The special naval forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) have seized Israel-linked MSC Aries container ship near the Strait of Hormuz, official news agency IRNA reports.
The ship was impounded by the Sepah Navy Special Force (SNSF) in a heliborne operation and rappelling of forces on the ship’s deck, the agency said Saturday.
“The ship has now been directed towards the territorial waters of our country,” IRNA said.
The Portuguese-flagged ship, operated by Zodiac Maritime, is owned by Israeli real estate, energy, technology and shipping magnate Eyal Ofer, it added.
Zodiac Maritime is part of the Israeli billionaire’s Zodiac Group.
A video released by IRGC shows SNSF commandos rappelling down onto a stack of containers sitting on the deck of the vessel.
A crew member on the ship could be heard saying: “Don’t come out.” He then tells his colleagues to go to the ship’s bridge as more commandos come down on the deck.
Reports said the MSC Aries had been last located off Dubai heading toward the Strait of Hormuz on Friday. The ship had reportedly turned off its tracking data, which has been common for Israeli-affiliated ships moving through the region.
The incident comes amid Israel bracing for Iranian retaliation after the regime’s April 1 strike on a building in the Iranian embassy compound in the Syrian capital of Damascus, which killed seven IRGC military advisors, including two generals.
April 13, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Zionism |
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Does anyone in Washington care about Israel’s crimes?
One expects that anyone involved in politics will lie whenever they think they can get away with it to burnish one’s own image and while also distorting reality to promote policies that are being favored. Nevertheless, the record of high crimes committed by a series of presidents and their top aides since the so-called “war on terror” began has established a new low for government veracity. One would have thought that the fake intelligence fabricated by a group of Zionists in the Pentagon and White House to launch the misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq would be as bad as it could possibly get, but the Joe Biden team has outdone even those unfortunately unindicted criminals by allowing itself to be maneuvered by friends in NATO and by Israel into situations that are one step short of nuclear war.
Listening to John Kirby, Lloyd Austin, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield speak suggests that a course of remedial English might be in order as they cannot articulate a sentence that is coherent, especially as they are frequently lying or being deliberately evasive. And then there is teleprompter Joe himself who can pout over the killing of 13,000 children in Palestine while also secretly sending weapons to the Israelis who are eager to slaughter still more based on the judgement that they will grow up to be “terrorists.” Joe’s idea of a exchange of views with the Israeli government is a threat to maybe do something unspecific followed by a strongly worded message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling him to “Go to hell!”
Joe’s gang cannot confirm that the Israelis are committing war crimes linked to genocide even though the rest of the world, including a majority of Americans, watch it happening on television and are convinced regarding what is taking place. But hey, Israel is a wonderful little democracy and America’s best friend and ally in the whole wide world. Or at least that is what Congress and the White House as well as the Jewish dominated media want you to believe. In reality, Israel is a racist and sectarian state that has been a US liability since it was founded, something that Secretary of State George Marshall warned about, but Harry Truman wanted Jewish money so he could get reelected. Some things never change as we watch Biden and Trump battle for the shekels by pledging their loyalty to Israel.
The latest wrinkle on the consequences of loving Israel so much comes with what is going on with Iran, which had its Embassy Consulate General building in Damascus Syria attacked by Israeli fighter planes, killing two senior Iranian generals plus a number of other Iranians, Lebanese and Syrians. For what it’s worth, embassies and consulates are generally speaking regarded as untouchable military targets under the terms of the Vienna Convention, which sought to keep enemies talking to each other even under the most adverse circumstances. In fact, Syria last fought Israel in 1973, more than fifty years ago, and has not gone to war with the Israelis since that time while Israel has been bombing Syria regularly as well as killing Iranian officials and scientists for many years. Iran, like Syria of late, has never attacked Israel.
Iran has said it will retaliate and Israel has gone on high alert. So what does Biden do? He warned Iran to back off and ignores the fact that it was Israel that did the unprovoked attacking and started the whole business and pledges “ironclad” support for the Jewish state if Iran dares to do anything serious in response. There are also reports that Israel and the US are planning jointly their possible retaliation if Iran were to strike. General Erik Kurilla, commander of the US Central Command, is now on his way to Israel and is expected to meet Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior Israel Defense Forces officials to coordinate possible US responses with those of Israel. Nota bene that President Biden has flipped the right or wrong of the entire affair over to do exactly what Israel wants, i.e. hopefully have the US go to war with the Iranians. This has been Netanyahu’s intention right from the beginning and there is also a bit of blackmail thrown in for good measure with Israel threatening to start using its secret nuclear arsenal if the United States stops supplying the Jewish state with weapons. Israeli Knesset member Nissim Vaturi, a representative in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, issued the threat in an unsubtle way while discussing the probability that Iran would retaliate against Israel for bombing its embassy. He said “In the event of a conflict with Iran, if we do not receive American ammunition … we will have to use everything we have.” In other words, Israel will have no choice but to start dropping nuclear weapons on its enemies and might also attack its friends who failed to support it, a reference to the Samson Option in which a beleaguered Israel would use its nukes to “take everyone down with them.”
The timing of the embassy attack suggests that Israel is acting as it does, i.e. taking steps to shift the narrative and restore its perpetual “victimhood,” because it definitely needs a public relations boost in a world where only the US and a few other nations aligned with Washington are not yet ready to give up on Bibi and his wild plans for regional domination. The horrific killing of hundreds of Palestinians in the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza as well as the targeted assassination of seven employees of a charity that was bringing in food to those starving due to Israel’s blocking the entry of relief supplies have been the top stories all over the world, and rightly so. The Israeli disdain for any behavior that might show weakness in the drive to remove the Palestinians from Palestine has resulted in the Jewish state’s being condemned and boycotted by much of the world with more to come.
Nevertheless, even in those countries that have made illegal pro-Palestinian expressions, demonstrations calling for a ceasefire have attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters. The governments confronting elections later this year, including the US and Germany, are under considerable pressure to respond to the popular sentiment. Indeed, it is already being mooted that President Joe Biden might well fail to be re-elected due to his kid gloves handling of Netanyahu who has assessed Biden’s weakness and has heedlessly taken US support as a given while also ignoring the warnings that are now coming out of Washington and elsewhere over the genocide taking place.
Indeed, it would be useful to speculate that the conflict in Gaza is in part being used as a smokescreen for developments with Iran and other Israeli neighbors that may prove more dangerous in the long run. Even the well-informed might be surprised to learn that even though Israel is not actually at war legally with several of its neighbors, it is nevertheless de facto at war with three countries, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. It has been exchanging fire with the Lebanese Hezbollah militias on its northern border on an almost daily basis since fighting with Hamas began in October and has sought and apparently obtained US guarantees of direct support should Hezbollah escalate its activity. In Syria, which has not in any way attacked Israel, the Israeli air and missile forces have staged numerous attacks against targets that it invariably claims to be “Iranian” even though most of the casualties are Syrians. There have been missile and bombing attacks on Syria nearly weekly since 2017, including a number of recent incidents involving both Damascus and Aleppo international airports that endangered civilian passengers and air crews.
As reported above, the most recent and most damaging attack was directed against the Iranian Consulate General, which was attached to the Iranian Embassy located in an upscale neighborhood in Damascus, Syria’s capital. The building was completely destroyed by six missiles fired from F-35 fighter planes that had crossed over the Syrian border from Israel, killing several long-serving diplomats alongside Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi. It was also reported that Brigadier General Hossein Amirollah, the chief of general staff for the al-Quds force in Syria and Lebanon, was among the victims as was at least one Hezbollah member. Sources in Syria confirmed that a total of 13 people were killed in the attack, including six Syrians. Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said afterwards that “We consider this aggression to have violated all diplomatic norms and international treaties. Benjamin Netanyahu has completely lost his mental balance due to the successive failures in Gaza and his failure to achieve his Zionist goals.” Both Iran and Hezbollah vowed revenge.
And just days before the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the Israeli military had launched massive strikes against a target in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo which killed at least 40 people, most of them soldiers. The air strikes hit a weapons depot, resulting in a series of explosions that also killed six Hezbollah fighters.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) subsequently revealed that it had strengthened air defenses and called up reservists in expectation of a response either from Lebanon or directly from Iran itself. Zahedi was an important Iranian official, reportedly responsible for the IRGC’s operations in Syria and Lebanon, for Iranian militias there, and for ties with Hezbollah, and was thus the most senior commander of Iranian forces in the two countries. His killing was the most significant death of a senior Iranian official since the murder in Baghdad of General Qassim Soleimani by the Trump Administration in January 2020. As the IRGC is a US-designated terrorist organization, Washington may have in advance approved of the Israeli action, though that was denied by the Pentagon.
Iran’s possible reprisal includes the capability to respond by directly launching missiles from its own territory rather than via any of its proxy groups, which include the militias it supports in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Responding to that possibility, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has warned on social media that if Tehran attacked from its territory, Israel would react and “attack in Iran.” Iran may therefore choose to respond indirectly or through a proxy, but any major reprisal would be giving Israel an excuse to elevate the conflict, which just might be the main reason for the attack on the Consulate General in the first place. It is, however, widely believed that the Iranian leadership is eager to avoid any escalation into a major or even a minor exchange that could be referred to as a war. Nevertheless, posters have gone up around Tehran in a sign of public pressure for an Iranian response. “The defeat of the Zionist regime in Gaza will continue and this regime will be close to decline and dissolution,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech to the country’s officials in Tehran. “Desperate efforts like the one they committed in Syria will not save them from defeat. Of course, they will also be slapped for that action,” he added.
Israeli Defense Minister Gallant responded to the Ayatollah, saying that Israel is “increasing preparedness” in the face of threats from all across the Middle East. Gallant said that the country’s defense establishment is “expanding our operations against Hezbollah, against other bodies that threaten us,” and reiterated that Israel “strikes our enemies all over the Middle East… We will know how to protect the citizens of Israel and we will know how to attack our enemies.”
Intelligence sources in Washington suggest that Iran will try to respond by possibly blowing up an Israeli Embassy or other building, or even by assassinating an Israeli official, but they will more likely do something indirectly through a proxy like Hezbollah or the Houthis. They could also send a more subtle message by accelerating their nuclear program, though there is a danger that that would definitely bring the US into the game, which is precisely what Israel would like to see. They want to cripple Iran but would much prefer that all the heavy lifting – and the casualties and costs – be endured by Washington. If a US intervention were to occur and there were a misstep, it could easily escalate into a regional war with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran all lined up against the US and Israel with China and Russia likely to be playing a supporting role aiding the Arabs and Iranians. And don’t forget that Israel is nuclear armed. If it gets in trouble it would see itself as a victim and would be tempted to do something very dangerous.
So it is easy to see that Israel has staged a deliberate provocation to draw Washington into its wars. It is playing with fire in an attempt to once and for all establish its dominance over all of its neighbors. Interestingly, the tone deaf Biden Administration appears to be falling into the trap set by the Israelis. Beyond the “ironclad” pledge, it also voted against a Russian and Chinese drafted UN Security Council resolution to condemn the Israeli attack on the Iranian Consulate General. The vote should have been a no brainer given the clear violation of international law and act of war committed by Israel in doing what it did, but the US was joined by Britain and France in casting the veto vote “no” reportedly after “Diplomats said the US told council colleagues that many of the facts of what happened on Monday in Damascus remained unclear.” It all means that Biden is stepping in it yet again in a situation where Netanyahu is in control and running circles around him.
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.
April 12, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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In both Ukraine and Gaza, the Joe Biden administration has adopted the dangerous doctrine of war management in which, while not stopping a war diplomatically, it attempts to contain it and prevent it from becoming a wider war into which the United States might get drawn.
This difficult to calibrate policy is being threatened in both theaters.
In the Middle East, two Israeli actions have escalated the calibrated strikes between Israel and Iran, up to the threshold that Iran could absorb without feeling the necessity to respond.
One was an airstrike in southern Lebanon that killed Ali Ahmad Hassin, an important Hezbollah commander. The more significant and volatile one was the April 1 attack on an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus that killed seven Iranian officers, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the top Iranian Quds Force commander in Lebanon and Syria.
Zahedi is the most senior Iranian commander to be killed since war broke out on October 7. But what made this strike escalatory and dangerous is that it targeted an embassy compound under Iranian sovereignty. “When they attack our consulate,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech on April 10, “it is as if they have attacked our soil.” Khamenei called the decision to escalate to such an attack a “mistake” that “must be punished.”
A direct response by Iran against Israel could risk the nightmare scenario the United States has sought to avoid through its policy of managing wars. In that scenario, Iran retaliates in kind against Israel and Israel responds, drawing Iran and Hezbollah into the war in a manner that pulls in the Houthis as well as militias in Iraq and Syria. A Houthi source told Responsible Statecraft that “In case a full-scale war was to erupt between Hezbollah and Israel, Yemen and its leadership will stand with the party [Hezbollah] militarily, politically and economically” in a way that could even include “sending foot soldiers.” Such a force aligned against Israel could risk drawing the United States into the war.
In a speech on April 5, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called the attack on Iran’s Damascus embassy “a turning point” and said that it is “certain that the Iranian response to the [bombing] of the Iranian consulate is coming without a doubt.”
He said, perhaps clearly for the first time, that Hezbollah could intervene in the event of a full-scale Israel-Iran war. “Everyone must prepare themselves, arrange their matters and be careful,” he said, “when the Iranian side responds to the targeting of the Iranian consulate and to the Zionist enemy’s possible response to the Iranian response.”
Nasrallah said that an Iranian response is inevitable and seemed to caution against the size of the Israeli counter-response, saying, not only that “everyone must prepare themselves,” but reminding that Hezbollah has “not used the main weapons nor the main forces and we have not called in the reserves.”
Nasrallah may have been leveraging a fuller Hezbollah entrance into the war to caution Israel and the United States against an even more escalatory Israeli counter-response to the response Iran feels it must deliver. Iran may have gone one step further, leveraging its entrance into the war in an attempt to stop the war altogether.
As Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute first reported, an Arab diplomatic source told Jadeh Iran that Iran will respond to the Israeli attack on its embassy with a direct attack on Israel unless the United States orchestrates a ceasefire in Gaza. According to reporting in Jadeh Iran, “Iran has vowed to respond to the assassination of Zahedi.” However, in an “exchange of messages between Tehran and Washington” whose aim is “to contain escalation,” an Iranian proposal “stipulated a ceasefire in Gaza as a price” for not striking Israel in retaliation.
Though a causal line cannot be drawn, it is interesting that, in an interview recorded on April 3, President Joe Biden said, “I think what [Netanyahu’s] doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” and then said, “So what I’m calling for is the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks, a total access to all food and medicine going into the country.”
It is also interesting that the United States is participating in the latest round of ceasefire negotiations in Cairo. In an April 8 press conference, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said that CIA Director Bill Burns was in Cairo for the talks. He said that the Biden administration “is doing everything possible to broker a deal that secures the release of all the hostages and leads to an immediate ceasefire. And there’s simply no higher priority.”
CNN went further, reporting that Burns wasn’t just present or participating, but that he “presented a new proposal to try to bridge the gaps in ongoing negotiations to broker a deal to bring about a ceasefire.”
Hezbollah may be responding to the killing of one of their commanders by leveraging the threat of its entering the war to prevent the war from entering an uncontrolled series of escalations. Iran may be responding to the airstrike on its embassy that killed a general by leveraging its entering the war to stop the war altogether. How big a factor Iran is, and how powerful its leverage, may help determine what comes next, how big the Israeli counter-response to Iran’s promised response is and even, perhaps, the prospects of a future ceasefire.
April 11, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Attacking embassies, consulates and diplomatic personnel is an intolerable crime under international law. The inviolability of diplomatic buildings is a global principle that enables the elementary conditions necessary for international relations. Even in situations of total war and high-intensity conflicts, respect for diplomacy must be observed by the belligerent sides to prevent even worse escalations of violence from occurring.
Israel, however, appears unwilling to respect any international norm. Recently, the Zionist State bombed an Iranian diplomatic building, close to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus. At least seven Iranian citizens were murdered in the operation, including diplomats and a senior Revolutionary Guard commander. As expected, Tehran has promised retaliation and is already mobilizing its military forces for a possible conflict situation.
In fact, the act of bombing diplomatic installations can be considered terrorism, as it deliberately aims to kill civilians, without any military objective. As we know, attacks against civilians have become increasingly frequent in the Zionist war strategy. The Israeli regime simply appears to see all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as legitimate targets, which leads the IDF to destroy all of the city’s civilian infrastructure and generate an ever-increasing number of non-military casualties among local residents.
However, it appears that Israel is also expanding its attacks on civilian targets to the international level. The destruction of one of the buildings of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus was certainly one of the most serious moves ever made in the current conflict. To make matters worse, Israeli officials have promised to carry out more attacks against Iranian and Shiite public figures, regardless of where they are located. Apparently, from now on Tel Aviv will openly adopt a rhetoric of “hunting” against Iranians.
Obviously, this situation will only generate more escalations. Israel is accustomed to attacking targets with little power to react, such as the stateless Palestinians or Syria, which is recovering from a brutal civil war. Iran, however, is a country in a different position. Tehran is the largest military power in the Middle East, having impressive weapons production and combat mobilization capabilities. The country controls the production of the main current military equipment, with modern long-range missiles and drones among its main tools of war.
Furthermore, Iran has more than only its military and Revolutionary Guard, controlling a complex network of anti-Zionist movements across the Middle East – the so-called “Axis of Resistance”. Armed organizations such as Hezbollah, the Iraqi Resistance, Syrian Shiite militias, the Houthis and the Palestinian guerrillas themselves are members of the Axis and are willing to fight a war in favor of Iran at any time. Even if Israel strives to destroy targets linked to regular Iranian forces, it will be difficult to neutralize the top leaders of all these organizations at the same time.
An open war between Iran and Israel would be catastrophic for the region from all points of view. Analyzing the military power of both countries, it is possible to say that Israel is militarily weaker. However, Tel Aviv has nuclear weapons. The possibility that Iran also has such weapons cannot be ruled out, but at least publicly there is no information to prove this. What is known, however, is that the Iranians already have full uranium enrichment capacity and control the industrial process that could lead to the production of an atomic bomb.
In a war scenario, Iran would also be favored by its complex geography. As a large country and with mountains that protect some of its important cities and industrial centers, Iran is less vulnerable to collapse in the face of foreign incursions than Israel. Furthermore, Tehran would mobilize the Axis of Resistance militias to attack Israel on several flanks, quickly making the Zionist state unable to fight given the existence of multiple fronts. In this scenario, Israel would be forced to choose between two fates: surrender or the use of its extreme arsenal.
However, history shows us that Iran has a great capacity to achieve military objectives without generating collateral damage. The country is used to asymmetric warfare, responding with patience and high precision to the provocations suffered, without escalating the regional situation into total war. Tehran will certainly do its best to retaliate against Israel without a formal declaration of war. It is possible that there will be more Axis of Resistance attacks against occupation forces in the coming days, just as it is possible that Israeli and American targets will be destroyed in high-precision raids.
It is not yet certain that there will be an open war, but it is absolutely clear that there will be a serious escalation. Israel is making a serious mistake by thinking that it will go unpunished after attacking the greatest military power in the Middle East.
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April 6, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Zionism |
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Included in the trillion-dollar spending package signed into law by President Biden on March 23, 2024 are provisions to disburse a combined total of at least $7.505 billion to and/or on behalf of Israel in the year 2024. This works out to $20.5 million per day.
These provisions were included in the package despite Israel’s many actions that harm Americans, U.S. laws ruling aid to Israel illegal, most Americans believe the U.S. already gives Israel too much money, and that Israel is in the middle of an onslaught against Gazan men, women, and children.
2024 Money to Israel ($3.8 Billion total):
$3.3 billion in grants to Israel under the Foreign Military Financing Program – to be disbursed within 30 days. (Including $725.3 million for procurement of defense articles and R&D) page 867
$500 million for Israeli Cooperative Programs, (beginning on page 103) including:
- $80 million for the procurement of the Iron Dome defense system
- $127 million for Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense
- $40 million for Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense Co-Production Activities
- $80 million for Israeli Missile Defense Architecture
- $173 million for Arrow System Improvement Program
Additional expenditures on behalf of Israel:
- $5 million for the Department of State to carry out provisions of the Migration and Refugee Assistance act to accommodate refugees resettling in Israel. (Page 710)
- $1.4 billion to Egypt (page 861) and $2.3 billion for Jordan (pages 126, 136, & 868) stem from agreements that benefit Israel, namely that these countries desist from advocating for full Palestinian rights.
As eminent economist Thomas Stauffer stated in a detailed analysis of U.S. expenditures: “Protection of Israel and subsidies to countries willing to sign peace treaties with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, has been the prime driver of U.S. outlays.“
Former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman concurred, noting that aid to Egypt and Jordan, are supported “in large measure in terms of their contribution to the security of the Jewish state.”
The money for Egypt originated from an inducement to obtain and then maintain Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel (AIPAC even advocated that the U.S. continue aid to Egypt when said aid was called into question in 2013) and the money to Jordan is based on similar terms, the Guardian noting in 2019 that Jordan’s willingness to work with Israel “helps to smooth the way for annual US aid payments worth more than $1.5bn each year that keep Jordan’s donor-dependent economy afloat.” The Jordanian government, despite protest from most of its population, has a history of enforcing Israeli policies.
The total amount of money to be expended on behalf of Israel amounts to over $3.705 billion.
This money to and for Israel is not new. Over the years, Israel has received far more U.S. tax money than any other country on earth: on average as of 2013 of over 7,000 times more direct aid per capita than anyone else.
Economist Thomas Stauffer wrote that support for Israel also includes numerous miscellaneous items such as “special trade advantages, preferential contracts, and aid buried in other accounts.” As of 2002, he found, support for Israel had cost Americans $1.8 trillion – and had cost “some 275,000 American jobs each year.”
And since then the cost of Israel to American taxpayers now also includes the lives destroyed and the multi-trillion dollar cost of the Iraq war, a tragic and disastrous quagmire promoted by Israel and its American partisans. And on top of this are the costs, in both lives and treasure, of Israel-influenced policies regarding Syria, Iran, and others.
In addition to the aforementioned financial benefits to Israel, there are other items that help Israel:
- Restricting funds for Diplomatic programs so the US Embassy must remain in Jerusalem. (Page 743)
- Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act Amended to Extend Loan Guarantees to Israel for one more year, expiring on September 30th, 2029 (Page 830)
- Arms Export Control Act authorized to commercially lease defense articles to Israel, Egypt & NATO allies. Page 842 the law restricts funding certain international programs.
- An express prohibition of funds for a Palestinian state unless certain stipulations are met. (Page 851)
- An express prohibition of funds for the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation (page 854), the Palestinian Authority, Hamas & PLO (page 860)
- No funds for UN human rights council unless Israel is removed as an agenda item. (Page 936)
- No funds for UN Commission of inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian territory. (Page 938)
- There is an “Economic Support Fund” for the West Bank and Gaza under the Taylor Force Act, that contains extremely strict requirements for disbursement. (Page 877)
- USAID Assistance for Gaza provided there is Israeli oversight (Page 997)
- A prohibition on funding the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (Page 1010)
Bottom line:
The total amount of money to be spent because of Israel, whether directly or indirectly, is at least $7.505 billion, or $20.6 Million daily.
AIPAC thanks Congress
AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, noted that the funding has no conditions, and tweeted that they “appreciate the efforts of many members who worked to include key pro-Israel provisions in the bill.
In particular, we thank the leadership of @PattyMurray @SenatorCollins @ChrisCoons @LindseyGrahamSC @SenatorTester @SenSchumer @LeaderMcConnell @RepKayGranger @rosadelauro @MarioDB @RepBarbaraLee @KenCalvert @BettyMcCollum04 @RepDWStweets @RepLoisFrankel @SpeakerJohnson @RepJeffries”
A number of politicians who had previously announced they opposed any request for aid to Israel, still voted for the bill:
- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
- Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois
- Rep Ilhan Omar of Minnesota
- Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York
- Rep Summer Lee of Pennsylvania
- Rep Andre Carson of Indiana
- Rep Jamaal Bowman of New York
- Rep Cori Bush of Missouri
- Rep Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
Voters can contact their representatives here to give them their opinion about how their tax money should be spent.
Matt Sabourin dit Choinière, a former Air Force Officer residing in New Hampshire, is an intern at If Americans Knew. The article draws on previous IAK reports and incorporates some of their text.
April 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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By Uriel Araujo | April 5, 2024
Peter Smith, Lucas Webber, and Colin P. Clarke, writing for The Diplomat, argue that ISIS and ISKP terrorist groups “have viewed Moscow as their enemy since the group’s inception” largely due to the Kremlin’s role in Syria. I recently wrote about the Russian role in fighting terrorism in the Levant and Central Asia, and much is being (finally) said about that in the aftermath of the violent Crocus City Hall terror attack near Moscow. It is about time, however, to talk about the hypocrisy pertaining to Washington’s role in Syria and elsewhere and in the evolution of ISIS itself and Islamic terrorism in general.
It may be a politically incorrect truth, but the fact remains that Hezbollah as well as Iranian and Russian forces have been playing a major role in fighting ISIS in Syria for over a decade as well as in guaranteeing the safety of Christians and other minorities in a region where Wahhabi extremists were beheading, enslaving and kidnapping them. Meanwhile, American military aid to insurgents in Syria is a well established fact.
It so happens the weapons provided by Washington to rebels there “ended up” in ISIS hands, according to more than one Amnesty Report. It could be just a coincidence, but, in fact, it is not far-fetched at all to say the United States played a key role in the evolution of ISIS both in Iraq and Syria – and much has been written on it. In any case, this is far from being the only instance of the world’s Atlantic superpower sponsoring terrorism – mayhem and civil war. Already in 1991, Graham H. Stuart, who was Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Stanford University, wrote on how the terrorism of the American enemies even paled in comparison to Western sponsored terror. This remains true to this day. The case of Libya is emblematic in this regard and it is worth having a look at it.
One may recall that, after seeing reports of Gaddafi’s capture and brutal assassination on her Blackberry device in between interviews, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously said, while cheering, “We came, we saw, he died” – paraphrasing Julius Cesar’s “Veni; vidi; vici” (“I came; I saw; I conquered”). She had been in Tripoli (Libya) earlier that same week for talks with Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) leaders. The reporter then asked her whether the Libyan leader’s death had anything to do with Clinton’s surprise visit to the country. She firstly replied “no”, but then added with a chuckle while rolling her eyes, “I’m sure it did!”
The Roman statesman and general, according to Appian of Alexandria, used the aforementioned phrase to report to the Roman Senate his swift victory in the war against Pharnaces II of Pontus in modern-day Turkey. Clinton’s paraphrasing of it in turn was basically a top US official cheering the obscene assassination of a sovereign country’s head of state by the hand of American proxy terrorist bandits in Libya. These rebels stripped and tortured the deposed leader and joyfully filmed it before killing him. A video appallingly shows the man being stabbed or poked in the anus with what appears to be a stick or a bayonet, which ensued a scandal throughout the country. The rotting body, later placed in an industrial freezer, was publicly displayed for days by the rebel authorities.
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called for an independent autopsy and investigation, to no avail. Whether one likes or not Gadaffi and his authoritarian rule, the hard fact is that slavery has literally made a comeback in post-Gaddafi Libya, with Black Africans being sold as slaves in open markets. The American-aided “spring” basically turned Libya into a ruined nation – Gaddafi’s Libya was no paradise, but one should keep in mind that the country for years had the highest Human Development Index in Africa before the civil war, and boasted of significant gender equality.
I’ve written before on the hydropolitics of the American intervention in Libya and the NATO bombing of the “Great Man-Made River” project. Besides dropping bombs on over 100 targets in Libya, together with France and its other NATO allies (which resulted in the deaths of civilians, including babies), Washinton provided covert military assistance to the rebels who toppled Gaddafi, despite the presence of Al-Qaeda and other terror groups amongst them. Sometimes it was not so covert: an American Predator drone took part in the airstrike in Muammar Gaddafi’s convey just moments before his death, and the whole matter was hailed by Washington and enthusiasts as a “new kind of US foreign policy success”, with an unnamed US official describing such policy as “leading from behind”. According to former CIA officer Bruce Riedel: “There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition. It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.”
It is no wonder ISIS-Libya (ISIS-L) emerged in the aftermath of the country’s civil war and is active there to this day. One group of Liybians who had fought against Gaddafi went to Syria to join the anti-government rebels there, by forming the Battar Brigade in 2012, which later pledged its loyalty to US-aided ISIS. Many Battar Brigade veterans then returned to Libya in 2014, to create the Islamic Youth Shura Council faction.
To sum it up, time and time again one will encounter Washington authorities directly or indirectly involved in the aiding and arming of the most vicious terrorist groups in North Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere, as admitted by US top officials themselves. It is part of the core of its foreign policy. And it is about time to stop pretending it isn’t.
April 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | al-Qaeda, Hillary Clinton, ISIS, Libya, Middle East, Syria, United States |
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On Monday, Iran said that Israeli warplanes struck the Iranian embassy in Syria, killing seven military advisers, including two generals. On Tuesday, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge.
As the US and its allies have continuously allowed Israel to “cross all red lines” in the past, it should be no surprise that it attacked an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday.
“The Israeli regime is only able to carry out these attacks because the United States, the Europeans, the Canadians, the British, the Australians allow them to cross all red lines. When they’re allowed to commit a genocide, when they’re allowed to carry out a Holocaust, in the words of the president of Brazil, then, obviously, attacking an embassy shouldn’t be unexpected.”
However, the United States and Europeans continue to parrot Israel’s lies, Marandi said, noting Israeli forces have attacked Al-Shifa hospital twice now, and the first time they falsely claimed it contained a tunnel network and Hamas command center.
“Now, they still try to repeat their lies even though it’s much more difficult,” Marandi explained. “They’ve wrecked all the hospitals. They’ve wrecked all the infrastructure. They shoot people carrying white flags.”
“There’s so much documentation that there’s no way for the Americans and Europeans to escape the reality that this is a genocidal and criminal regime from top to bottom. Yet still, they behave as if this is a normal country, as if this is a country that’s exercising its right and that it may be making mistakes.”
Marandi and co-hosts Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon acknowledged the unlikelihood of the US not having advance notice about the attack; however, Marandi postulated it would showcase Israel’s lack of respect for the US if they didn’t.
“If the Americans didn’t know, then it just shows that the Israelis have no respect for the United States, that the Israelis don’t care what the implications are for the United States in this region and globally, because there is no doubt that the Iranians are going to respond. This is no ordinary attack.”
Unlike the US and Europeans that allow Israel to “get away with anything,” this attack is a red line “that the Iranians cannot ignore.”
“The Iranians are going to hit back hard. And if the Americans didn’t know, then that means the Israelis are putting the Americans at risk of a very complicated situation, but they don’t care.”
With the protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ongoing, and some US politicians calling for elections in Israel, Marandi stressed the importance of remembering that he is not alone in carrying out the genocide in Gaza. “Let’s not allow the Americans to pin the blame on Netanyahu. Overwhelmingly people in Israel support the genocide, and, apparently, more than half believe it should be even more intense.”
“The problem goes way beyond Netanyahu.”
April 3, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States |
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Iran’s apparent restraint in the face of Israeli aggression should not be mistaken for weakness. Tehran steadily applies pressure on Tel Aviv through its own methods, setting the stage carefully for Israel’s unravelling.
A strategy in asymmetrical warfare is expressed by the “boiling frog” theory:
Legend has it that a frog placed in a shallow pot of water heating on a stove will remain happily in the pot of water as the temperature continues to climb, and will not jump out even as the water slowly reaches the boiling point and kills the frog. The change of one degree of temperature at a time is so gradual that the frog doesn’t realize he is being boiled until it is too late.
While the story is an apologue – a pretty fable meant to convey a meaningful lesson – it is one frequently invoked by militaries and geopoliticians to describe the “long game” of reaching strategic objectives.
Today, it is Iran and its regional allies who are using a measured approach to increase temperatures in West Asia until the water boils the US and Israeli ‘frogs’ to death. Strategy, discipline, and rare patience – the antithesis of western short-termism – will bring Iran victory. To quote the Taliban: “Americans have watches, but we have the time.”
Time is now on the side of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its regional allies. Two connected examples show how the IRGC is calibrating temperatures like scientists in a laboratory.
The Yankee Frog
Following the launch of the Hamas-led resistance operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October of last year, US President Joe Biden deployed US Navy assets to the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea to “defend” Israel.
On 26 November, the USS Eisenhower and its escorts navigated through the Straits of Hormuz, anchoring in the Persian Gulf on the Saudi Arabian side. Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned naval forces initially targeted Israeli ships and Eilat Port with their first shots on 19 October. But by 29 November, their attacks escalated to include vessels bound to or from Eilat, irrespective of flag or ownership.
This pattern culminated in the Pentagon’s announcement of “Operation Prosperity Guardian” on 18 December, aimed at safeguarding Israel’s economic interests at the expense of US military personnel. Subsequently, the Eisenhower and its naval escorts relocated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, purportedly to “defend” the occupation state.
Instead, the positioning of US Navy assets in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has left them susceptible to potential attacks from Iranian or Iranian-supplied weaponry, including cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones.
Despite efforts from the US Navy (USN) and the US Air Force (USAF), Ansarallah remains undefeated. Previous Anglo–American airstrikes in Yemen have proven ineffective, while the ongoing pace and expanding scope of Yemeni operations are straining naval resources and dampening morale.
Unlike ‘Hollywood guns,’ US Navy vessels do not have unlimited interceptor missiles, nor can they be reloaded at sea. As for the morale of American personnel, it will break in the long run, particularly since many, if not most, sailors and marines are simply not invested in a fight for Israel.
Last month, Captain Chris Hill, the commanding officer of the USS Eisenhower, said: “People need breaks, they need to go home.”
While sailors, marines, and airmen are getting antsy dodging Ansarallah’s drones and missiles on a daily basis, the ‘Yankee Frog’ is merrily paddling about his Washington hot tub, believing the ‘might’ of the USN will defeat the pesky ‘Houthis.’
This was arguably a well-calibrated move supported by Iran that accomplished two objectives: First, it got the carrier battle group out of the Persian Gulf, and second, it sucked the US into an escalatory trap. The Yankee Frog is in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden hotpot. It cannot win.
It will either jump out and flee in humiliation, further destroying the credibility of the US armed forces following its humiliating 2021 debacle in Afghanistan; or it will remain in the hotpot and be boiled to death—with the loss of ships and lives.
With either outcome, Iran wins. Relatedly, an Iranian defeat of the US will be welcomed by China, Russia, and scores of US adversary states, particularly across the global south. As noted by one astute Twitter/X user, Armchair Warrior (describing Russia’s likely responses to Ukrainian provocations), by its actions, Iran has demonstrated “reflexive control” over Washington’s actions. By this, he means, “If every military action you take gets a symmetrical reaction, then you can control the nature, venue, and tempo of the conflict to your benefit.” This is precisely what the IRGC is cleverly doing.
The Israeli Frog
The wee ‘Israeli Frog,’ meanwhile, somnolent in the warm water, is dreaming of his ‘new Israel’ – the Israel that he will create once he has ethnically cleansed Gaza. He has plans to develop Gaza, build luxury condos along the beachfront, and build housing units for new settlers.
Architects are now drawing up plans. Former President and current Republican contender Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a Netanyahuist and Likud Party benefactor, is measuring drapes for his Gaza waterfront condominium.
However, the Israeli military has not defeated Hamas, which continues to inflict significant damage to Israeli military hardware and human assets. By one estimate, Hamas has only been degraded by 15–20 percent. The occupation army wholly depends on the US and its European vassal states for armaments since its domestic production capacities are limited.
According to one estimate, some 500,000 settlers have returned to their homelands; most will not return. Since 7 October, conscription is no longer a safe yet inconvenient three-year requirement: parents are afraid for their daughters and sons.
The dormant refusenik movement that emerged from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon has re-awakened. Draftees are refusing to serve and being jailed as a result. The conscription exemption for ultra-Orthodox Jews expired on 1 April; they are threatening to flee Israel, whose very survival is dependent on Jews moving there.
If representatives of ultra-Orthodox Jews quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, it could bring down his extremist government. Internal tensions within Israeli society are escalating, fueled by socio-economic pressures and disillusionment with the government’s handling of the war.
The Israeli economy is in shambles. The shekel is declining. Budget deficits and borrowing have skyrocketed. Moody’s downgraded Israel’s credit from A1 to A2 on 9 February. Israel’s tourism industry has collapsed into crisis. Most major airlines no longer fly to Israel. Israel’s manufacturing and agricultural bases are small. Israel has limited access to natural resources and energy; it depends on overland lifelines to Jordan and Egypt, with Azerbaijani oil and gas coming to Haifa from Turkey.
Iran is doing to Israel just what Israel did to it with economic sanctions. But unlike Israel, Iran has abundant supplies of oil and gas, 85 million literate and educated people who are not planning to flee, and formidable agricultural and manufacturing bases.
Tehran is methodically throttling Israel’s economy. Haifa port is on Hezbollah’s target list. If Haifa is shut down alongside Eilat, Israel will only have overland lifelines for food and energy supplies. Ben Gurion International and other airports may be targeted in the future.
Turning up the heat, one degree at a time
The recent Israeli attack on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus, purportedly in response to an Iraqi drone striking Eilat, mirrors Netanyahu’s apprehensions and frustrations – that “the whole world is ganging up on us.”
Netanyahu’s strategy appears to be to goad Iran into escalating tensions, potentially prompting them to target American military assets in the region, thereby drawing the US into the Gaza War. However, it’s uncertain whether Tehran will take the bait.
While the IRGC is likely to respond, they will look to avoid falling into Netanyahu’s trap. Instead, Iran may opt to tighten its economic stranglehold on Israel, possibly by targeting strategic locations such as Eilat, Haifa, and Ben Gurion Airport.
The IRGC understands that Israel’s economy cannot sustain a prolonged conflict. Therefore, their strategy might involve a gradual escalation – effectively boiling the Israeli frog slowly – through coordinated actions involving Hezbollah, Ansarallah, and various Syrian and Iraqi-based factions.
As the economist Herbert Stein noted, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” While Israel is far from being on the brink of collapse, the disciplined and calculated actions of the IRGC are steadily increasing regional tensions. If left unchecked, this could lead to significant repercussions for Israeli society and its economy – all without it realizing, like the wee boiling frog.
April 3, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Zionism |
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Tel Aviv launched a strike against the Iranian diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital of Damascus this week, killing several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in the process.
Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria suggests that it is trying to “widen” the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip by drawing Iran into it, said Foad Izadi, an associate professor at the University of Tehran’s Department of American Studies.
“They have been trying to start a military confrontation between the United States and Iran for many years. And they think that they have an opportunity to have this done fighting Iran using American soldiers,” he told Sputnik, apparently suggesting that the US would be quick to leap to Israel’s defense if the latter were threatened by Tehran.
Izadi also remarked that Israel displayed a blatant disregard for international law by attacking a diplomatic compound, which is a violation of the Vienna Convention.
“That is what Israelis are trying to do. Netanyahu realizes that he has lost the war in Gaza. He has managed to kill more than 30,000, mostly women and children, without achieving any goals except killing these people and ruining their homes,” Izadi said.
“They say that they want to destroy Hamas, but that’s not a goal they can achieve. Obviously, they would have done that if they could. That’s why criminal acts and genocide in Gaza continue. And Netanyahu realizes that sooner or later this war needs to end. And that would be the end of his prime ministership. And so he’s trying to prolong the war, he’s trying to widen the war,” Izadi added.
Noting that Iran’s attempt to seek justice via the UN Security Council may be unsuccessful due to the likelihood of the US vetoing a resolution critical of Israel, Izadi suggested that Tehran may opt to “cause pain for the Israelis so that these types of actions are not repeated.”
“Because Iranian officials realize that if there is no pain in engaging in this type of activity, then they will continue,” he elaborated. “So I think Iran’s response would be two-fold in a manner that is not satisfying the Israeli aim of widening the war. I think that’s what Iranian leaders will do.”
April 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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The veiled details behind the recent visit of Wafiq Safa, head of Hezbollah’s Liaison and Coordination Unit, to the UAE remain undisclosed. Rumors propagated by Saudi media have tried to insinuate that the Lebanese resistance party aims to placate its stance towards Israel, possibly even contemplating concessions.
This narrative seeks to undermine or distort any real achievements gained during the rare trip. Despite all the conjecture, one development is undeniable: there has been a nascent shift in thawing the longstanding hostilities between Hezbollah and the UAE — a prominent Arab ally of both the US and Israel.
Strained relations
The sudden revelation of Safa’s visit to the Persian Gulf state on 19 March was indeed astonishing — a first by a senior Hezbollah official in many years — particularly given Abu Dhabi’s active role in clamping down on even pro-Hezbollah sentiments within the UAE.
The UAE’s track record includes arbitrary arrests and expulsions of Lebanese nationals under all sorts of dubious charges, often subjecting them to inhumane treatment, exemplified tragically in the case of Lebanese businessman Ghazi Ezzeldin, who was tortured to death while in Emirati custody last year.
News reports suggest that seven Lebanese citizens — four serving life sentences; two others facing 15 years in prison — remain incarcerated in the Emirates under charges of laundering funds for Hezbollah and Iran, and for the spurious claim of having made contact with Hezbollah. All of the detainees deny these charges.
In short, UAE authorities need little justification to accuse Lebanese individuals of ties to Hezbollah, which is designated a terrorist entity in the Emirates.
The UAE, it should be noted, is Tel Aviv’s closest Arab ally in West Asia, marked by Abu Dhabi’s decision in 2020 to normalize relations with the occupation state — with Bahrain, the first Arab state in the Persian Gulf to do so. Despite Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, economic ties between the UAE and Israel continue to flourish, further entrenching their alliance against common adversaries.
Against this backdrop, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad emerges as an unexpected mediator, leveraging his amicable relations with the UAE leadership, united in their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Behind the scenes, the UAE has been quietly leveraging its international clout to lift US Caesar Act sanctions on Syria, with an eye on participating in the war-torn country’s reconstruction efforts. As the first Arab state to break Assad’s diplomatic isolation, the UAE has now seized the opportunity to engage with Hezbollah via its renewed Damascus channel.
Preliminary discussions, facilitated by Syrian General Intelligence Director Major General Hossam Louka, bridged the gap between the two parties. These exchanges, held on Syrian soil, involved representatives from both Hezbollah and UAE officials.
Louka also visited Lebanon and the UAE to meet with Emirati officials and the leadership of Hezbollah and convey a detailed message to Assad.
Contrary to the many sensationalized reports in regional media, informed sources tell The Cradle that Safa encountered no explicit demands from UAE officials during his visit. Instead, discussions centered on two pivotal objectives: first, securing the release of Lebanese detainees unjustly incarcerated in the UAE under charges of affiliation with Hezbollah, and second, improving the precarious conditions Lebanese expatriates face in the UAE, where their presence is securitized by the state.
The sources affirm the constructive nature of the meetings and indicate there may be imminent releases of the Lebanese detainees before the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
What do both parties want?
But the timing of Safa’s visit, as Israel escalates airstrikes on Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, raises speculation about the implications of this renewed relationship. Safa himself is on a US sanctions list, while Hezbollah retains its designation as a terrorist organization by both Washington and the Persian Gulf states.
The UAE, having previously subjected Lebanese nationals to unjust treatment, now initiates efforts to mend ties with Hezbollah. Conversely, Hezbollah, having waged a war to free prisoners from Israeli detention, displays a willingness to engage in dialogue, even if the optics of its representative shaking hands with UAE officials may not be well-received back home.
Following the visit, Hezbollah issued a very brief statement:
“The head of the Liaison and Coordination Unit, Hajj Wafiq Safa, visited the United Arab Emirates as part of the ongoing follow-up to address the case of a number of Lebanese detainees there, where he met with a number of officials concerned with this case, and [a solution to this issue will be reached hopefully].”
Nevertheless, the underlying question remains: What does the UAE seek to achieve? Did it initiate this thaw in relations merely to reopen its embassy in Lebanon after years of closure and diplomatic strife? Does the UAE have hidden intentions concealing these superficial objectives — and what role could Hezbollah play in this equation?
Outreach to Iran via its allies
Early this year, as the regional war expanded, CIA Director William Burns wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine: “The key to Israel’s — and the region’s — security is dealing with Iran.”
Abu Dhabi too, knows that the relationship with Tehran is pivotal to resolving crises in the region. Hence, the UAE has taken a significant stride towards Hezbollah, recognizing its critical regional role. While this unusual meeting could have taken place in Damascus, in secret, the UAE opted instead for a public airing and even arranged for Safa’s transportation via plane to the Emirates.
Moreover, Abu Dhabi’s interest in improving relations with Hezbollah and its leadership could have direct security benefits. The Lebanese party has influence with Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, whose naval operations in the Red Sea and other waterways are impacting international navigation and, thus, Emirati interests from the Persian Gulf to the Horn of Africa.
While a Syrian source tells The Cradle that the meeting yielded positive outcomes and is likely to be followed by further engagements, the visit carries implications that extend well beyond the immediate parties involved.
Beyond improving Hezbollah-UAE or Iran-UAE understandings, it will be essential to monitor the subsequent actions of Saudi Arabia’s leadership after this event.
In essence, these developments could lead to improved future relations between Hezbollah and Arab states of the Persian Gulf, in turn reversing Washington and Tel Aviv’s strategic target of clinching further normalization deals for Israel in West Asia.
March 31, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Hezbollah, Lebanon, Middle East, Syria, UAE, Yemen, Zionism |
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Over the past two years, Moscow has collected evidence of Western involvement in training and arming jihadi terrorists to weaponize them on the Ukrainian battlefield and Russia’s rear.
The Crocus City Hall terror attack has raised questions about the West’s repeated use of jihadist elements, starting from arming Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Cold War era to most recent reports of Islamists fighting on the side of the Kiev regime.
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) stated on February 13, 2023, that it obtained intelligence indicating that the US military was actively recruiting militants from jihadist groups affiliated with ISIS and al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia and the CIS countries. According to the SVR, particular attention is paid to attracting people from the Russian North Caucasus and Central Asia to cooperate.
The Russian intelligence service revealed that in January 2023, 60 terrorists with experience of participating in hostilities in the Middle East were recruited by the West, adding that they were undergoing training at the American base in Al-Tanf, Syria, to conduct terrorist and subversive attacks.
The SVR noted at the time that the militants would be dispatched in small groups to the territory of Russia and the CIS countries in cooperation with underground cells of international terrorist groups, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamaat Ansarullah and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
“We see the final loss of any moral principles in the US security forces,” the SVR summarized in its official statement, lambasting Washington’s obsession with inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia by any means possible. “Such actions put Washington on a par with the largest international terrorist groups.”
Intel data confirming the plans described by the SVR started to emerge later in the year. Russian Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov stated at the October 2023 meeting of heads of Russian security agencies and special services that ISIS and other terrorist groups were fighting against Russia as part of the Ichkerian and Crimean Tatar mercenary units in Ukraine. ISIS is also part of sabotage and reconnaissance groups sent to Russian territory to carry out attacks and terrorist attacks, Bortnikov emphasized.
The FSB director pointed out that Western governments were “actively facilitating the movement of militants into the Ukrainian conflict zone.” As of October 2023, the FSB had registered the participation of employees of 13 Western private military companies (PMCs) and members of nine foreign paramilitary proxy forces in the Ukraine conflict on the side of the Kiev regime.
According to Bortnikov, the US and its NATO allies have turned Ukraine into nothing short of a terrorist hotbed.
The FSB chief likewise drew special attention to the US and British intelligence services’ efforts to create a “belt of instability” in Afghanistan near the southern borders of the CIS, where al-Qaeda and the ISIS groups are becoming stronger. To that end, the Western intelligence services were recruiting militants from international terrorist organizations operating in Iraq, Syria, and a number of other Asian and African countries, and transferring them to northern Afghanistan.
“We note the increased role of al-Qaeda, which, in alliance with the IS branch Vilayat Khorasan, takes an active part in the preparation, indoctrination and logistical support of controlled groups,” Bortnikov stressed last October.
Islamic Terror Groups Flocking to Ukraine
From the very beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, reports started to emerge in international media outlets and blogs, shedding light on jihadists of all stripes flocking to the combat zone in Ukraine.
In early March 2022, the BBC quoted Syria-based terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) explicitly expressing solidarity with the Kiev regime. High-profile HTS member al-Shamali al-Hurr took to Telegram to cheer Ukrainian victories by sharing footage and graphic images of damaged Russian military hardware and dead soldiers.
In April 2022, reports emerged claiming that the White Helmets, a Western-backed so-called “humanitarian” Syrian group, had arrived in Ukraine. Prior to this, the group, officially known as the Syrian Civil Defense, pledged to provide “tutorials” to the Ukrainian forces. The group was accused by Syrians of being connected to al-Qaeda offshoots operating in the Middle Eastern country and staging chemical attacks.
What’s more, initial training and financial support to the White Helmets was provided by the Mayday Rescue Foundation, a non-governmental organization established by ex-British Army officer James Le Mesurier. Le Mesurier’s group was instrumental in the West’s long-standing effort to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, according to Grayzone investigative journalists’ account of events in 2016.
The SVR announced in May 2022, citing obtained evidence, that about 60 ISIS terrorists were released from prisons controlled by the US-backed Syrian Kurds a month earlier with the aim of dispatching them to Ukraine as sabotage units. The SVR highlighted that the US Al-Tanf base in Syria’s Homs province was turned into a terrorist hub where militants were trained to be deployed to Ukraine.
“Priority is given to natives of the states of Transcaucasia and Central Asia. The training ‘course’ in Al-Tanf includes training in the use of available types of anti-tank missile systems, reconnaissance and strike drones MQ-1C, advanced communications and surveillance equipment,” the SVR stated.
On October 22, 2022, Al-Monitor reported that it had learned that members of Ajnad al-Kavkaz, a Chechen-led Islamist group, left the Syrian province of Idlib and headed to Ukraine to fight against the Russian military.
Who Masterminded the Crocus City Hall Attack?
The Crocus City Hall terror attack was carried out by the hands of radical Islamists, but it is necessary to find the masterminds and those who benefitted from the hideous crime, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on Monday.
“The horrific crime committed on March 22 in the capital of Russia is an act of intimidation … and the question immediately arises: who benefits?” Putin said. “This atrocity can only be an element in a whole series of attempts by those who have been fighting our country since 2014 with the hands of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime.”
In the wake of the attack four alleged perpetrators – Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Shamsidina Fariduni, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda and Muhammadsobir Fayzov – were caught in the Russian Bryansk region on the way to the Ukrainian border. According to the FSB, the jihadists had connections in Ukraine and sought to hide in the Eastern European country after committing the crime. The fifth suspect, Dilovar Islomov, was detained on March 25.
“We also need to answer the question of why the terrorists tried to leave for Ukraine after committing the crime and who was waiting for them there,” Putin underlined during the conversation with Russian authorities on security measures taken after the terrorist attack.
The Russian president specifically referred to the Biden administration’s effort to divert public attention from Ukraine’s possible involvement immediately after the tragedy.
“We see how the US is taking to various channels to convince its satellites and other countries that according to the data from its intelligence, there is allegedly no Ukrainian trace in the Moscow terrorist attack (…) We already know by whose hands this atrocity against Russia and its people had been carried out. Now we want to know who the mastermind is,” the Russian president emphasized.
March 26, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | al-Qaeda, ISIS, Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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Ranked second only to Osama bin Laden, the US’s most notorious declared enemy during the so-called War on Terror was Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
But a closer examination of Zarqawi’s life and his impact on events in Iraq shows that he was likely a product and tool of US intelligence.
Neoconservative strategists within the administration of George W. Bush utilized Zarqawi as a pawn to justify the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the American public.
Moreover, he was instrumental in fomenting internal discord within Iraqi resistance groups opposing the US occupation, ultimately instigating a sectarian civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities.
Israel’s plan unfolds in Iraq
This deliberate strategy of tension in Iraq advanced Tel Aviv’s goal of perpetuating the country’s vulnerabilities, dividing populations along sectarian lines, and weakening its army’s ability to challenge Israel in the region.
It has long been known that the CIA created Al-Qaeda as part of its covert war on the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and supported Al-Qaeda elements in various wars, including in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya in the 1990s.
Additionally, evidence points to CIA support for Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups during the clandestine war in Syria launched in 2011 amid the so-called Arab Spring.
Despite this history, western journalists, analysts, and historians still take at face value that Zarqawi and AQI were sworn enemies of the US.
Without understanding Zarqawi’s role as a US intelligence asset, it is impossible to understand the destructive role the US (and Israel) played in the bloodshed inflicted on Iraq, not only during the initial 2003 invasion but in launching the subsequent sectarian strife as well.
It is also essential to understand the importance of current Iraqi efforts to expel US forces and rid the country of US influence moving forward.
Who was Zarqawi?
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was born Ahmed Fadhil Nazar al-Khalaylah but later changed his name to reflect his birthplace, Zarqa, an industrial area near Amman, Jordan. In and out of prison in his youth, he would become radicalized during his time behind bars.
Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the CIA-backed mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Upon his return to Jordan, he helped start a local Islamic militant group called Jund al-Sham and was imprisoned in 1992.
After his release from prison following a general amnesty, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan in 1999. The Atlantic notes that he first met Osama bin Laden at this time, who suspected that Zarqawi’s group had been infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence while in prison, which accounted for his early release.
Zarqawi then fled Afghanistan to the pro-US Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and established a training camp for his fighters in the fateful year of 2001.
The missing link
Eager to implicate Iraq in the 9/11 attacks, it wasn’t long before the Bush administration officials soon used Zarqawi’s presence to shroud Washington’s geopolitical agendas there.
In February 2003, at the UN Security Council, US Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed that Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq proved Saddam was harboring a terrorist network, necessitating a US invasion.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “This assertion was later disproved, but it irreversibly thrust Zarqawi’s name into the international spotlight.”
Powell made the claim even though the Kurdish region of Iraq, where Zarqawi established his base, was effectively under US control. The US air force imposed a no-fly zone on the region after the 1991 Gulf War. Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, was also known to have a presence there, a reality that Iran actively acknowledges and remains vigilant about.
Curiously, despite Zarqawi’s base being nestled within the confines of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Bush administration opted for inaction when presented with a golden opportunity to neutralize him.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon drew up detailed plans in June 2002 to strike Zarqawi’s training camp but that “the raid on Mr Zarqawi didn’t take place. Months passed with no approval of the plan from the White House.”
Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, justified the inaction by claiming “the camp was of interest only because it was believed to be producing chemical weapons,” even though the threat of chemical and biological weapons falling into the hands of terrorists was supposedly the most important reason for toppling Saddam Hussein’s government.
In contrast, General John M. Keane, the US Army’s vice chief of staff at the time, explained that the intelligence on Zarqawi’s presence in the camp was “sound,” the risk of collateral damage was low, and that the camp was “one of the best targets we ever had.”
The Bush administration firmly refused to approve the strikes, despite US General Tommy Franks pointing to Zarqawi’s camp as among the “examples of the terrorist ‘harbors’ that President Bush had vowed to crush.”
As soon as Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq had accomplished its initial purpose of selling the war on Iraq to the US public, and after the March 2003 invasion was already underway, the White House finally approved targeting his camp with airstrikes. But by then, the Wall Street Journal adds, Zarqawi had already fled the area.
Singling out Shiites
Then, in January 2004, the key pillar of the Bush administration’s justification for war unraveled. David Kay, the weapons inspector tasked with finding Iraq’s WMDs, publicly declared, “I don’t think they exist,” after nine months of searching.
The Guardian reported that the failure to locate any WMDs was such a devastating blow to the rationale for invading Iraq that now “even Bush was rewriting the reasons for going to war.”
On 9 February, as the WMD embarrassment mounted, Secretary of State Powell again claimed that before the invasion, Zarqawi “was active in Iraq and doing things that should have been known to the Iraqis. And we’re still looking for those connections and to prove those connections.”
Two weeks before, US intelligence had conveniently made public a 17-page letter it claimed Zarqawi had written. Its author claimed responsibility for multiple terror attacks, argued that fighting Iraq’s Shia was more important than fighting the occupying US army, and vowed to spark a civil war between the country’s Sunni and Shia communities.
In subsequent months, US officials attributed a series of brutal bombings targeting Iraq’s Shia to Zarqawi without providing evidence of his involvement.
In March 2004, suicide attacks on Shia shrines in Karbala and the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad killed 200 worshippers commemorating Ashura. In April, car bombings in the Shia-majority city of Basra in southern Iraq killed at least 50.
Regarding the Karbala and Kadhimiya attacks, Al-Qaeda issued a statement through Al-Jazeera strongly denying any involvement, but Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer insisted Zarqawi was involved.
Zarqawi’s alleged attacks on Iraq’s Shia helped drive a wedge between the Sunni and Shia resistance to the US occupation and sowed the seeds of a future sectarian war.
This proved helpful to the US army, which was trying to prevent Sunni and Shia factions from joining forces in resistance to the occupation.
‘Dividing our enemies’
In April 2004, President Bush ordered a full-scale invasion to take control of Fallujah, a city in Anbar province that had become the epicenter of the Sunni resistance.
Vowing to “pacify” the city, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt launched the attack using helicopter gunships, unmanned surveillance drones, and F-15 warplanes.
The attack became controversial as the Marines killed many civilians, destroyed large numbers of homes and buildings, and displaced the majority of the city’s residents.
Eventually, due to widespread public pressure, President Bush was forced to call off the assault, and Fallujah became a ‘no-go’ zone for US forces.
The failure to maintain troops on the ground in Fallujah had US planners turning back to their Zarqawi card to weaken the Sunni resistance from within. In June, a senior Pentagon official claimed that “fresh information” had come to light showing Zarqawi “may be hiding in the Sunni stronghold city of Fallujah.”
The Pentagon official “cautioned, however, that the information is not specific enough to allow a military operation to be launched to try to find al-Zarqawi.”
The sudden appearance of Zarqawi and other Jihadists in Fallujah at this time was not an accident.
In a report written for the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) entitled “Dividing our enemies,” Thomas Henriksen explained that the US military used Zarqawi to exploit differences among its enemies in Fallujah and elsewhere.
He writes that the US military maintained the goal of “fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters” so that America’s “enemies eliminate each other,” adding that “When divisions were absent, American operators instigated them.”
The Fallujah Case Study
Henriksen then cites events in Fallujah in the fall of 2004 as “a case study” that “showcased the clever machinations required to set insurgents battling insurgents.”
He explained that the takfiri–Salafi views of Zarqawi and his fellow jihadis caused tension with local insurgents who were nationalists and embraced a Sufi religious outlook. Local insurgents also opposed Zarqawi’s tactics, which included kidnapping foreign journalists, killing civilians through indiscriminate bombings, and sabotaging the country’s oil and electricity infrastructure.
Henriksen further explained that US psychological operations, which took “advantage of and deepened the intra-insurgent forces” in Fallujah, led to “nightly gun battles not involving coalition forces.”
These divisions soon extended to the other Sunni resistance strongholds of Ramadi in Anbar province and the Adhamiya district of Baghdad.
The divisions instigated by US intelligence through Zarqawi in Fallujah paved the way for another US invasion of the restive city in November 2004, days after Bush secured re-election.
BBC journalist Mark Urban reported that 2,000 bodies were recovered after the battle, including hundreds of civilians.
Conveniently, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not among the dead,” having slipped through the US cordon around the city before the assault began, Urban added.
Domestic consumption
US military intelligence later acknowledged using psychological operations to promote Zarqawi’s role in the Sunni insurgency fighting against the US occupation.
The Washington Post reported in April 2006 that “The US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” which helped “the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks.”
The Post quotes US Colonel Derek Harvey as explaining, “Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will – made him more important than he really is.”
As the Post reports further, the internal documents detailing the psychological operation campaign “explicitly list the ‘US Home Audience’ as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.”
The campaign to promote Zarqawi also proved helpful to President Bush during his re-election campaign in October 2004. When Democratic challenger John Kerry called the war in Iraq a diversion from the so-called War on Terror in Afghanistan, President Bush responded by claiming:
“The case of one terrorist shows how wrong [Kerry’s] thinking is. The terrorist leader we face in Iraq today, the one responsible for planting car bombs and beheading Americans, is a man named Zarqawi.”
Who killed Nick Berg?
Nick Berg, a US contractor in Iraq, was allegedly beheaded by Zarqawi. In May 2004, western news outlets published a video showing Berg, dressed in an orange Guantanamo-style jumpsuit, being beheaded by a group of masked men.
A masked man claiming to be Zarqawi stated in the video that Berg’s killing was in response to the US torture of detainees in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Berg was in Iraq trying to win reconstruction contracts and disappeared just days after he spent a month in US detention in Mosul, where he was interrogated multiple times by the FBI.
On 8 May, a month after his disappearance, the US military claimed they found his decapitated body on the side of a road near Baghdad.
But US claims that Zarqawi killed Berg are not credible. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, there is evidence the beheading video was staged and included footage from Berg’s FBI interrogation. It was uploaded to the internet not from Iraq but from London and remained online just long enough for CNN and Fox News to download it.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt also lied about Berg having been in US military custody, claiming instead he had only been held by the Iraqi police in Mosul.
But the video cemented in the minds of the American public that Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda were major terror threats.
Such was the impact in the US, that following the video’s release, the terms ‘Nick Berg’ and ‘Iraq war’ temporarily replaced pornography and celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as the internet’s main searches.
Sectarianism, a key US–Israeli goal
Large-scale sectarian war erupted following the February 2006 bombing of the Shia Al-Askari Shrine in the Sunni city of Samarra in central Iraq, although the full extent was mitigated thanks to religious guidance issued by the highest and most influential Shia authority in the land, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Al-Qaeda did not take credit for the attack, but President Bush later claimed that “the bombing of the shrine was an Al-Qaeda plot, all intending to create sectarian violence.”
Zarqawi was finally killed in a US airstrike a few months later, on 7 June 2006. An Iraqi legislator, Wael Abdul-Latif, said Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone at the time of his death, further showing Zarqawi was being used by elements within the US-backed Iraqi government.
By the time of Zarqawi’s death, the neoconservative agenda to divide and weaken Iraq through instigating chaos and sectarian conflict had reached its pinnacle. This goal was further exacerbated by the emergence of a successor group to AQI – ISIS – which played an outsized role a few years later in destabilizing neighboring Syria, igniting sectarian tensions there, and providing the justification for the renewal of a US military mandate in Iraq.
March 26, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | al-Qaeda, CIA, Iraq, ISIS, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism |
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