Quds commander by the Leader on Friday, said in a statement that Iran will no doubt avenge the assassination.
“Steps will be definitely taken” to avenge General Soleimani’s blood, which Qaani said has set in motion a series of steps that will lead to America’s expulsion from the region.
US ‘elimination’ from region only acceptable retribution
Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC’s Aerospace Division, echoed the remarks and said the only possible revenge for General Soleimani’s blood would be the total “elimination” of America from the region.
Launching a few missiles, destroying a base or even Trump’s death will not sufficiently avenge the blood of such a martyr, General Hajizadeh asserted, adding “the oppressed nations of the region will have to be rid of America’s evil.”
When things are as crazy as they are right now, it’s hard to see just how much progress has been made. 2019 had in it a number of watershed moments in geopolitics which signal just how close to radical change in the game board we are.
The neoconservatives within the Trump administration went for broke in 2019 and came a cropper every time. There’s no war with Iran. Nordstream 2 will be completed. Russia and Ukraine are on the path to solving their conflict. Iran is still selling oil. Turkey is still run by a madman. Israeli politics is more fractious than Spain’s. And Bashar al-Assad is still in charge in a slowly-rebuilding Syria.
The problem with these folks is they are relentless and still placed everywhere within the permanent bureaucracy of the U.S. government and Congress itself.
And President Trump has only been partially successful in fending them off from pulling off policy mistakes from which there is no turning back.
We are downstream from the neocon/Israeli push to withdraw the U.S. from the JCPOA, or Iran Nuclear Deal. That one event has dominated the geopolitical landscape for going on two years now. Trump thought he was gaining leverage over both Europe and Iran by withdrawing from the deal, when he actually unleashed a political and diplomatic quagmire.
The pull of the AIPAC crowd surrounding him, specifically Sheldon Adelson, Jared Kushner and Rudy Guiliani, put Trump on a path to confrontation with Iran which could only end in war, their desired outcome.
Trump, to his credit, has resisted this but only just barely. His refusal to go to war after Iran shot down a Global Hawk drone in June led to the firing of arch-neocon John Bolton as National Security Adviser and the subsequent impeachment fiasco we’re seeing today.
It seems Trump is finally realizing that in Washington personnel is policy. Robert C. O’Brien is not John Bolton. It’s a good start. And if Trump wins a second term in November there may be hope that we’ll see foreign policy that is less schizophrenic and, frankly, dangerous.
Make no mistake, Trump not going to war overtly with Iran in June was a win. A small win, but a win, nonetheless.
But since that day it has been one non-stop neocon assault on his presidency and any kind of peace in the Middle East. I’m still of the opinion, tenuously so, that Trump wants to do the right thing in, at least, minimizing U.S. meddling in the region.
But the neocons are still dominant. They infest the NSC, the CIA, the State Dept. as well as major European governments and intelligence agencies. And it’s clear that Trump is fighting a rear-guard battle against them. They dominate the information flow to him.
I’m not absolving Trump of his mistakes by saying this. It’s clear he needs to be better at seeing through the misleading, if not outright false, data put in front of him about what’s happening on the ground in places like Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
But what’s also clear is that the neocons will not stop until they get a war with Iran. Theirs is an ideology of subjugation and permanent revolution. These people are the descendants of Trotsky and all that implies.
Israeli Prime Minister (for now) Benjamin Netanyahu will do anything to keep the U.S. engaged in Syria and Iraq. He and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are on the same page and it seems every time Pompeo shows up to talk with Bibi some escalation happens a week later.
The latest is this attack on the K1 base near Kirkuk which killed ‘an American contractor.’ That’s code for non-strategic personnel, most likely someone working the Iraqi oil fields there. The base was under the control of Iraqi PMU forces and likely attacked by either the local Kurds or ISIS.
The U.S. response was to bomb five PMU bases in Syria and Iraq nowhere near Kirkuk, all supporting the Iraqi government’s order to open up the Al Qaim/Al-Bukamai border crossing with Syria, which both the U.S. and Israel are vehemently opposed to.
It looks to me that Pompeo and Netanyahu cooked up yet another ‘incident’ to force President Trump into a confrontation with Iran by escalating tensions now in Iraq.
The result of the U.S. response was assaults on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad which brought in 100 marines and Apache helicopters to disperse the crowd.
Everything that happens in the Middle East that the U.S. and Israel doesn’t like is Iran’s fault. There can be no nuance for Iraqi people rising up organically against U.S. airstrikes taking out dozens of Iraqi patriots who liberated most of Iraq from ISIS and Al-Qaeda on the thinnest of pretexts.
Iraq is not going to rise up against Iran over this. If Trump has been advised that this is possible that is coming straight from a national security infrastructure intent on convincing him of staying it the Middle East forever. But Trump has shown no inclination to take this farther.
He’ll threaten fire and brimstone but that’s about it. And for this reason, the neocons are losing ground in the long run. What’s clear to me is that Trump lacks the political will to hold the line completely. He goes along with economic sanctions and tariffs in lieu of putting troops on the ground.
But at some point, he’s going to have to take a decisive stand and stop playing a game of attrition. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is slow-walking the impeachment articles to gain more leverage over him and force him from office with Republican support. For now, there is no appetite for this. But into this vacuum of power where Trump’s future rests on the votes of 17 Republican Senators, all rampant neocons, the worst legislation imaginable will come forth. This is how the NDAA got passed with additional sanctions on European allies working on Russian energy projects.
This is how Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will push the even worse DASKA through Congress now that he’s secured the vote of the Foreign Relations Committee. If Trump doesn’t toe the neocon line while the impeachment threat hangs over his neck, then, all of a sudden, conviction in the Senate will be the talk of the town.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that Trump keeps bringing in record money to fund his re-election. As long as Iran can keep a hold over its more militant factions and not escalate the situation in Iraq then all of these neocon provocations will peter out along with impeachment.
These moves by the neocons are desperation plays to retain control over U.S. foreign policy which the electorate is growing more tired of by the day. 2019 was the year they failed to secure victory. Most of 2020 will be dominated with them putting up one, last desperate offensive.
For quite some time the British have accepted that British Jewish organizations have hijacked the political discourse. As has happened in other Western countries, the British political establishment has engaged is a relentless rant against antisemitsm. Sometime the focus drifts for a day or two. An alleged ‘Russian nerve gas attack’ provided a 48 hour pause. Occasionally we bomb Arabs in the name of ‘human intervention’ only to realize a day or two later that we have, once again, followed a premeditated foreign agenda. But, somehow, we always return to the antisemitism debate, as if our media and politicians are a herd of flies gravitating to a pile of poop. … continue
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