Biden vs Trump has profound implications for the world order
By Glenn Diesen | RT | February 8, 2024
The world is watching the US presidential election closely as it will have significant implications for global governance. President Joe Biden and former leader Donald Trump have very different views on how the world order should be governed and how the US should respond to its relative decline.
Biden wants to restore unipolarity with ideological economic and military blocs, strengthening the loyalty of allies and marginalizing adversaries. Trump has a more pragmatic approach. He believes the alliance system is too costly and limits diplomatic room for maneuver.
Since World War II, the US has enjoyed a privileged position in the key institutions of global governance. The Bretton Woods format and NATO ensured its economic and military dominance within the West. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Americans sought to extend their liberal hegemony around the globe.
They developed a security strategy based on global superiority and an expanded NATO. Washington assumed that its dominance would mitigate international anarchy and great power rivalry, and that liberal trade agreements would strengthen the US’ position at the top of global value chains. The replacement of international law with a ‘rules-based international order’ – in effect, sovereign inequality – was supposed to promote American hegemony and enhance the role of liberal democratic values.
However, unipolarity has proven to be a temporary phenomenon because it depends on the absence of rivals and values are devalued as instruments of power politics. The US has predictably exhausted its resources and the legitimacy of its hegemony, and competing powers have collectively counterbalanced Washington’s hegemonic ambitions by diversifying economic relations, staging retaliatory military operations, and developing new regional institutions of global governance.
The Cold War was a unique period in history because the West’s communist adversaries were largely disconnected from international markets, and military confrontation strengthened alliance solidarity to the extent that it mitigated economic rivalry between the capitalist allies. After the Cold War, however, the former communist powers, China and Russia, gained experience in managing economic processes, and submission to the US-led economic path lost its value for them.
The system of alliances has also begun to decline. The US previously was willing to subsidize European security in exchange for political influence. But Washington shifted its strategic focus to Asia, demanding that its European allies show geo-economic loyalty and not develop independent economic relations with rivals China and Russia. Meanwhile, the Europeans sought to use collective bargaining mechanisms through the European Union to establish autonomy and an equal partnership with the United States.
It is now clear that the unipolar moment has come to an end. The US military, exhausted by failed wars against weak opponents, is preparing for a conflict against Russia and China and a regional war in the Middle East.
The ‘rules-based international order’ is openly rejected by other major powers. US economic coercion to prevent the emergence of new centers of power only encourages separation from US technology, industry, transport corridors, banks, payment systems, and the dollar.
The US economy is struggling with unsustainable debt and inflation, while socio-economic decline is fueling political polarization and instability. Against this backdrop, Americans could elect a new president who will seek fresh solutions for global governance.
Biden’s global governance: Ideology and bloc politics
Biden wants to restore US global dominance by reviving the Cold War system of alliances that divided the world into dependent allies and weakened adversaries. It pits Europe against Russia, Arab states against Iran, India against China, and so on. Inclusive international institutions of global governance are being weakened and replaced by confrontational economic and military blocs.
Biden’s bloc politics is legitimized by simplistic heuristics. The complexity of the world is reduced to an ideological struggle between liberal democracies and authoritarian states. Ideological rhetoric means demanding geo-economic loyalty from the ‘free world’ while promoting overly aggressive and undiplomatic language. Thus, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are smeared as ‘dictators’.
Multilateralism is welcome to the extent that it reinforces US leadership. Biden is less hostile to the UN and the EU than his predecessor, and under his administration, the US has rejoined the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement. But Biden has not revisited the Iran nuclear deal or reduced economic pressure on China to change its supply chains. The institutions that could constrain the US – the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – are not favored by either Biden or Trump.
The deteriorating socio-economic and political situation in the US will also affect Biden’s approach to global governance. Biden will remain reluctant to enter into new ambitious trade agreements as the losers of globalization and neo-liberal economics within the US move into the camp of the populist opposition. Nor will he favor free trade agreements in areas where China has a technological and industrial advantage, and his attempts to cut European states off from Russian energy and Chinese technology will further fragment the world into competing economic blocs.
Western Europe will continue to weaken and become more dependent on the US, to the point where it will have to give up any claim to ‘strategic autonomy’ and ‘European sovereignty’.
Biden has also shown a willingness to disrupt allied country’s industries through initiatives such as the US Inflation Reduction Act.
Trump’s global governance: ‘America First’ and great power pragmatism
Trump seeks to restore American greatness by reducing the costs of alliance systems and hegemony. He sees alliances against strategic rivals as undesirable if they involve a transfer of relative economic power to allies. Trump believes that NATO is an “obsolete” relic of the Cold War because Western Europeans should contribute more to their own security. In his view, the US should perhaps reduce its presence in the Middle East and allies should pay America for their security in some way. Economic agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have promoted US leadership, but under Trump, they have been abandoned because of the transfer of economic benefits to allies. Trump does not reject US imperialism, but wants to make it sustainable by ensuring a higher return on investment.
Less tied to the alliance system and unencumbered by ideological dogma, Trump can take a more pragmatic approach to other great powers. Trump is able to make political deals with adversaries, use friendly and diplomatic language when talking to Putin and Xi, and even perhaps make a diplomatic visit to North Korea. While Biden’s division of the world into liberal democracies and authoritarian states makes Russia an adversary, Trump’s view of the world as nationalists/patriots versus cosmopolitans/globalists makes Russia a potential ally. This ideological view complements the pragmatic consideration of not pushing Russia into the arms of China, the main rival of the US.
Global governance will be utilitarian in this case, and the main goal of the US will be to regain a competitive advantage over China. Trump is fundamentally inclined to blame China excessively for America’s economic problems. Economic pressure on China is intended to restore US technological/industrial dominance and protect domestic jobs. Economic nationalist ideas reflect the ideas of the 19th-century American system, where economic policy is based on fair trade rather than free trade. Trump appears to view the entire post-Cold War security system in Europe as a costly attempt to subsidize Western Europe’s declining importance. These same Europeans have antagonized Russia and pushed it into the arms of China. Trump’s unclear stance on NATO has even prompted Congress to pass a bill prohibiting presidents from unilaterally deciding whether to withdraw the US from NATO.
While Trump is in favor of improving relations with Russia, his presidency would be unlikely to achieve this goal.
The US can be seen as an irrational actor to the extent that it allows domestic political battles to influence its foreign policy. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff fabricated the Steele dossier and Russiagate to portray Trump as a Kremlin agent. In the 2020 election, Biden’s campaign staff attempted to portray the Hunter Biden laptop scandal as a Russian disinformation campaign and accused Russia of paying bribes to kill US troops in Afghanistan. These false accusations were designed to distract the public and make Trump look weak on Russia. All of this ultimately soured relations with Russia and even contributed to the current conflict in Ukraine.
Both Biden and Trump seek to reverse the relative decline of the US in the world, but the difference in their approaches will have a profound impact on global governance. While Biden seeks to restore US greatness through systems of ideological alliances that will fragment global governance into regional blocs, Trump will seek to withdraw from the institutions of global governance because they drain US resources and impede pragmatic policies.
Glenn Diesen is a Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal.
Col. Douglas MacGregor on Iran
IfAmericansKnew | February 5, 2024
Colonel Douglas MacGregor is a 28-year veteran of the US Army who previously served as Senior Advisor to the US Secretary of Defense. During this interview with Redacted’s Clayton Morris, he explains that Iran did not perpetrate the recent attack that killed three American servicemen and he describes the long effort to get the US to attack Iran on behalf of Israel. Colonel McGregor explains that such an attack would be disastrous on every level.
This excerpt is from a longer, excellent interview that can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le-Ktsau_iM (If Americans knew added the image of the New York Times advertisement and the photos of Gaza.)
Israel and Israel partisans embedded in the US government previously pushed the US into the disastrous Iraq War. See https://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-loyalists-embedded-in-u-s-government-pushed-us-into-iraq-war/ and https://israelpalestinenews.org/pentagon-officer-described-how-israelists-manufactured-anti-iraq-disinfo-that-led-to-war/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjzD5zTLepc
This is not the first time the US has been used to deliver oil to Israel. See the account by Gary Vogler, a former US Army officer who served as a senior oil consultant for US Forces in Iraq. See https://israelpalestinenews.org/oil-for-israel-the-truth-about-the-iraq-war-15-years-later/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK-LFOpVowg
For more information on israel-Palestine go to https://ifamericansknew.org/
Biden’s Justification For Hitting Iran ‘Would Justify Russian Attacks on NATO’
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.02.2024
On Friday, US President Joe Biden fulfilled his promise to strike Iranian targets in Syria and Iraq, further escalating the region even as the White House insists that it does not seek war with Iran.
Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense with nearly 30 years of experience, told Sputnik’s Fault Lines that the justification used by the White House could easily be applied by Russia to NATO countries supporting Ukraine.
“You’re hearing from congressmen and senators saying ‘but we need to hit Iran for supplying the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah,” Maloof explained. “Well, does Russia then have a right to hit US and NATO allies, as a result of supplying weapons to Ukraine to battle Russians?”
The United States has placed the blame on Iran for the Sunday drone attack that killed three US service members and injured dozens more on the border of Syria and Jordan. While the US admits that it has no evidence Iran helped plan the attack, the Biden administration has been clear it blames Iran because the country allegedly funds those groups and other militants.
“This afternoon, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets at facilities in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack U.S. forces,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement released Friday by the White House.
“I think that if Biden were to follow through, then that raises a whole new specter of opening up NATO countries to potential attack,” Maloof continued, adding that the US is simply hoping Russian President Vladimir Putin “doesn’t follow through” with that justification.
Maloof argued that the US should reevaluate the situation in the Middle East but it’s difficult because the US looks “at the Middle East through the prism of Israel all the time.”
“We’ve got to somehow figure a way out of it. Instead, we’re digging that hole deeper and even though there might be some attempts to try and persuade [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to calm down and have a ceasefire and try to resolve things, it’s doing just the opposite.
“The problem is that Biden has left the conduct of the war up to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu knows this and he’s basically dragging us along – we’re captives of Netanyahu,” Maloof explained.
“You don’t have any, there’s no leadership [the US] left it up to Netanyahu. He’s the tail wagging the dog,” he added later.
Maloof further argued that Israel has been getting the United States to do its dirty work for decades. “We always hear Netanyahu wanting the United States involved, or us to bomb the sites… This is the way we’ve been conducting ourselves since… 2003 when we invaded Iraq.”
Asked by Co-host Melik Abdul how the US should have responded to the attack, Maloof argued that the US should leave the region.
“I think we shouldn’t even be in those locations. And I think we should have gotten out some time ago.”
Otherwise, Maloof warns “This thing has unlimited possibilities of escalation very rapidly.”
US Not Prepared for War Against Iran and ‘Axis of Resistance’
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 02.02.2024
Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for Washington, as the US is too internally weak to wage a new major in the Middle East, University of Tehran professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.
US officials have reportedly signaled that plans have been approved for a series of strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria.
That would be in response to a recent drone attack on US personnel in the Middle East — which claimed the lives of three soldiers and left 34 wounded.
In the wake of the strike Bloomberg claimed the Biden administration was considering a covert strike on Iran or Iranian officials as possible options.
But University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik that directly targeting Iran would be a major mistake and a major miscalculation by Washington.
He suggested that scenario was very unlikely, given Iran’s missile defense and drone capabilities, as well as the vulnerability of US bases which are scattered across the Middle Eastern region.
“Let’s assume that the United States strikes Iran,” Marandi said. “The United States has bases all across the Persian Gulf. The Iranians will hit out at those bases, and then the Iranians will also punish those countries that host those bases.”
Message for Joe Biden: Don’t Mess with Iran
The professor warned the fallout from the tit-for-tat attacks would send oil and gas prices “through the roof.”
“The Red sea would no longer be safe for oil and gas. The Western economies would collapse if there was a major escalation in our region,” Marandi underlined. “The United States, its assets across Iraq would be crushed. It would be overrun and by extension Syria as well and Lebanon. The world has changed. This is not just Iran, by the way. This is the whole of West Asia.”
Given the latest US media reports, it appears far more plausible that the US would attack targets in Iraq and Syria, Marandi continued.
“[The US] will claim some sort of ‘victory over terrorists’ and that sort of nonsense which they usually say,” the professor said. “But it will be like in Yemen, they will have very little impact because the resistance to the US occupation, the illegal occupation in Iraq and Syria is very well hidden. Their assets are underground, they are spread out. And all the United States would do would be to make people angrier and make the resistance more popular, both at home and abroad. That’s exactly what we saw in Yemen.”
Marandi noted that most recently instead of pushing the Israeli regime to end the slaughter in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the US tried to facilitate the genocide by attacking Yemen. Since early January the US and its allies conducted a series of strikes against the Ansar Allah-led government in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, also known as the Houthis after their leader.
“They launched many missiles, wasted a lot of money, but they were incapable of changing the balance of power. And Yemen continues to easily strike ships. Why?” the professor asked. “Because all of their assets are underground. Their mobile radar is well-protected underground. They are missiles and drones are well protected underground. They come out, strike the target and go back underground. So the Americans failed in Yemen. They made ‘Ansar Allah,’ or what the West likes to call the Houthis, very popular across the region and across the world, and they’ll only do the same in Iraq and Syria.”
In the aftermath of the strikes the Biden administrations came under criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. A bipartisan group of House representatives, comprising such strange bedfellows as Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, argued that the US’ “unauthorized strikes in Yemen” violate the Constitution and US statute.
They called on Biden “to seek authorization from Congress before involving the US in another conflict in the Middle East,” and warned the White House against provoking Iran and Iran-backed militia in the region which could swiftly spiral out of control and lead to a broader regional conflict.
US legislators’ concerns are justified as the US cannot afford to wage wars on multiple fronts, the academic pointed out.
“The United States cannot win another war,” said Marandi. “I have no doubt that if the Republicans were in charge, they would be… Whoever is in the white House, the people around him would be saying these things in private, and the Democrats in public would be denouncing the president for holding back. But the truth is that the United States is not the United States of the past. They can launch an attack on Iran. But the price would be extremely high and the United States wouldn’t win.”
Marandi questioned when the US had last won an overseas war.
“As the United States ‘won’ in Iraq as it won in Afghanistan. Did it win in Libya? Did it win in the genocide that it supported in Yemen? Did it win in Ukraine? The United States has a very poor record when it comes to launching wars and destroying nations and countries,” the acdemic said.
“They are capable of ruining lives and murdering millions and they don’t care. We see that in Gaza every day, but they simply don’t have the power to win. And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is not Vietnam,” Marandi stressed. “Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for the United States, and something that I don’t think those decision makers in Washington would ever seriously contemplate.”
“The Americans may be foolish enough to do so, but if they do so, then I think you’ll see the demise of the American empire take place much more rapidly than we’re seeing right now,” he concluded.
The Three Strands to the ‘Swarming of Biden’
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 2, 2024
“The Iranians have a strategy, and we don’t”, a former senior U.S. Defence Department official told Al-Monitor: “We’re getting bogged down in tactical weeds – of whom to target and how – and nobody’s thinking strategically”.
The former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar has coined the term ‘swarming’ to describe this process of non-state actors miring the U.S. in the tactical attrition – from the Levant to the Persian Gulf.
‘Swarming’ has been associated more recently with a radical evolution in modern warfare (most evident in Ukraine), where the use of autonomous swarming drones, continuously communicating with each other via AI, select and direct the attack to targets identified by the swarm.
In the Ukraine, Russia has pursued a patient, calibrated attrition to drive hard-Right ultranationalists from the field of battle (in central and eastern Ukraine), together with their western NATO facilitators.
NATO attempts at deterrence towards Russia (that recently have veered off into ‘terrorist’ attacks inside Russia – i.e. on Belgorod) notably have failed to produce results. Rather, Biden’s close embrace of Kiev has left him exposed politically, as U.S. and European zeal for the project implodes. The war has bogged down the U.S., without any electorally acceptable exit – and all can see it. Moscow drew-in Biden to an elaborate attritional web. He should ‘get out’ quick – but the 2024 campaign binds him.
So, Iran has been setting a very similar strategy throughout the Gulf, maybe taking its cue from the Ukraine conflict.
Less than a day after the attack on Tower 22, the military base ambiguously perched on the membrane between Jordan and the illegal U.S. al-Tanaf base in Syria, Biden promised that the U.S. would provide a quick and determined response to the attacks against it in Iraq and Syria (by what he calls ‘Iran-linked’ militia).
Simultaneously however, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby stated that the U.S. doesn’t want to expand military operations opposite Iran. Just as in Ukraine, where the White House has been loath to provoke Moscow into all-out war versus NATO, so too in the region, Biden is (rightly) wary of out-right war with Iran.
Biden’s political considerations in this election-year will be uppermost. And that, at least partly, will depend on the fine calibration by the Pentagon of just how exposed to missile and drone attacks U.S. forces are in Iraq and Syria.
The bases there are ‘sitting ducks’; a fact would be an embarrassing admission. But a hurried evacuation (with overtones of the last flights from Kabul) would be worse; it could be electorally disastrous.
The U.S. seemingly aims to find a way to hurt Iranian and Resistance forces just enough to show that Biden is ‘very angry’, yet without perhaps doing real damage – i.e. it is a form of ‘militarised psychotherapy’, rather than hard politics.
Risks remain: bomb too much, and the wider regional war will ignite to a new level. Bomb too little, and the swarm just rolls on, ‘swarming’ the U.S. on multiple fronts until it finally caves – and finally exits the Levant.
Biden thus finds himself in an exhausting, ongoing secondary war with groups and militias rather than states (whom the Axis seeks to shield). In spite of its militia character, however the war has been causing major damage to the economies of states in the region. They have fathomed that American deterrence has not been showing results (i.e., with Ansarallah in the Red Sea).
Some of those countries – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have initiated ‘private’ steps that were not coordinated with the U.S. They are not only speaking with these militia and movements, but also directly with Iran.
The strategy to ‘swarm’ the U.S. on multiple fronts was plainly stated at the recent ‘Astana Format’ meeting between Russia, Iran, and Turkey on 24-25 January. The latter triumvirate are busy preparing the endgame in Syria (and ultimately, in the Region as a whole).
The joint statement after the Astana Format meeting in Kazakhstan, MK Bhadrakumar has noted:
“is a remarkable document predicated almost entirely on an end to the U.S. occupation of Syria. It indirectly urges Washington to give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates “operating under different names in various parts of Syria” as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism.’ It demands an end to the U.S.’ illegal seizure and transfer of oil resources “that should belong to Syria””.
The statement thus spells out the objectives starkly. In sum, patience has run out over the U.S. weaponising the Kurds and attempting to revitalise ISIS in order to disrupt the tripartite plans for a Syria settlement. The trio want the U.S. out.
It is with these objectives – insisting that Washington give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism’ – that the ‘Astana’ Russian and Iranian strategy for Syria finds common ground with that of the Resistance’s strategy.
The latter may reflect an Iranian strategy overall – but the Astana Statement shows the underlying principles to be Russia’s too.
In his first substantive statement after 7 October, Seyed Nasrallah (speaking for the Axis of Resistance as a whole) indicated a strategic Resistance pivot: Whereas the conflict triggered by events in Gaza was centrally connected with Israel, Seyed Nasrallah additionally underlined that the backdrop to Israel’s disruptive behaviour lay with America’s ‘forever wars’ of divide-and-rule in support of Israel.
In short, he tied the causality of America’s many regional wars to the interests of Israel.
So, here, we come to the third strand to the ‘swarming of Biden’.
Only it is not regional actors that are contriving to box-in Biden – it is America’s own protégé: Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Netanyahu and Israel are the principal target of the bigger regional ‘swarm’, but Biden has allowed himself to be enmeshed by it. It seems that he cannot say ‘no’. So here Biden is: boxed-in by Russia in Ukraine; boxed-in in Syria and Iraq, and boxed-in by Netanyahu and an Israel that fears the walls closing-in on their Zionist project.
There is likely no electoral ‘sweet-spot’ to be found here for Biden, between inserting America into an unpopular and electorally disastrous, all-out Middle East war, and between ‘green-lighting’ Israel’s huge gamble on victory over war against Hizbullah.
The confluence between the failed Ukrainian ploy to weaken Russia, and the risky ploy for Israel’s war on Hizbullah, is unlikely to be lost on Americans.
Netanyahu too is between a rock and a hard place. He knows that ‘a victory’ that boils down to just the release of the hostages, and confidence-building measures to establish a Palestinian state, would not restore Israeli deterrence – inside or outside the state. On the contrary, it would erode it. It would be ‘a defeat’ – and without a clear victory in the south (over Hamas), a victory in the north would be demanded by many Israelis, including key members of his own cabinet.
Recall the mood within Israel: The latest Peace Index survey shows that 94% percent of Israeli Jews think Israel used the right amount of firepower in Gaza – or not enough (43%). And three-quarters of Israelis think the number of Palestinians harmed since October is justified.
If Netanyahu is boxed in, so is Biden.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu former said:
“We will not end this war with anything less than the achievement of all its objectives … We will not withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip and we won’t release thousands of terrorists. None of that is going to happen. What is going to happen? Total victory.”
“Is Netanyahu capable of veering strongly to the left… entering into an historic process that will end the war in Gaza and lead to a Palestinian state – coupled with an historic peace agreement with Saudi Arabia? Probably not. Netanyahu has kicked over many other similar buckets before they were filled”, opined veteran commentator, Ben Caspit, in Ma’ariv (in Hebrew).
Biden is making a huge bet. Best to wait on what Hamas and the Gaza Resistance answers to the hostage proposal. The omens, however, do not look positive for Biden —
Senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials responded yesterday to the latest proposal:
“The Paris proposal is no different from previous proposals submitted by Egypt … [The proposal] does not lead to a ceasefire. We want guarantees to end the genocidal war against our people. The resistance is not weak. No conditions will be imposed on it” (Ali Abu Shahin, member of Islamic Jihad’s political bureau).
“Our position is a ceasefire, the opening of the Rafah crossing, international and Arab guarantees for the restoration of the Gaza Strip, the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Gaza, finding a housing solution for the displaced and the release of prisoners according to the principle of all for all … I am confident that we are heading for victory. The patience of the American administration is running out because Netanyahu is not bringing achievements” (Senior Hamas official, Alli Baraka).
Israel Keeps Killing Civilians and Rejects Any Sovereignty for Palestinians
Benjamin Netanyahu shows Joe Biden who’s boss
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 1, 2024
Over the past ten days there have been several interesting developments in the continuing ethnic cleansing of Gaza, as well as increasingly on the West Bank, by the Israeli military supplemented by armed settlers. In one particularly grotesque killing, Israeli commandos disguised as medical staff and Arab civilians burst into a hospital room in Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank and shot dead three Palestinians. The Israeli military said one of the victims belonged to Hamas and was planning an imminent attack “inspired by the events of October 7” but provided no evidence in support of the claim. Palestinian hospital staff reported afterwards how “They raided one of the patients’ rooms and killed him, and the people who were in the room with him, his brother and friend. He was a patient, paralyzed and using a wheelchair.” One might observe that Israel, like the White House, lies about everything.
To be sure, Israel and the United States deservedly continue to be subjected to legal challenges, both internationally and in the United States, over their carrying out of a policy in Gaza that many, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, might eventually consider to be a full scale and active genocide, the most notorious crime against humanity. The court’s Order last Friday to Israel “to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and punish incitement for genocide accepts the possibility of Israel being a perpetrator of genocide” and not just a perpetual historical victim, as it chooses to depict itself. As the court continues to pursue the completely plausible claim of genocide submitted by South Africa and to come to a final ruling, which could easily take months to complete, it has “already made history.” But in the meanwhile, manipulation of both the judicial and constitutional processes by the United States to support Israel has enabled the Jewish state to keep bombing and killing an average of 300 Palestinians each day while also controlling and cutting off relief supplies desperately needed by the starving and dying two million nearly all civilians physically imprisoned by the barriers erected by Israel surrounding Gaza.
In the latest act of undoubted collusion staged to kill even more Palestinians, Israel claimed that 12 members of the United Nations Gaza Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) participated in the Hamas October 7th attack on Israel. The UN has fired some of those accused out of its 13,000 employees in the organization and it is investigating further but that did not prevent the US from immediately cutting its funding to UNRWA in spite of the fact that Israel had produced no evidence to back up its claim and there was no explanation provided why such a report was not issued until more than 100 days after the alleged incident. Timing is everything. Clearly the moves were preplanned by President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to help counter the negative impact of the ICJ report, which was released several days before, and it will accomplish nothing except to increase the misery of the Palestinians.
The international focus on Israel and the United States regarding Gaza is because of the widely held and absolutely correct perception that Israel keeps getting away with murder, literally, and Washington is the accomplice in the crime, using its power and United Nations veto to avoid holding the Jewish state accountable for its misdeeds. Ironically, Israeli behavior often negatively impacts on the actual interests of the United States to include killing American citizens without there being and consequences for the perpetrators. This recklessness has recently been on display not only in Gaza but also on the occupied West Bank where just last week another Palestinian-American has been shot dead in what appears to be something like a vigilante killing.
According to witnesses, the completely unprovoked recent killing consisted of the fatal shooting of American-Palestinian teen Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, a Louisiana native, who was driving a pickup truck near his village Al-Mazra’a Ash-Sharquiya on the Israeli occupied West Bank. Without any warning, a volley of Israeli gunfire struck the back of the truck, hitting Tawfik in the head and killing him, resulting in the out-of-control vehicle turning over several times on a dirt road. Family members who rushed to the scene were confronted by Israeli soldiers at gunpoint, who blocked their access to the truck. In an initial statement, Israeli police admitted that the shooting targeted Tawfic, but claimed the victim was “purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities.” Police would not identify who fired the shots but did describe the incident as “ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian.” That suggests an armed settler was involved. The US Embassy has demanded an explanation but Israel never convicts Jews who kill Palestinians. That is what is expected in this case, which recalls the May 2022 killing by an army sniper of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh at a demonstration which she was covering at the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli occupied West Bank. She was wearing a clearly identifiable journalist’s jacket. No one was ever held accountable and even the Zionist dominated US State Department eventually believed she had been targeted and deliberately executed. Indeed, there is currently a law pending in the Knesset that blocks prosecution of any Israeli soldier or policeman who kills an Arab.
And when it comes to other dead Americans, there is the still uninvestigated killing of 34 crewmen on the USS Liberty in June 1967 by Israeli warplanes and gunboats, the killing of activist Rachel Corrie by being run over by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003, and the killing of Turkish-American boy Furkan Dogan and eight others in international waters on the Mavi Marmara ferry in 2010. If Israel decides to kill Americans it does not hesitate and the US never does anything but whine after the fact, if that. In that case of the Liberty the White House and Pentagon actually participated in the cover-up, such is the power of the Israel Lobby.
So once again the gloves are off in terms of the abuse that the United States has to take at the hands of “best friend” Israel, particularly now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a group of fascist ultra-nationalists have formed a war cabinet that is intent on driving out or exterminating the Palestinians. Both in Gaza and on the West Bank any living Palestinian is little more than target practice for the Israel Defense Force half trained thugs in uniform.
And Netanyahu is not even trying to hide what he wants to do to Palestine, even though he is now running into concern from President Joe Biden who apparently is afraid that all the bloodshed in Gaza being endorsed and enabled by Washington will damage his re-election prospects. Netanyahu has not budged however and has made some significant comments over the past two weeks, one of which directly rejects a Biden call to look at options for reviving the so-called Two States plan that would give the Palestinians a mini-state that has actual sovereignty at some level, unlike the almost total military and police occupation by Israel that prevails currently.
Speaking at a press conference on January 22nd, Netanyahu insisted that “I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of the Jordan River”. His statement also prefigures an assault on the West Bank and the seizure of all Palestinian-held territory. War would “continue until the end, until the victory, until the elimination of Hamas” and “nothing will stop us.” Ending the war prematurely “would harm Israel’s security for generations,” he said, suggesting this could mean military action continuing until next year.
Netanyahu has said that there will be no Palestinian state with actual sovereignty and that Israel will control all of the former historic Palestine “From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Yes, Netanyahu is using the very words that Israel’s friends have condemned as “antisemitic” when used by Palestinian demonstrators in the US objecting to the slaughter in Gaza.
Meanwhile, a number of Israeli cabinet and other senior officials have indicated clearly that achieving the goal of an Israeli state incorporating the whole area into what will legally be defined as a Jewish state will be achieved no matter what will have to be done to the Palestinians. This will all start with the ethnic cleansing and resettlement of Gaza by Jews, no matter how long it takes to accomplish, and then will proceed to the West Bank. The displacement of the Palestinians is being justified by claiming that that population is not redeemable as they are nothing but “terrorists,” to include incitement from government officials with comments like “We kill the children otherwise they will grow up to kill Jews.”
To be sure, there has been some pushback against the Netanyahu revelation, coming from many dissatisfied Israelis and even originating within the normally massively pro-Israel US Congress. Calls have come for a cease fire and 15 Jewish Democratic congressmen have supported a two-state solution with a Palestine state having true sovereignty. They issued a brief statement saying “We strongly disagree with prime minister [Netanyahu]. A two-state solution is the path forward.” And there also has been something of a rebellion from the civil service in Washington, where there was a walkout of employees rejecting the Biden Administration’s Gaza policy.
Senator Bernie Sanders and some others in Congress have repeated calls to stop funding what Israel is doing, particularly as the war is already spilling over to Yemen and Iraq and Syria where illegal US military bases are under attack producing most recently three deaths by drone fired from an Iraqi shi’ite militia, allegedly hitting a base in Jordan, and causing more than thirty injuries. The incident will possibly lead to further escalation as Joe Biden has said there will be some retaliation against the militia group that staged the attack and its sponsors. Predictably, Joe and others in Washington are actually blaming the attack on Iran though there is no evidence supporting that claim. Several Congressmen and presidential candidate Nikki Haley have nevertheless already called for an attack on Iranian military and economic installations and CBS news is now reporting that preparations are underway for the US to hit “Iranian targets” in Syria and Iraq. The Iranian government has said it was not involved in the incident and has already announced that it would retaliate if attacked. A better policy would be a withdrawal from those illegal bases, reportedly under consideration by the Pentagon, but it has been denied by the inimitable Victoria Nuland at the State Department.
US President Joe Biden also followed up on the recent Netanyahu statements with what was reportedly his first phone call with Netanyahu for a month, after which he suggested that the Israeli leader might consider some “type” of two-state solution. But Netanyahu’s spokesman dismissed Biden’s claim on the following day, saying that “In his conversation with President Biden, prime minister Netanyahu reiterated his policy that, after Hamas is destroyed, Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty.”
Netanyahu then personally expanded on the message, saying how “I emphasized to President Biden our determination to achieve all the goals of the war, and to ensure that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel.” Under his leadership, Netanyahu pledged that Israel would go beyond that to wage a far wider regional war “on all fronts and in all sectors. We are not giving immunity to any terrorist: not in Gaza, not in Lebanon, not in Syria, and not anywhere.”
Netanyahu and his generals have repeatedly stated that Israel is waging war not just on the Palestinians but also against Iran and its allies, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant explaining that Israel is confronted by a war on seven fronts: Gaza, the West Bank, and Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Replying to a question from a reporter asking why Israel is not attacking Iran directly, Netanyahu responded, “Who says we aren’t attacking Iran? We are attacking Iran.” Indeed, Israeli forces have repeatedly bombed Syria’s capital, Damascus, targeting Iranian forces allied to the Syrian government. In the most recent incident, Israeli missiles fired from the occupied Golan Heights killed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Syria intelligence chief and four more IRGC members.
As a final observation, Netanyahu and his supporters appear to be using the prospect of a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential elections in November to put more pressure on Biden to make him back off from supporting any concessions over Gaza and a Palestinian state. Bibi is also intent on extending the war until the end of 2024 to make his domestic opponents who are demanding his resignation appear unpatriotic, many of whom believe that the Israeli actions vis-à-vis Gaza have been motivated by Netanyahu’s own political and personal interests. As Netanyahu might well otherwise be in jail currently due to corruption charges, many critics now support the theory that Gaza may have been a false flag setup with the Prime Minister himself giving the green light to an operation that would open the door to keeping himself in power while also destroying Gaza and ridding Israel of the Palestinians forever. If Netanyahu plays his cards right with the clueless Biden he might also be able to convince the United States to attack Iran very soon, something that he has been seeking for more than twenty years. That may be what is coming next.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Biden Makes Clear Case for NATO Complicity – and Russia’s Right to Retaliate – Over IL-76 Shoot-Down
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 1, 2024
Joe Biden is contending that the United States has the right to attack Iran as a result of the deadly strike on a U.S. base in Jordan which killed three American troops.
Biden is throwing rocks in a glass house if we then look at the case of the IL-76 shoot-down over Russia when 74 people were killed.
It is by no means clear if Iran was involved in the Jordan base raid. Tehran strongly denies it and even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack.
Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily. If Biden can make that case, then the United States and its NATO allies should be held accountable for the shooting down of the IL-76 transport plane over Russia killing all onboard, according to the reasoning of none other than the US President.
By “accountable” that means Russia has the right to take retaliatory military action against the culprit of the crime in which 74 people were killed. Again, this is according to Biden’s own reasoning.
Biden was not speaking about the fatal IL-76 incident that occurred on January 24 when nine Russian servicemen and 65 Ukrainian prisoners were killed after their cargo plane was hit in mid-air with a warhead.
The president was responding to U.S. journalists questioning him about the deaths of three American military personnel at a base in Jordan that Iraqi militants attacked on January 28.
Biden said he held Iran responsible for the American fatalities and vowed to retaliate. Somewhat contradictorily, the president and his spokesmen have said the United States does not seek to have a wider war with Iran even though Biden said he intends to attack Iranian assets in a “tiered way at a time of his choosing”. If that’s not a wider war, what is?
Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the drone attack on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq. The strike was claimed by Iraqi militia known as Islamic Resistance which is allied with Iran.
Asked if he blamed Iran, Biden said he did “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Iran and the Iraqi militants are affiliated in a similar way to Tehran’s support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen. All are motivated by staunch opposition to U.S. military occupation in the Middle East and Washington’s support for Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza. Collectively, Iran and its allies are known as the Axis of Resistance.
There is no evidence that Iran supplied the weapons to the militants who killed the three American troops. Iran contends that each resistance member possesses its own agency and decision-making.
By contrast, however, the supply of American and other NATO weaponry to the Kiev regime is publicly recorded. It is estimated that the West has funded Ukraine with a total of $200 billion since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. About half of that has been spent on weapons that include long-range missiles such as Patriot, Shadow Storm, Scalp and Iris-T systems. British and French cruise missiles have been repeatedly used to hit pre-war Russian territory such as Belgorod resulting in dozens of civilian deaths.
The strike on the IL-76 transport plane is believed to have been carried out with Western-supplied weapons.
Russian crash investigators have this week confirmed earlier claims that the cargo plane was shot down with a NATO weapon, either a U.S.-made Patriot missile system or a German Iris-T surface-to-air missile.
When the IL-76 was blown out of the sky on January 24 over Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian radars detected the launch of two anti-aircraft warheads nearly 100 kilometers away from the target. The missiles were allegedly fired from the location of Liptsy in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkov province. It is believed that only NATO-supplied weapons to the Ukrainian forces could have achieved that extensive range.
At the time of the IL-76 shoot-down, the Kremlin said that if it confirmed that Western weapons were responsible then Russia would deem the West to be complicit in the crime.
On January 26, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said: “According to preliminary investigation, Ukrainian armed forces carried out this terrorist attack using an anti-aircraft missile system. The missiles were launched from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov region.”
He added: “These could have been either American Patriot or German-made Iris-T missiles. If confirmed, this will make the Western suppliers of this ammo complicit in this crime. Just as they are complicit in shelling of peaceful neighborhoods of Russian cities that Ukrainian armed forces carry out with Western weapons.”
Russian crash investigators have now confirmed that Western weapons were the cause of the deadly crash.
The United States or one of its NATO allies supplied those weapons. That makes the U.S. or NATO complicit in an act of deadly aggression against Russia.
And by using the same logic as Joe Biden that culpability makes the U.S. or its allies accountable to Russia… “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Biden has made the case for Russia to directly hit American or NATO assets.
Direct US Attack on Iran Would Open Pandora’s Box – Mideast Experts
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 29.01.2024
Having groundlessly accused Tehran of masterminding a recent deadly drone bombing on US personnel, President Joe Biden and his team are allegedly considering a covert strike on Iran or targeting Iranian officials, as per Bloomberg. How could the purported plan pan out for Washington?
Three US soldiers were killed and 34 wounded in a drone attack over the weekend that is ramping up the pressure on Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 elections, according to the US press. The Biden administration rushed to pin the blame on Iran, presenting no evidence to back up its claims.
Even though Tehran made it clear that it had nothing to do with the attack, Washington is reportedly planning to either conduct a covert strike on Iran and later deny it, or resort to extraterritorial assassinations of Iranian officials, as then-President Donald Trump did by ordering the killing of General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.
“A direct attack on Iran will open Pandora’s Box,” Professor Hossein Askari, political analyst and emeritus professor of business and international affairs at George Washington University, told Sputnik.
“If the attack was from an Iraqi militia that Iran supports, then a US attack on the militia will affect relations with Iraq, which has already objected to other US responses to the militias and is engaged in talks for the US to exit Iraq. It is an election year in the US and there is a great deal of pressure on Biden to be ‘tough’ on Iran.”
Per Askari, Biden has found himself between a rock and a hard place: no matter what he does, he is likely to come under fierce criticism for either being too weak or escalating the conflict.
“An attack inside Iran would undoubtedly widen the war with the end game becoming even murkier and [an attack] inside Iraq would further damage US-Iraq relations,” the professor stressed.
He believes that Biden will strike nonetheless and that the strike will pour more gasoline on the fire as Tehran is “still looking for revenge for the assassination of General Soleimani and the Iraqi militia leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.”
When asked what forces could be potentially involved in any “covert strike”, the expert assumed that only cruise missiles and no planes or Special Forces are likely to be used. He added that no regional player would join the purported US action except, possibly, Israel. “But if the US allows Israel to join in, then this would become a much wider war with religious overtones,” Askari warned.
Even though neither the US nor Iran have an interest in a wider regional war, “there is a tug of war between the two countries to sway influence over the wider Middle East, and particularly the Arab Gulf States,” echoed Dr. Imad Salamey, associate professor of political science and international affairs at the Lebanese American University.
“I believe the US will take on limited retaliatory attacks against [Islamic] Revolutionary Guards targets in Iran or Iraq without engaging in a wide-scale war,” Salamey told Sputnik.
“It remains too early in this conflict for the US to target strategic positions such as nuclear facilities. I do not think the allies will join the US in the standoff against Iran, as none have a reason to join rank. Only in the case that Iran decided to close down the Strait of Hormuz that other states would join the US war efforts. I believe the US is now after attacking Iranian Revolutionary Guards and no longer as interested in proxies.”
US Vows Response to Deadly Attack on Mideast Base, Seeks to Avoid Wider Conflict
Sputnik – 29.01.2024
WASHINGTON – The United States will retaliate to a deadly drone attack on its al-Tanf military base on Syrian-Jordanian border at a time and in a manner of its choosing, but it is not seeking a wider conflict in the region, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday.
Earlier in the day, Axios reported that President Joe Biden discussed a “significant military response” to the attack during a meeting with top US officials on Sunday.
“As for our response options, the President is working his way through that right now. He had a good meeting yesterday with the National Security Team,” Kirby told CNN.
According to Axios, the White House and Pentagon are seeking to calibrate their retaliation to contain the risk of a wider conflict. Meanwhile, some hawks on Capitol Hill are pushing for strikes inside Iran, the report said.
“We will respond. We will do it in a time and a manner of our choosing. We’ll respond, you know, in a very consequential way but we don’t seek a war with Iran. We are not looking for a wider conflict in the Middle East,” Kirby said, when asked if the US is considering strikes inside Iran.
On Sunday, three US soldiers had been killed and 34 others injured in a drone attack on a US military base in Jordan’s northeast near the border with Syria.
President Biden pinned the blame on unspecified Iran-backed militant groups, while also saying the US was still gathering the facts. Jordanian cabinet spokesman Muhannad Mubaidin said that the strike targeted the US’s Al-Tanf base in Syria, not a base on Jordanian territory.
Iran has nothing to do with the drone attack on a US military base, Iranian state-run news agency IRNA reported, citing an Iranian official.
Russia-China Joint Approach to the Middle East
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern outlook – 29.01.2024
By repeatedly targeting the Houthis in Yemen and pushing for an escalation in the Red Sea, the US is jumping into the Middle East with a military and strategic mindset. The objective is to create space for Washington – and its global allies – to push back against the recent gains, i.e., normalization between Iran and Saudi and Arab normalization with Syria more than a decade after the start of the so-called “Arab Spring”, that Russia and China have made. A wider war in the region will, in the US calculation at least, re-politicize regional fault lines that might allow Washington to reverse the larger normalization process. Considering the high stakes Washington has in developing a wider war in the region, it makes sense for both Russia and China, who largely have similar interests vis-à-vis normalization processes within the Middle East, to develop a joint approach.
In October, soon after Israel launched its brutal war after the October 7 attacks by Hamas and much before the US started doing its own strikes, Russia, anticipating a deeper US military involvement in the Middle East, confirmed that it was already coordinating its Middle East policy with China. This coordination, on the other hand, is also an outcome of the recent state of Russia-China bilateral ties, which, in the words of the Russian foreign minister, are in the best state in the “centuries-old history”.
This coordination also has its roots in the ways that the Arab world itself has come to see its ties with the US on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. For instance, some recent surveys have shown that an increasing number of people across most Arab states view Russia and China as crucial economic players above all. The core reasons for this favourable view are twofold. First, many Arab societies today view the US as no longer a reliable partner. Second, they view Russia and China not from a revisionist perspective, i.e., as states deepening their involvement in the region to replace the US. Rather, Russia and China continue to emphasize the Middle East as a region that can play an autonomous role, i.e., a role not tied to, or disproportionately overshadowed by, any superpower’s interests.
The fact that Russia and China both see the Middle East from this perspective, their calculation sees the Middle East as a vital region that can really push for shifting the center of the present world order away from the West to creating multiple power centres within a multipolar world order. Therefore, developing a joint policy and indirectly protecting the Middle East from slipping too much under the US radar makes sense for both Moscow and Beijing. Were the Middle East to relapse to being a US vassal region, it would make it extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible, for Russia and China to realize their ambitions for a new world order.
Now, for both Russia and China, keeping the Middle East – which is already on the verge of a wider war – as a center of power, they must project their ties beyond the Gaza war. Of course, Israel’s war on Gaza is the most important issue today, and both Russia and China have adopted and emphasized a pro-Arab/pro-Palestine position. But Russia and China are also taking steps to not allow their ties with the region to be bogged down by this one issue.
China and Russia, as we know it, already have deep economic ties with the Middle East. Both, as we know, remain focused on maintaining and expanding these ties despite the ongoing conflicts. Putin’s recent visit to the Middle East was not simply provoked by the Gaza crisis, nor was this war the sole subject of his discussions with Arab leaders. In fact, a lot of discussion was around the core issue of a multipolar world order. Putin emphasized how the conflict in the Middle East is a US failure, a failure that makes it imperative for the Middle East to not only distance itself from Washington but also adopt a more autonomous role to, among other things, resolve the issue through its initiatives. But beyond this, Putin emphasised that “The UAE is Russia’s main trading partner in the Arab world.”
For China as well, this logic of relationship beyond and above the Palestine issue remains prominent. While Beijing has openly supported the Arab state’s current stance on the issue, its ongoing engagement with this region remains predominantly underpinned by the logic of trade and development, building a relationship that helps the Middle East transform into a powerhouse that can ultimately help China and Russia tackle the hegemony of the West. (That’s why both China and Russia recently adopted new members into BRICS, including those from the Middle East.)
At the same time, China has taken steps to use the scenario, like Russia, to step up itself as a global power that can help mediate regional conflicts. In November, China announced its five-point peace plan that placed heavy emphasis on the United Nations, calling for the implementation of all relevant UN resolutions on the conflict and an international conference organized by the world body that leads to a two-state solution, all overseen by the Security Council. While nothing concrete followed this plan, it served China’s purpose of projecting itself as a power different from the West on the one hand and very close to the Arab world on the other.
For Washington, which has been hoping for differences to emerge between Russia and China taking them back to the era of rivalry, this situation is frustrating, making it extremely difficult for it to not lose ground in the Middle East specifically and across the Global South more generally. But its continuing support for Israel’s war machine and its continuing push for NATO’s expansion is doing exactly the opposite of what the US aims for, i.e., preventing its global decline and the related rise of Russia and China.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
‘Swarming’ the US in West Asia, until it folds
The US is so deeply mired in an unwinnable battle from the Levant to the Persian Gulf that only its adversaries in China, Russia, and Iran can bail it out.
By MK Bhadrakumar | The Cradle | January 29, 2024
Deterrence in defense is a military strategy where one power uses the threat of reprisal to preclude attack from an adversary, while maintaining at the same time the freedom of action and flexibility to respond to the full spectrum of challenges. In this realm, the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah, is an outstanding example.
Hezbollah’s clarity of purpose in establishing and strictly maintaining ground rules that deter Israeli military aggression has set a high regional bar. Today, its West Asian allies have adopted similar strategies, which have multiplied in the context of the war in Gaza.
America, surrounded
While the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah is comparable to Hezbollah in certain respects, it is the audacious brand of defensive deterrence practiced by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq that is going to be highly consequential in the near term.
Last week, citing sources in the State Department and Pentagon, Foreign Policy magazine wrote that the White House is no longer interested in continuing the US military mission in Syria. The White House later denied this information, but the report is gaining ground.
The Turkish daily Hurriyet wrote on Friday that while Ankara is taking a cautious approach to media reports, it does see “a general striving” by Washington to exit not only Syria but the entire region of West Asia, as it senses that it has been dragged into a quagmire by Israel and Iran from the Red Sea to Pakistan.
Russia’s special presidential representative for the Syrian settlement, Alexander Lavrentiev, also told Tass on Friday that much depends on any “threat of physical impact” on American forces present in Syria. The swift US military exit from Afghanistan took place with virtually no advance notice, in coordination with the Taliban. “In all likelihood, the same may happen in Iraq and Syria,” Lavrentiev said.
Indeed, the Islamic Resistance of Iraq has stepped up its attacks on US military bases and targets. In a ballistic missile attack on Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq a week ago, an unknown number of American troops sustained injuries, and the White House announced its first troop deaths on Sunday when three US servicemen were killed on the Syrian-Jordanian border in strikes earlier that day.
Calling Beijing for help
This situation is untenable for President Joe Biden politically — in his re-election bid next November — which explains the urgency of the National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday and Saturday in Thailand to discuss the Ansarallah attacks in the Red Sea.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby explained Washington’s rush for Chinese mediation thus:
“China has influence over Tehran; they have influence in Iran. And they have the ability to have conversations with Iranian leaders that — that we can’t. What we’ve said repeatedly is: We would welcome a constructive role by China, using the influence and the access that we know they have…”
This is a dramatic turn of events. While the US has long been concerned about China’s growing sway in West Asia, it also needs that influence now as Washington’s efforts to reduce violence are getting nowhere. The US narrative on this will be that the “strategic, thoughtful conversation” between Sullivan and Wang will not only be “an important way to manage competition and tensions [between the US and China] responsibly” but also “set the direction of the relationship” on the whole.
Meanwhile, there has been hectic diplomatic traffic between Tehran, Ankara, and Moscow, as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi traveled to Turkiye, and the moribund Astana format on Syria last week got kickstarted. Succinctly put, the three countries anticipate a “post-American” situation arising soon in Syria.
A US exit from Syria and Iraq?
Of course, the security dimensions are always tricky. On Friday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad chaired a meeting in Damascus for commanders of the security apparatus in the army to formulate a plan for what lies ahead. A statement said the meeting drew up a comprehensive security roadmap that “aligns with strategic visions” to address international, regional, and domestic challenges and risks.
Certainly, what gives impetus to all this is the announcement in Washington and Baghdad on Thursday that the US and Iraq have agreed to start talks on the future of American military presence in Iraq with the aim of setting a timetable for a phased withdrawal of troops.
The Iraqi announcement said Baghdad aims to “formulate a specific and clear timetable that specifies the duration of the presence of international coalition advisors in Iraq” and to “initiate the gradual and deliberate reduction of its advisors on Iraqi soil,” eventually leading to the end of the coalition mission. Iraq is committed to ensuring the “safety of the international coalition’s advisors during the negotiation period in all parts of the country” and to “maintaining stability and preventing escalation.”
On the US side, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the discussions will take place within the ambit of a higher military commission established in August 2023 to negotiate the “transition to an enduring bilateral security partnership between Iraq and the United States.”
Pentagon commanders would be pinning hopes on protracted negotiations. The US is in a position to blackmail Iraq, which is obliged, per the one-sided agreement dictated by Washington during the occupation in 2003, to keep in the US banks all of Iraq’s oil export earnings.
But in the final analysis, President Biden’s political considerations in the election year will be the clincher. And that will depend on the calibration by West Asia’s resistance groups, and their ability to ‘swarm’ the US on multiple fronts until it caves. It is this ‘known unknown’ factor that explains the Astana format meeting of Russia, Iran, and Turkiye on January 24-25 in Kazakhstan. The three countries are preparing for the endgame in Syria. Not coincidentally, in a phone call last Friday, Biden once again told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to scale down the Israeli military operation in Gaza, stressing he is not in it for a year of war,” Axios‘ Barak Ravid reported in a ‘scoop’.
Their joint statement after the Astana format meeting in Kazakhstan is a remarkable document predicated almost entirely on an end to the US occupation of Syria. It indirectly urges Washington to give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates “operating under different names in various parts of Syria” as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism.’ It demands an end to the US’ illegal seizure and transfer of oil resources “that should belong to Syria,” the unilateral US sanctions, and so on.
Simultaneously, at a meeting in Moscow on Wednesday between the Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev and Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, the latter reportedly stressed that Iran-Russia cooperation in the fight against terrorism “must continue, particularly in Syria.” Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to host a trilateral summit with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts to firm up a coordinated approach.
The Axis of Resistance: deterrence means stability
Iran’s patience has run out over the US military presence in Syria and Iraq following the revival of ISIS with American support. Interestingly, Israel no longer abides by its “de-confliction” mechanism with Russia in Syria. Clearly, there is close US-Israeli cooperation in Syria and Iraq at the intelligence and operational level, which goes against Russian and Iranian interests. Needless to say, the backdrop of the imminent upgrade of the Russia-Iran strategic partnership also needs to be factored in here.
These developments are a vintage illustration of defensive deterrence. The Axis of Resistance turns out to be the principal instrument of peace for the issues of security that entangle the US and Iran. Clearly, there isn’t any method or any reasonable hope of convergence to this process, but, fortunately, the appearance of chaos in West Asia is deceiving.
Beyond the distractions of partisan argument and diplomatic ritual, one can detect the outlines of a practical solution to the Syrian stalemate that addresses the inherent security interests of the US and Iran that are embedded within an outer ring of US-China concord over the situation in West Asia.
Russia may seem an outlier for the present, but there is something in it for everyone, as the pullout of US troops opens the pathway to a Syrian settlement, which remains a top priority for Moscow and for Putin personally.
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Book Summary
The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food
Lies Are Unbekoming | January 20, 2026
Soybeans generate approximately $80 million annually in mandatory producer assessments alone, funding a marketing apparatus that has transformed an industrial commodity into one of America’s most trusted “health foods.” The campaign succeeded. Soy milk lines supermarket shelves beside dairy. Soy protein fortifies everything from infant formula to energy bars. Vegetarians rely on tofu and tempeh as dietary staples. Doctors recommend soy to menopausal women. School lunch programs serve soy-based meat substitutes to children. An estimated 60 percent of processed foods contain soy derivatives. The premise underlying this proliferation—that Asians have thrived on soy for millennia and that modern science validates its health benefits—has been repeated so often it functions as established fact.
Kaayla T. Daniel’s The Whole Soy Story dismantles this premise through systematic examination of the scientific literature. The book documents that traditional Asian soy consumption averaged roughly one tablespoon daily, consumed as fermented condiments after processing methods that neutralized inherent toxins—a pattern bearing no resemblance to American consumption of industrially processed soy protein isolate, soy flour, and soy oil. Daniel catalogs the antinutrients that survive modern processing (protease inhibitors, phytates, lectins, saponins), the toxic compounds created by industrial methods (nitrosamines, lysinoalanine, hexane residues), and the heavy metals concentrated in soy products (manganese, aluminum, fluoride, cadmium). She traces the mechanisms by which soy isoflavones—plant estrogens present at pharmacologically significant levels—disrupt thyroid function, impair fertility, and interact with hormone-sensitive cancers. The evidence emerges from peer-reviewed journals, FDA documents, and industry sources themselves.
The stakes extend beyond individual dietary choices. Infants fed soy formula receive isoflavone doses equivalent to several birth control pills daily, with blood concentrations 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than their natural estrogen levels. Soy protein isolate—the ingredient in formula, protein bars, and thousands of products—has never received GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status; its only pre-1960s use was as an industrial paper sealant. Two senior FDA scientists formally protested their own agency’s approval of soy health claims, citing evidence of thyroid damage and reproductive harm. The Honolulu Heart Program found that men consuming tofu twice weekly showed accelerated brain aging and increased dementia. These findings have not penetrated public awareness because the institutions responsible for consumer protection have been compromised by the industry they regulate. The Whole Soy Story presents the evidence that has been systematically excluded from mainstream health messaging, enabling readers to evaluate for themselves what the soy industry prefers they never learn. … continue
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- Polar Colding…Antarctica Saw Its Coldest October In 44 Years!
- New Study: Sea Levels Rose 20 Times The Modern Rate During The Roman Warm Period
- As German Gas Storage Dips Dangerously Low…Shortage Hardly Avoidable
- New Study: Brazil’s Relative Sea Level Was 2+ Meters Higher And SSTs 3-4°C Warmer 6000 Years Ago
- Philosopher Schopenhauer: Climate Science Certainty Stems From Stupidity, Ignorance
- New Study: Species Extinction Rates Declining Since 1980 – ‘Climate Change Is Not An Important Threat’
- Denmark Places Climate Protection Above Animal Welfare, Poisoning And Culling Cows
- New Study: Greenland Was 3-7°C Warmer And Far Less Glaciated Than Today 6000-8000 Years Ago
- German Media Report That Current Frigid Weather Can Be Explained By Arctic Warming!
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