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Details of EU plan to revive Iranian nuclear deal leaked to media

Samizdat | August 19, 2022

A proposal the EU submitted at the Vienna talks to revive the Iranian nuclear deal would reportedly see an immediate lifting of sanctions on over 160 Iranian entities, including banks, in exchange for Tehran gradually scaling down its nuclear activities, Al Jazeera reported on Friday, citing “informed sources.”

The proposal that Brussels previously called “final” reportedly involves four stages and would take at least 120 days to be fully implemented, the media outlet said. The “first day” after its signing would see the lifting of sanctions on 17 Iranian banks and 150 other economic entities. Tehran, in turn, would also begin returning to its commitments under the agreement from day one and scale back its nuclear activities.

The implementation of this accord would also involve the release of $7 billion in Iranian funds that are currently frozen in South Korea, the report said.

During the 120-day period after the signing of the agreement, Iran will be allowed to export 50 million barrels of oil as part of a “verification mechanism,” Al Jazeera said, citing its sources. After that period, the Islamic Republic would be able to export 2.5 million barrels per day.

The proposal also includes an obligation for the US to pay a fine if it ever pulls out of the deal again, Al Jazeera said, without revealing the amount of any such penalty or where the money would go.

Iran submitted a written response to the proposal on Monday, without revealing its details. “There are three issues that if resolved, we can reach an agreement in the coming days,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said at the time. “We have shown enough flexibility… We do not want to reach a deal that after 40 days, two months or three months, fails to be materialized on the ground,” he added, warning that Tehran’s “red lines” should be respected.

Earlier, the US said the 2015 nuclear deal could be revived only if Iran drops its “extraneous” demands, which included an end to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) probe into unexplained uranium traces in Iran and the removal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the American terrorism list.

Al Jazeera reported on Friday, citing a European official in Vienna, that Tehran is no longer seeking the removal of the organization from the list.

Last week, Politico reported that the EU had proposed watering down the US sanctions on the IRGC as part of efforts to revive the 2015 deal. The news outlet also said Washington was set “to make greater concessions than expected” to revive the deal.

According to Politico, the text of the proposal also said Washington and Brussels “take note of Iran’s intent” to address the issue of the IAEA probe by the time the agreement enters into force again.

The Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in 2015 by Iran, the US, UK, France, and Germany, as well as Russia, China, and the EU. It involved Iran agreeing to certain restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for economic sanctions relief. In 2018, the US unilaterally withdrew from the deal under President Donald Trump. Talks to revive the deal have been taking place in Vienna for the past 16 months.

August 19, 2022 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

The Timing Behind the Atttack on Salman Rushdie

BY E. MICHAEL JONES • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 16, 2022

On Friday, August 12, a 24-year-old New Jersey resident by the name of Hadi Matar stormed the stage in western New York where the Anglo-Indian author Salman Rushdie was scheduled to speak and stabbed him 15 times before he was subdued by a security guard and members of the audience.[1] The assault was immediately labeled “an assault on freedom of thought and speech”[2] after Rushdie was praised as “an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world.”[3]

Missing from this and other news accounts was the role which Rushdie played as an agent provocateur in a campaign that was designed to provoke violent responses from the Islamic world, which would be then turned around to demonize them. No one would know who Salman Rushdie was if he hadn’t written The Satanic Verses as the inauguration of in an ongoing assault on Muslim culture which has continued to this day and has been revived by Matar’s assault for further weaponization.

The Satanic Verses paved the way for the Danish cartoon crisis which unfolded on September 30, 2005, after the Danish periodical Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons ridiculing the prophet Muhammad.[4] Then as now the assault on Islamic sensibilities was justified in the name of “freedom of thought and speech.” But in the light of subsequent events it became clear that the point of these intentionally reckless and provocative acts was the Islamic reaction, which included protests around the world, “including violence and riots in some Muslim countries.”[5]

In September 2012, the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, aping Jyllands-Posten, published a series of cartoons which were deliberately calculated to offend the sensibilities of Muslims, including a cartoon which “depicted Muhammad as a nude man on all fours with a star covering his anus.”[6] What followed was so predictable that one had to conclude that provoking violent reaction was part of the plan from the beginning. On January 7, 2015, two Muslim gunmen forced their way into the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing twelve staff members and wounding 11. During the attack, the gunmen shouted Allahu Akbar and “The Prophet is avenged.” Eager to cash in on the unprecedented publicity the attack afforded them, the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo upped the print run for the following week’s edition from 60,000 to one million, then to three million and then to five million copies.

Eventually, every European head of state showed up at a march sporting “Je suis Charlie” buttons celebrating what was a deliberate attempt to provoke violence for political ends. Since then, ridicule of Islamic culture has become institutionalized not only in journalistic outlets but on internet platforms like Twitter, whose seemingly innocent entry #hijab is actually a portal to hardcore pornography depicting women wearing the hijab but otherwise naked engaging in various forms of perverted sexual activity. Twitter also has an entry #Mitpachat, which is the name for the orthodox Jewish head covering for women that is equivalent to the hijab, but no porn is allowed on this site. As anyone who is familiar with the Israelis’ use of pornography against Palestinians in Ramallah in 2004 already knows, pornography is a weapon which, like blasphemous cartoons, is itself a form of violence and often creates violence.

Journalism played a crucial role in this psychological warfare campaign against Islam. Nothing epitomized the wretched state of journalism in the UK and the US better than the recent article by Stephen Pollard in the Telegraph condemning the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. “Stephen Pollard,” according to one observer, “is a rabid Zionist, an unprincipled propagandist and liar,” but nevertheless in good standing with the British media and Establishment, despite the many rulings against the Jewish Chronicle, which he edits. Pollard has written for all of Britain’s mainstream media outlets, including the Evening Standard, the Daily Express, The Times, the Daily Mail, The Independent and the Sunday Telegraph in spite of the risk of libel suits he poses for any newspaper which hires him as a writer.

In September 2010, the Spectator had to pay damages and costs to the organizers of the Islam Expo resulting from a defamation case involving a blog post written by Pollard and published in July 2008. During his tenure as editor of The Jewish Chronicle, the Press Complaints Commission handed down 14 rulings against the paper forcing it to pay damages for libel on several occasions throughout his tenure. The effect those damages had on the paper’s bottom line became apparent in April 2020 when the Jewish Chronicle announced that it was going into voluntary liquidation despite a planned merger with the Jewish News because of Pollard’s reckless disregard of the truth. In spite of this dismal journalistic track record, Pollard is still the go to guy when the mainstream media want opinions on topics vital to Jewish interests, which is how he sees the Rushdie affair.

Pollard claims that “Tehran never rescinded the fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie” because “It’s incapable of change.”[7] Pollard ends his article by claiming that “the fatwa on Sir Salman Rushdie is not an aberration. It is how this monstrous criminal regime operates.”[8]

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken claimed that Iran had been inciting violence, ignoring the fact that the Iranian government denied any involvement with the man who attempted to kill Rushdie.[9] The same government spokesman who denied any involvement between Iran and Matar went on to add that “Freedom of speech does not justify Salman Rushdie’s insults on religion.” The fatwa has never formally been rescinded.

As someone who has earned his living by writing for over 40 years, I can sincerely say that no writer should be condemned to death in absentia for something that he has written. As a writer, I am against fatwas of this sort, but I mean all fatwas even if they do not go by that name. This includes Jewish fatwas of the sort issued by Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which have been given carte blanche to confer the equivalent of the death sentence on anyone by denouncing their enemies as Nazis and anti-Semites. This is precisely what happened to the Canadian trucker protest when Ya’ara Sachs, a member of the Canadian parliament, told the world that “Honk Honk” equals “Heil Hitler.” As soon as she stripped the truckers of their real identity, Finance Minister Christia Freeland was able to freeze their bank accounts in an act of violence that was more effective in silencing freedom of speech than anything that Hadi Matar did to Sir Salman.

In an incident that was eerily reminiscent of Matar’s attack on Rushdie, the SPLC, the other Jewish domestic terrorist organization, issued a fatwa on the Family Research Council in Washington by placing that organization on its “hate map” because of its opposition to gay rights. Inspired by the SPLC’s fatwa, Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council’s headquarters on August 15, 2012 and opened fire on the staff. Corkins eventually “pleaded guilty to three charges, including a charge of committing an act of terrorism” after telling the FBI that “he wanted to kill anti-gay targets and went to the [Southern Poverty] law center’s website for ideas.”[10] Faced with this evidence, FRC’s director Tony Perkins demanded that the SPLC “take responsibility for the shooting and take down their hate map.” Corkins, according to Perkins “had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group.’” Perkins’ comments, however, had no impact on the SPLC or their “hate map,” which still exists and still refers to the FRC as a hate group.[11]

Five years later, James Hodgkinson opened fire on a group of Republican Congressmen who were practicing for a charity baseball game, wounding then U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capital police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika.[12] According to a report by the Washington Examiner, “The shooter blamed for Wednesday’s bloody attack on a Republican congressional baseball team shared a tie with the 2012 gunman who attacked the conservative Family Research Council in Washington. Both were fans of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”[13] When asked about how he got the idea of shooting Republican Congressmen, Hodgkinson told the FBI, “The Southern Poverty Law [Center] lists anti-gay groups,” After finding the SPLC’s hate map on line, Hodgkinson also “liked” the SPLC on his Facebook page.

So what constitutes a “monstrous criminal regime”? Is a regime monstrous because it issues fatwas? Or because it carries them out without announcing them? As I said, I am against fatwas, but on the other hand, I recognize that the fatwa is a warning in advance, which is more that General Qasem Suleimani got when the United States murdered him in a drone attack in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. If Donald Trump had issued a fatwa against General Suleimani, Suleimani might still be alive today. Instead, he was lured to Baghdad under the false pretense that he was taking part in a peace mission.

Similarly, Israel routinely murders Iranian nuclear scientists, but it never issues fatwas as a warning that they have been targeted. Between 2010 and 2012, Israel assassinated Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Razaeinejad, and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, all of whom were Iranian nuclear scientists. On November 27, 2020, the Israeli government assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh “in a road ambush using an innovative autonomous satellite-operated gun,” according to the BBC, which invariably focused on the James Bond-like technological gadgets the Israelis use to eliminate anyone they don’t like rather than the suffering and death of their victims.[14] Similarly, American politicians who were recipients of money from the Israel lobby, praised the killings. “Former speaker of House Newt Gingrich supported ‘taking out [Iranian] scientists,’ and presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the killings ‘a wonderful thing.’”[15]

The only difference between Israel and the “monstrous criminal regime” in Iran is that Iran warns you that you’ve been targeted. If the Israelis had issued a fatwa against Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American reporter for Al Jazeera who was covering a gun battle in Gaza, she might have stayed in her office that day. Instead, she was killed by an Israeli sniper, in what the Israelis claimed was an accident. The Palestinians, for their part, claim that Shireen was targeted deliberately as she tried to flee.

Pollard is a professional liar. Pollard’s article is full of lies, but even liars have a way of telling the truth in spite of themselves. Thanks to Pollard’s article we now know that the real point of the attack on Rushdie is the looming revival of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Pollard sets the stage for this revelation by creating a chronology of events:

On Monday, the EU put forward what it described as the “final” proposed text of a revived nuclear deal with Iran, a deal which has been under negotiation in Vienna since the arrival of Joe Biden in the Oval Office. On Friday morning, the Iranian state news agency reported that the EU’s proposed text “can be acceptable if it provides assurances” to Tehran over its key demands, quoting a senior Iranian diplomat.

Then he makes this remarkable statement:

The timing could hardly have been more instructive. Within hours of that report, Sir Salman Rushdie had been brutally attacked by a knife-wielding assailant.[16]

Pollard’s statement is capable of being interpreted in two ways: one obvious, the other absurd. If he is telling us that the Iranians deliberately sabotaged their own nuclear agreement, the idea is absurd. If he is telling us that he has insider knowledge of Israeli intelligence, that is completely plausible, which means it is also plausible to claim that the Israelis played a role in when the attack happened, as one more attempt at sabotaging peace with Iran. This is precisely what Mohammad Morandi, one of the Iranian officials negotiating the new version of the JCPOA claimed when he reacted to the news of the attack on Rushdie.[17] “I won’t be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam. A pawn of empire who poses as a Postcolonial novelist,” Marandi tweeted. “But, isn’t it odd that as we near a potential nuclear deal, the US makes claims about a hit on Bolton… and then this happens?,” he added.[18] Timing played a crucial role in Fahkrizadeh’s assassination as well. According to Robert Malley, who served as an advisor to President Barack Obama on Iran, the assassination of Mohsen Fahkrizadeh “was deliberately timed in order to make Biden’s attempts to negotiate with Iran more difficult.”[19]

Matar is now in custody , and according to Nathaniel Barone, his public defender, is “very cooperative.”[20] If so, Mr. Barone should ask his client if anyone contacted him after he posted his pictures on Facebook and encouraged him. Then Mr. Barone should ask the FBI if they knew about Matar’s Facebook page. If they didn’t, then why are we paying them to spy on people they deem to be potential terrorists. If they did, how did they follow up on what they discovered? Did they contact Matar? The FBI has a well-earned reputation as the main promoter of domestic terrorism through its notorious entrapment schemes which place weapons in the hands of people who otherwise would have never gone beyond hot air and crazy talk. Their collaboration with Dana Nessel, Michigan’s Jewish lesbian attorney general, who claimed she exposed with FBI help a plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, just blew up in their face. This failed plot is an indication that the first thing Mr. Barone should do after talking to his client is subpoena FBI records. Merrick Garland’s raid on President Trump’s home in Mar a Largo is only the latest instance of Jewish meddling in American politics. For decades now, Americans have allowed the Jews to drag them into one war after another, all of which were fought with Israel’s interests in mind. The Israelis and their Jewish supporters are eager to hold America’s coat while we beat up Israel’s enemies. Now, thanks to Stephen Pollard, we can see how the attack on Salman Rushdie fits into that pattern and act accordingly.

Notes

[1] https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-on-ventilator-after-new-york-stabbing-5ea54212d71b95569ed85df7b0fb5fea

[2] https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a

[3] https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo#2012_cartoons_depicting_Muhammad

[7] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/

[8] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/

[9] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzGqPzDqZlHpGNWHtdPplVThjnGf?projector=1

[10] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/southern-poverty-law-center-website-triggered-frc-shooting

[11] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/southern-poverty-law-center-website-triggered-frc-shooting

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting

[13] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/support-for-southern-poverty-law-center-links-scalise-family-research-council-shooters

[14] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55128970

[15] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55128970

[16] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/

[17] https://en.irna.ir/news/84851460/Marandi-Claims-on-Bolton-assassination-Rushdie-attack-before

[18] https://en.irna.ir/news/84851460/Marandi-Claims-on-Bolton-assassination-Rushdie-attack-before

[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohsen_Fakhrizadeh

[20] https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/13/us/salman-rushdie-attacked-saturday/index.html

August 16, 2022 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US-Iran deal dangling in the air

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | AUGUST 16, 2022

In an interview on The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro Show, the former prime minister of Israel — and the likely next PM — Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Sunday that he had an ingenuous Plan B for forcing regime change in Iran. Netanyahu said, “With low-flying satellites” and other miniature devices, “you might break their (regime’s) hold—their monopoly on information. That begins to challenge them.” 

Netanyahu insisted that “there are devices the size of a matchbook” that could help destabilise the Iranian regime. “There are many other things I could talk about, but I won’t,” he added. 

The hawkish politician was speaking at a defining moment when Tehran was expected to give its “final thoughts” to the European Union’s “final text” on behalf of the Americans, at the end of the 16-month long negotiations in Vienna that would enable Washington to return to the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA.) 

Netanyahu’s thesis was that Israel cannot and will not put all its eggs in the American basket. He sarcastically illustrated the point, narrating how naive top American diplomats could be, as the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan testifies. 

Conversely, the big question is also how naive would the Iranians be to place their eggs in the American basket when it comes to their national security. From details available so far, Iran’s response, which was transmitted to Brussels Monday evening mostly focuses on outstanding questions related to sanctions and guarantees around economic engagement. An EU spokesman reacted today, “We are studying it and are consulting with the other JCPOA participants and the US on the way ahead.”

An IRNA report says that Iran’s response is “calling for flexibility” from the US side, without elaborating, as a final deal is “closer than ever if the US accepts the requirements of a sustainable, reliable deal in action.” [Emphasis added.] 

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said yesterday that Iran has shown enough flexibility and the US knows this and that it was the latter’s turn “to show flexibility this time.” Indeed, the IRNA report also adds vaguely that “the disagreement is over three issues, two of which have been orally accepted by the US, but Iran insists on including them in the text.” 

Importantly, Tehran’s response falls short of a rejection of the EU’s proposal. The Nour News, Iranian website linked to the Supreme National Security Council, reported yesterday after an extraordinary meeting chaired by President Ebrahim Raisi that a “final result” will depend on the US response to “the legal demands of Iran.” 

The bottom line appears to be that Tehran needs guarantees that the West’s promise of economic engagement will not once again remain a chimera as it turned out with the 2015 deal. Conceivably, Iran wants this aspect to be included in the text of the agreement. 

From available details, Tehran no longer makes an issue of the IAEA seeking Iran’s accountability for the “missing uranium” or over the IRGC continuing to remain in the US watchlist of terrorist groups. But the emphasis is on the efficacy of implementation and the durability of the new agreement. 

Past experience shows that unless the POTUS puts his weight behind the agreement, it becomes rudderless. The paradox is that the shelf life of a new agreement is far from certain, although no expiry date is put on its label. It all depends on the end-user — in this case, the western companies who may be wary about a long-term relationship with Iran, with an eye on Washington. 

But then, Iran’s oil is much sought-after today, and for a conceivable future, it will be an indispensable energy source for western economies. This was not the case previously in 2015 when Europe (and the US) could easily access Russian oil, which was in abundant supply at low prices.

In turn, the criticality of the Iranian oil to salvage the EU economies means that Brussels will now be a genuine stakeholder ensuring the implementation of the new agreement that lifts the sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports and fire walling the deal in the near and medium terms. 

Meanwhile, the expert assessment is that even if large scale investments are made by oil producing countries, there is a gestation period for the  results in the form of increased production capacity to appear. 

Then, there is also the question of the oil producing countries having their own interest in high oil prices. A report in the weekend showed that Saudi Aramco has doubled its profits due to the high oil prices. 

Suffice to say, this time around, the market forces — high demand for oil and the need of the western economies to recover from recession — provide a reasonable guarantee that the EU and the US dare not upset the apple cart. Surely, Iran cannot but be aware of it. 

The odds, therefore, may seem to be favouring the conclusion of the new agreement at Vienna. As a statement on Monday by the so-called Elders shows, there is no dearth of advice cajoling the Iranian regime to be reasonable and cooperative. And it is difficult to see how Tehran will let this moment pass as history.

That said, Tehran can also afford to wait. The status quo is not so bad, as some may make out. After all, Iran is selling its oil and generating appreciable income, and, importantly, the international environment has created more space lately for it to manoeuvre, while also advancing its nuclear programme. (See a recent interview with Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei on international affairs and a former foreign minister for over sixteen years during 1981 to 1997.)

Fars news agency which is close to the IRGC has quoted FM Amirabdollahian as saying that Iran has a “Plan B” if no agreement could be reached. As he put it, “failure to revive the pact would not be end of the world.”

From the American perspective too, Biden Administration cannot hope to make any political capital out of the deal in the November 8 mid-term elections as if this is some great arms control deal. Of course, Biden is sure to be criticised by the Republicans. 

If anything, after the knife attack on Salman Rushdie and the purported plot to kill former White House national security adviser John Bolton, the optics are probably not congenial for the Biden team to have a photo-op with Iranian officials. 

Reuters has noted wryly in an analysis, “The lack of better policy options for Washington, and Tehran’s view that time is on its side, could leave the deal dangling.” Netanyahu probably senses that his matchbox like contraption may still have its uses. Elections are due in Israel on 1st November. 

August 16, 2022 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Russian Foreign Ministry speaks out on ‘Plan B’ for Iran nuclear deal

Samizdat | August 11, 2022

Any ‘Plan B’ in the talks on the Iranian nuclear program would violate a “consensus decision” of the UN Security Council on the issue and have “unavoidable negative consequences” for the entire Middle East, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned on Thursday.

“Any departure [from the original 2015 deal] or ‘Plans B’ that some people like to speculate about would run counter to the consensus decisions of the [UN] Security Council,” said Ivan Nechaev, the ministry’s deputy spokesman, referring to a 2015 UNSC resolution supporting that year’s agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.

The revival of the existing 2015 deal through the ongoing talks in Vienna is the only “reasonable and effective way” forward, Nechaev told journalists during a briefing. He also welcomed the latest round of indirect talks between the US and Iranian delegations in Vienna, which resulted in some “progress” on issues that had earlier been a stumbling block in the negotiations.

“A positive result of the talks is… achievable,” Nechaev said, adding that “there are no irreconcilable differences between the parties. Further progress would solely depend on each side’s “political will,” the diplomat said.

At the same time, Moscow slammed the EU for what it called the bullying tactics. “The language of ultimatums does not work in such a sensitive and high-stakes issue,” Nechaev said as he particularly criticized Peter Stano, the spokesman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell.

Earlier this week, Stano told journalists that “everything that could be negotiated has been incorporated into the final version of the text” compiled after the latest round of talks between Tehran and Washington, which was mediated by the EU. “It’s yes or no,” Stano insisted, adding that “there is no more room for other compromises.” Borrell himself also called the document “the final text” at that time.

On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry responded by saying Stano had no authority to make such statements on behalf of all parties involved in the talks. The Iranian deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was built on “carefully measured balance of interests” and not “crude political pressure,” it added.

The work on reviving the deal will only end “when interests of all parties involved are properly taken into account,” Nechaev told journalists on Thursday.

Last week, Washington said it developed a proposal for a mutual return to the nuclear deal with Iran. Tehran responded by saying the revival of the agreement relies primarily on the US’ “will” and that Washington must show its readiness to achieve a long-term result.

The Western media have also been publishing pieces calling on Washington and Brussels to work out a ‘Plan B’ that can be used if the Vienna negotiations yield no results. Some of the pieces openly called on Western governments to ditch the talks in favor of this option, which has apparently yet to be devised. “Enough of the ‘tenuous’ Iran nuclear deal – it’s time for Plan B,” read an opinion piece The Hill published in early July. “Biden Should Show Iran What ‘Plan B’ Looks Like,” another piece published by the Washington Post in mid-June suggested.

The deal signed in 2015 by Iran, the US, the UK, France and Germany – as well as Russia, China and the EU – involved Tehran agreeing to certain restrictions on its nuclear industry in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions and other incentives.

The agreement has been in limbo since 2018 when it was torpedoed by the US under then-President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew from it. In response, Iran started gradually reducing its commitments under the accord, such as the level of enriched uranium it produces.

On August 1, Tehran announced it has “the technical ability to build an atomic bomb,” adding, however, that such a program “is not on the agenda.”

August 11, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden and Allies Continue to Put Iran in the Crosshairs

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | August 5, 2022

In addition to escalating brinkmanship with Russia and China, President Joe Biden’s administration is flirting with war against Iran. The clearest evidence of this includes the ever expanding “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, as well as the development of a U.S.-led, NATO style alliance encircling Iran. There is also ample support for Israel’s incessant drone strikes, assassinations, and ceaseless bombings of allegedly Iranian targets in Syria.

Last month, Biden traveled to the region to publicly genuflect before the rulers of America’s cherished Gulf tyrannies and apartheid Israel. The aforementioned burgeoning alliance topped his agenda.

In May, Tel Aviv’s U.S. taxpayer subsidized military murdered Shireen Abu Akleh, a world renowned Al Jazeera journalist, a Palestinian Christian, and American citizen. During a raid on the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, the Israeli Occupation Forces shot her in the face while she was wearing a press vest. They also attacked her funeral procession, attempting to knock her casket to the ground while mourners were carrying it.

But Biden, “Israel’s man in Washington,” got off the plane at Ben Gurion airport and said our bilateral relationship is “bone-deep.” And speaking for the “vast majority” of Americans, he stated emphatically we are “completely devoted to Israel’s security without any ifs, ands, or buts—without any doubts about it.”

He went on to sign a joint declaration with acting Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid committing the U.S. to use all of its “national power” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

During an interview ahead of his Israel visit, Biden said he would use force, threatening war against Iran “as a last resort.” It is not enough for the Israelis, they demand an “offensive” and “credible” military threat against Iran. Lapid called it “the real thing.”

Biden refuses to lift the necessary sanctions to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal, which means at least the brutal economic war on Iran will persist in perpetuity. This week, Biden levied fresh sanctions on Iran. Biden’s issuance of sanctions has become more frequent in recent months and ever since the other members of the P5+1 began approaching a finalized deal.

As Dave DeCamp, news editor at Antiwar.com, reported,

The U.S. on Monday issued fresh sanctions against Iran meant to target the Islamic Republic’s oil and petrochemical sales to East Asia.

The new sanctions targeted three Chinese firms and one UAE firm accused of doing business with the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industry Commercial Co. (PGPICC), which the U.S. Treasury Department says is one of Iran’s largest petrochemical brokers.

According to the Treasury Department, PGPICC facilitated the “sale of tens of millions of dollars worth of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products from Iran to East Asia” through the firms that were hit with sanctions.

The sanctions are the latest sign that the Biden administration is not serious about reviving the Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked if the U.S. was ready to return to JCPOA, but he sidestepped the questions and put the responsibility on Iran.

Donald Trump and Biden’s “maximum pressure” campaign has led to 40-50% inflation rates and medical shortages. Washington has deliberately suffocated the Iranian people, almost half of whom live below the poverty line.

Last year, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told Biden his “strategic vision” for Iran was “death by a thousand cuts,” or myriad military and diplomatic attacks, as well as clandestine attacks, “the gray-area stuff.” Bennett went on to demand U.S. troops remain indefinitely in both Syria and Iraq.

But the decades of lies and unsubstantiated assertions by hawks about Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons may remain a useable casus belli. Americans aware of Israel’s arsenal, which includes 200 or more nuclear weapons and makes U.S. aid illegal, are considerably outnumbered statistically by those who falsely believe Iran has the bomb. The Iranians have never sought nuclear arms, and they recently reiterated twice that they have the technical capability but, despite their encirclement, Tehran has chosen not to take this course. The development of such weapons is haram under Islamic law, forbidden by the Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwah.

However, this was never about the phony threat of Iran nuking Israel. The Iranians’ latent threat is unacceptable for Tel Aviv because it may finally restrict the Israelis’ ability to attack their neighbors with impunity, the way they bomb Syria every week.

In the book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, Scott Horton, the Libertarian Institute’s Director, explains,

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the former prime minister Ehud Barak, admitted in 2010 that even if Iran were hypothetically to gain atomic weapons, the Israelis were not afraid the Ayatollah would attack them in a first strike, as they constantly tell the public. Instead they were merely concerned that it would limit their “freedom of action” against other regional adversaries, such as Hezbollah, and could cause a “brain drain” of talented young Israelis to the United States. Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the New York Times that, “Just as Pakistan had the bomb and nothing happened, Israel could also accept and survive Iran having the bomb.” Former Clinton administration State Department official Jamie Rubin also explained in Foreign Policy that the problem was never an Israeli fear of a first strike by Iran, but “Israel’s real fear – losing its nuclear monopoly and therefore the ability to use its conventional forces at will throughout the Middle East – is the unacknowledged factor driving its decision-making toward the Islamic Republic.”

Horton continues quoting Rubin,

[F]or Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. It’s the fact that Iran doesn’t even need to test a nuclear weapon to undermine Israeli military leverage in Lebanon and Syria.

Earlier this year, the Israelis simulated a massive bombing campaign over Iran, with a series of repeated airstrikes against the Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program. The drills took place over the Mediterranean Sea, spanned over 10,000 kilometers, and saw more than 100 military aircraft and navy submarines participating.

These simulations capped off a month long military exercise called Chariots of Fire which practiced for war with Iran and other contingencies. The U.S. General overseeing Central Command was in attendance. The IDF’s chief of staff has now announced the Israeli military’s primary focus is preparing an attack on Iran. In the Red Sea, the U.S. and Israel are now conducting joint war drills.

The Iran situation is another deadly indication that presidents and administrations may change, but the overall foreign policy agenda does not. Apparently, it only gets worse. The U.S. empire is in decline and the American people feel it. But the neocons and their liberal interventionist partners are holding onto their dream of a “Unipolar Moment.”

As the world adjusts to a multipolar world order, the U.S. foreign policy establishment, left and right, has picked fights with its enemies, not ours.

Americans’ only enemy is our own ruling class who would drag us into wars (proxy wars or otherwise), including with nuclear armed world powers to fulfill their desires to violently dominate the planet, funneling trillions of our dollars into the military-industrial complex. This establishment’s geopolitical and monetary schemes are destroying our nation’s future. As the Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams recently said, “[American] foreign policy is the FED with nukes.”

We have been stuck with a bill for more than $10 trillion after more than 20 years of war and killing in the Middle East, with millions dead and tens of thousands of soldiers committing suicide. It is long past time Americans put their foot down.

We have a choice. Do we want to continue gambling on the apocalypse, fighting wars with Iran, Russia, and China in memory of the disgraced neocon Charles Krauthammer’s “Unipolar Moment?”

Or should we pursue “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none?”

The answer should be obvious.

Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.

August 5, 2022 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US asks Argentina to confiscate aircraft linked to Iran

MEMO | August 3, 2022

The US Department of Justice said on Tuesday that it has asked the government in Buenos Aires for permission to seize an Iranian plane that was sold to new owners in Venezuela but is being held in Argentina on suspicion of being linked to international terrorist groups.

The unannounced arrival of the plane in Argentina on 8 June raised concerns within the Argentinian government about its relations with Iran, Venezuela and companies that the US has imposed sanctions on. The Justice Department said that the seizure request followed the disclosure of a warrant in the District Court for the District of Columbia dated 19 July to take the aircraft for violating export control laws.

According to the department, the US-made Boeing 747-300 is under sanctions because Iran’s Mahan Air sale to Emtrasur last year violated US export laws. Both companies are subject to US sanctions over their alleged cooperation with terrorist organisations.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said that, “The department will not tolerate transactions that violate our sanctions and export laws.” Mahan Air faces sanctions for its ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, which the US has listed as a terrorist organisation.

There were 14 Venezuelans and five Iranians travelling on the aircraft when it landed in Buenos Aires. Seven of the passengers are still being held by the Argentinian authorities.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran nuclear chief: IAEA cameras will remain turned off until JCPOA fully restored

Press TV – July 25, 2022

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) says monitoring cameras installed by the UN nuclear agency at the Iranian nuclear sites will remain turned off until the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is fully restored.

Mohammad Eslami made the remarks on Monday in reaction to recent remarks by Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi.

Eslami said the conclusion of the JCPOA was the final outcome of numerous rounds of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

“However, the West continues to level accusations against Iran on the basis of stolen and alleged documents. The Islamic Republic of Iran agreed to the JCPOA to dispel doubts and build confidence. Iran accepted to restrict its [nuclear] activities to pave the way for confidence building. However, they (the other parties to the deal) did not abide by their commitments,” he said.

“The [IAEA] cameras [which were installed] under the JCPOA were meant to put an end to those [Western] accusations. If those accusations are going to remain in place, there is no more need for the existence of JCPOA cameras,” Iran’s nuclear chief said.

Esalmi added that the IAEA “has removed and sealed the cameras, which are being kept at the [nuclear] facilities [of Iran] until they return to this accord.”

Grossi said in June that Iran has informed the United Nations nuclear watchdog that it is removing 27 surveillance cameras at its nuclear facilities following the Western-drafted anti-Tehran resolution by the agency’s Board of Governors.

“What we have been informed is that 27 cameras… are being removed in Iran,” the IAEA chief said.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Eslami also criticized certain allegations against Iran’s nuclear program, emphasizing that “Tehran has never engaged in any covert and enrichment activities outside the framework [of the JCPOA] and without coordination with the IAEA.”

Iran’s measures to produce heavy water or develop other sections of the country’s nuclear industry infrastructure have been carried out in coordination with the IAEA and are currently under the agency’s supervision, Eslami said.

“No one should have the wrong impression that the IAEA does not currently supervise Iran’s nuclear activities. The IAEA is … conducting its supervision according to the Safeguards Agreement,” the Iranian nuclear chief pointed out.

He added that Iran has turned off the cameras that were not operating based on the Safeguards Agreement, but were related to the JCPOA.

He, however, said Tehran will make new decisions if the parties to the deal return to their obligations as per the JCPOA and Iran is assured that the West would not carry out any mischievous act any more.

During an interview with Spain’s El Pais on Friday, the IAEA chief claimed that Iran’s nuclear program “is advancing at a gallop and we have very little visibility.”

Iran’s nuclear program “has grown enormously, far beyond what it was in 2015. It is a growth that is not only quantitative but qualitative, also with the levels of enrichment.”

“This does not imply that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, but no country that does not have warlike projects enriches at that level, at 60 percent,” Grossi said.

Earlier on Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani also reacted to Grossi’s remarks, saying, “The Islamic Republic of Iran is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and for many years, especially during recent years, has allowed the agency’s inspectors … to visit [Iran’s nuclear] facilities.”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Grossi has time and again taken an unprofessional and unfair approach vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program, especially in recent months. His views are not helpful and constructive. He is interested in raising an issue about Iran’s nuclear issues now and then.,” he said.

Kan’ani added, “We believe that the IAEA director general should adopt a constructive and interactive approach in response to Iran’s constructive cooperation with the agency. We do not view Grossi’s remarks as technical and professional and we advise him to observe the principle of neutrality and fairness and to avoid politically-motivated statements.”

July 25, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

US “Iran Nuclear Deal” Ploy Coming Full Circle

By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 22.07.2022 

Hopes for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) simply known as the Iran Nuclear Deal seemed to fade further during US President Joe Biden’s recent trip to Israel where the US and Israeli governments signed a pledge to use force against Iran should it pursue nuclear weapons (weapons both the US and Israel possess).

US-based ABC News in its article, “Biden left with few options on Iran as nuclear talks stall,” would claim:

President Joe Biden made a clear promise on Iran, declaring that the country would never become a nuclear power under his watch. But during his time in the White House, the path towards upholding that promise has only become murkier.

During his trip to the Middle East, the president said he would consider using force against Iran only as a “last resort,” although Israel, the US.’s most ardent ally in the region, has pushed for the administration to issue a “credible military threat” against Tehran.

The article would mention the Iran Nuclear Deal specifically, claiming:

… while the administration initially hope to cut a “longer and stronger” deal with Iran, over a year and half of indirect negotiations has produced little movement towards restoring even the original terms of the agreement.

After a monthslong stalemate, a 9th round of talks took place in Doha, Qatar, at the end of June. A State Department spokesperson did not sugarcoat the outcome, saying “no progress was made.”

The 2018 unilateral withdrawal of America from the deal by the administration of US President Donald Trump is blamed for the deal’s failure. Yet the Trump administration’s withdrawal was predicted long before President Trump took office, and in fact, long before US President Barack Obama even signed the deal in the first place. President Biden’s recent activities are only wrapping up what was always a diplomatic ploy meant to trap Iran.

The Nuclear Deal Was Always a Trap

When President Obama signed the Iran Nuclear Deal, it was celebrated as a breakthrough in US diplomacy and a departure from the previous Bush administration’s expanding wars of aggression spanning Iraq and Afghanistan while threatening Iran next.

Signed by the United States and Iran along with other participating nations (the UK, EU, Germany, Russia, China, and France) in 2015, NBC News in their article, “What is the Iran nuclear deal?” would explain:

The Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, offered Tehran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for agreeing to curb its nuclear program.

The agreement was aimed at ensuring that “Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful.” In return, it lifted UN Security Council and other sanctions, including in areas covering trade, technology, finance and energy.

At face value, the United States imposing sanctions on Iran to impede its development of nuclear weapons was problematic. The United States is the only nation in human history to use nuclear weapons against another nation, twice. Following the 2001 US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the United States had military forces to Iran’s west and east. US hostilities toward Iran stretch back decades and the US State Department, regardless of administration, has made little secret that Washington seeks regime change in Tehran just as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Worse still, US policymakers as early as 2009 had articulated a ploy by which the US would offer Iran a “deal” before deliberately sabotaging it and using its failure as a pretext for the long sought-after regime change war the US has wanted against Iran.

The Washington DC-based Brookings Institution, funded by the largest corporate-financier interests in the Western world as well as Western governments themselves including the US through the US State Department published the 2009 paper (PDF), “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran.” In it, the Brookings Institution’s policymakers explicitly articulated options the US could pursue to achieve regime change in Iran.

These options were broken down into sections and chapters within the 170-page report and ranged from “An Offer Iran Shouldn’t Refuse: Persuasion,” to “Toppling Tehran: Regime Change,” to “Going All the Way: Invasion,” and “The Velvet Revolution: Supporting a Popular Uprising.” Everything from setting diplomatic traps to arming designated terrorist organzations were not only discussed, but in the years that followed the paper’s publication, they were implemented one after the other without success. The remaining options on the long list are military in nature involving either the US or Israel (or both) waging war directly and openly against Iran.

All that is required before doing so is a pretext, including the “offer” the US made, but Iran “refused.”

“An Offer Iran Shouldn’t Refuse”

Under “Chapter 1” titled, “An Offer Iran Shouldn’t Refuse: Persuasion,” Brookings policymakers would explain (emphasis added):

… any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it.

The paper then laid out how the US could appear to the world as a peacemaker and depict Iran’s betrayal of a “very good deal” as the pretext for an otherwise reluctant US military response (emphasis added):

The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.

The Iran Nuclear Deal was doomed before it was ever signed. It was conceived wholly as a pretext for war, not as a diplomatic solution to avoid it.

False Hope Spanning Multiple US Presidencies

In many ways, Iran would be foolish not to create a sufficient military deterrence against US aggression, including the development of nuclear weapons if necessary. However, Iran nonetheless agreed to the nuclear deal’s terms and until the US unilaterally abandoned the deal in 2018, abided by it.

In fact, following the US withdrawal from the deal, Iran continued abiding by many of its conditions alongside its other signatories in the vain hope that under a new US administration it could be salvaged.

When US President Joe Biden took office, the obvious first step by Washington should have been to unconditionally rejoin the deal by removing sanctions, followed by Iran’s renewed and full compliance to the deal’s conditions. Yet the US demanded Iranian compliance first before even agreeing to negotiate Washington’s return to the deal.

It was clear long before President Obama’s signature was inked on the deal’s documents that the US would sabotage it, blame Iran, then pursue renewed and expanded aggression against Iran directly, by proxy, or both. President Trump in 2018 took advantage of America’s domestic politics and the perceived notion that US “Republicans” seek a harder line versus Iran in order to abandon the deal. Because of President Trump’s perceived trait as an “outsider” both to his own party and wider US politics, the US could shift the blame squarely on his administration. Yet the continuity of this ploy across presidential administrations is evident by the fact that upon coming into office, President Biden did not immediately and unconditionally return the US to the deal’s framework.

Instead, President Biden’s administration prevented America’s return to the deal by creating unreasonable preconditions placed entirely upon Iran. With President Biden’s statement in Israel coupled with a recent claim made by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan that Iran is preparing to supply Russia with drones, the US is closing the door on the deal indefinitely.

Further evidence of continuity between US administrations can be seen throughout the US-led destabilization, invasion, and occupation of Syria. The campaign was meant as one of several prerequisites laid out by the Brookings Institution’s experts in 2009 before attempting regime change against Iran directly. Ironically, as the Obama administration appeared reconciliatory toward Iran by signing the Iran Nuclear Deal, the same administration presided over the devastating proxy war targeting Iran’s key ally in the region, Syria.

Support of US aggression in Syria transcended presidencies, from the Bush administration who set the stage for it, to the Obama administration who presided over the opening phases of hostilities and occupation, to the Trump and now Biden administrations who have perpetuated a US military presence in Syria along with a policy of denying Syria its key fuel and food production regions in the east to block reconstruction. US foreign policy toward Syria and Iran should not be interpreted separately. The fate of both nations is entwined and illustrates the wider agenda the US is pursuing in the region and has been for decades regardless of US administration.

Barring a fundamental reordering of both American foreign policy objectives and a reordering of the special interests driving them, the Iran Nuclear Deal’s prospects of success will only fade further in the distance. While Tehran’s patience is admirable, Iran and its allies must prepare for the inevitable hostilities that will follow US blame against Tehran for “undermining” a deal the US never had any intention of honoring in the first place.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

July 22, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran deal can survive if US opts for own interests rather than Israel’s: Foreign Ministry

Press TV – July 20, 2022

Tehran says multilateral negotiations to revive the 2015 Iran deal will be fruitful if the United States looks at the issue through the lens of its own national interests rather than those of the Israeli regime.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani told a press conference on Wednesday that the US seems to be weak when it comes to making “an independent political decision” about whether it is willing to return to the deal, four years after it unilaterally walked away.

“If the US administration [of Joe Biden] looks at this issue through the lens of American national interests and not through the lens of the interests of the occupying Zionist regime, the ground will be paved for an agreement in the near future,” Kan’ani said.

More than a year of negotiations – first in Vienna and now in Doha – have not yet led to an agreement on what steps each side needs to take in order to restore the ailing accord, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The US withdrew from the JCPOA back in 2018 as it unleashed a “maximum pressure” campaign targeting the Iranian economy, despite Tehran’s strict compliance with the terms of the accord.

The Vienna talks, which began in April last year, hit a deadlock in March owing to Washington’s insistence on retaining parts of its sanctions against Iran. The Doha talks, however, have led to different interpretations by the parties to the talks.

“Contrary to the claim of the American side that the Doha negotiations were a failure, they opened up a path for the continuation of talks between the different parties of the nuclear agreement,” Kan’ani said, assessing the negotiations as “good.”

He explained that there is no major obstacle to concluding an agreement, except that the American side has to make a serious political decision.

“On the one hand, the US administration expresses its desire to return to the agreement, and on the other hand, it does not want to pay the costs of returning to the agreement,” the Iranian spokesman added.

‘US, Israel failed to form anti-Iran coalition’

In his Wednesday press conference, Kan’ani also pointed to Biden’s recent trip to the region with the agenda of forming an anti-Iran coalition among other objectives, saying both the US and the Israeli regime failed to achieve that goal.

“The Zionist regime attempted to form a regional coalition during that trip to put pressure on Iran,” he said. “In this effort, this regime has failed and the American government has not succeeded either.”

Biden arrived in the Israeli-occupied territories last Wednesday, kicking off a much-anticipated four-day trip to the region. The regional tour also took the US president to Saudi Arabia, the country he once pledged to make “the pariah that they are.”

Since 2020, the US has brokered normalization agreements under the so-called Abraham Accords between the Israeli regime and some Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan – with Saudi Arabia expected to be the next.

In Saudi Arabia, Biden attended a summit of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, plus Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq – also known as GCC+3. The summit, which was ostensibly aimed to build an anti-Iran front, failed to garner much support.

A day before the summit, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi stressed that Iraq will not be part of any camp or military alliance, and “will not be a base for threatening any neighboring countries.”

The UAE, a close ally of both Saudi Arabia and the US, also dismissed the idea of forming a NATO-like military alliance in the region.

“We are open to cooperation, but not cooperation targeting any other country in the region and I specifically mention Iran,” Anwar Gargash, the UAE president’s diplomatic adviser, said.

“The UAE is not going to be a party to any group of countries that sees confrontation as a direction,” Gargash added.

After the summit, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan claimed that his country extends a hand of friendship toward Iran.

He also expressed the kingdom’s willingness to reestablish normal relations with the Islamic Republic.

“The messages we received from Arab officials in the region, both directly and indirectly, show that fortunately, the countries of the region are not ready to act against Iran [and in line with] America’s regional policies,” Kan’ani said.

He then added that conditions are now ripe for Iran to organize and host talks to deepen regional cooperation.

He also urged the US to stop meddling in the internal affairs of regional countries, halt its plots of forming fictitious alliances, and refrain from imposing American values on the region.

Regional countries naturally have common interests and views, he said, adding, “They are capable of creating the best conditions for stability and security in the region in the light of regional meetings.”

July 20, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran’s petrochemical output capacity to rise by 54% in 2025

Press TV – July 14, 2022

Iran will increase its production capacity for petrochemical products by more than a half in the next three years as the country moves ahead with plans to increase added value in its petroleum sector.

A Thursday report by the official IRNA news agency said Iran will launch a total of 35 new petrochemical plants by 2025 to increase the output capacity in the sector by 54% to 140 million metric tons per annum (mtpa).

It said petrochemical output capacity in Iran had increased by 7% in the calendar year to March 2022 to reach nearly 91 million mtpa thanks to the completion of seven new petrochemical projects across the country.

Iran’s sales of petrochemicals, including exports to other countries, also rose by 4.4% in the calendar year to late March with government figures showing that exports proceeds from the sector reached nearly $12.5 billion over that period.

Iran has relied on petrochemicals as a major source of earning hard currency in recent years as the country has been facing a series of tough American sanctions targeting its direct exports of crude oil.

China has been the top customer of Iranian petrochemical shipments in recent years while exports to countries in the region have also surged since the United States imposed its sanctions on Iran in 2018.

The expansion of the Iranian petrochemical sector has also led to a significant rise in the number of jobs in the country. Estimates suggest the number of direct jobs in the sector is more than 920,000 compared with a total of 107,000 direct jobs registered in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry in Iran.

July 15, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Tehran rejects G7’s anti-Iranian statement as baseless, one-sided, unfair

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani
Press TV – June 29, 2022

Tehran has vehemently denounced as “baseless, one-sided, and unjust” an anti-Iranian statement by the Group of Seven industrialized states.

The statement was issued during a meeting of the group’s sevenfold members—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—in Germany on Tuesday.

It urged “restriction of Iran’s nuclear program,” faulted Iran’s “ballistic missile activities,” and accused it of “human rights violations.”

Later during the day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said the country “strongly condemns” the passages of the statement.

The statement, he said, “deliberately ignores” the United States’ departure from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and others as well as Washington’s subsequent re-imposition of illegal sanctions against the Iranian people.

The Iranian official reprimanded the countries that had issued the statement for their cooperation with the US in imposing sanctions and their refusal to confront the coercive economic measures.

He also spurned any accusations directed towards Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program, saying the statement “deliberately” ignores the Islamic Republic’s ban on all nuclear weapons.

Kan’ani reminded that the G7 countries were facing Iran with “factitious accusations,” while they, themselves, were in possession of the world’s “biggest nuclear arsenal.”

The spokesman, meanwhile, blasted the statement for trying to portray Iran’s comprehensive cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear body, in a bad light.

The official further rejected all allegations against Iran’s “legitimate and defensive missile program,” reminding that the country’s missile work can never be subject to any negotiation or compromise.

“It is necessary that the parties that have issued the statement rather be accountable for their sales of billions of dollars of advanced weapons, which is one of the most important factors of instability in our region,” Kan’ani asserted.

Addressing the human rights accusations made through the statement, the official said the countries throwing the allegations were the very same states that have closed their eyes to the “flagrant violation” of the Iranian nation’s rights as a result of the sanctions.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Murders Iranians While Biden Kills the Iran Deal

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | June 23, 2022

In a clear message to Tehran, an American B-52 flew over the Persian Gulf as soon as Joe Biden entered the White House. Biden promised to return the U.S. to the Iran nuclear deal. But indirect talks to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which began last April, have stalled for three months without a resolution in sight. Counting on the reliable support of Biden and bipartisan Iran hawks in Congress, the nuclear-armed Israeli apartheid regime intends to kill the deal entirely.

Tehran, a decades-long signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is neither seeking nor has ever sought nuclear weapons. But the Islamic Republic, once Tel Aviv’s “best friend,” serves as Israel’s favorite boogeyman, superficially justifying billions of dollars in American military aid each year. The JCPOA threatens the racket.

Formally known for years as “Israel’s man in Washington,” President Biden is essentially pursuing ultra-Zionist Donald Trump’s foreign policy regarding Iran and supporting, tacitly or otherwise, Tel Aviv’s relentless attacks against Iran and its allies. Biden is continuously imposing yet more sanctions, increasing the “Maximum Pressure” on the economically crippled Iranian people.

The rial has hit all-time lows. With a population of 82 million, almost half of all Iranians live below the poverty line, and inflation is somewhere between 40-50%.

America’s self-styled sanctions artists delight in seeing the results of their economic war on Iran: excess deaths, severe medical shortages, prohibitively high prices for staple goods, plummeting incomes, and social unrest over food costs.

This year, Tel Aviv has been bombing Syria, Tehran’s ally, at the usual weekly rate. A recent strike, coming from the illegally occupied Golan Heights, attacked Damascus International Airport. The airstrike targeted the facility’s only working runway Israel had not yet destroyed, rendering the airport temporarily inoperable.

Shortly afterwards, The Wall Street Journal put out a story confirming that Tel Aviv coordinates with the Pentagon on many of its strikes in Syria.

The Israelis just wrapped up month-long war drills, the largest held in decades, aimed squarely at Tehran. Exercises over the Mediterranean Sea, with over 100 aircraft and navy submarines, spanned 10,000 kilometers and were designed to simulate repeated airstrikes on Iran and their civilian nuclear facilities.

Early reports were that the U.S. Air Force would participate, providing refueling planes, but this reportedly did not come to pass. Although General Michael Kurilla, the new head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), observed some of these Chariots of Fire exercises.

On May 22, 2022, the Israelis carried out a high profile assassination of a senior colonel in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei. Shortly afterwards, citing an unnamed intelligence official, The New York Times reported Tel Aviv had informed Washington that it was responsible. Israel’s attacks seem to be primarily focused on the Iranians’ drone program, namely killing people who work on drone technology and attacking related sites.

As Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com news editor, reported,

Israel was immediately suspected of the assassination since it has a history of carrying out targeted killings and other attacks inside Iran. Israel rarely officially acknowledges such operations, and it’s typical that its responsibility is revealed by leaks to the media, often by Israeli officials.

Israeli officials claimed to the Times that Khodaei was in charge of a secret covert IRGC group known as Unit 840, which Iran denies exists. The Israelis claim Khodaei was involved in plots to kill and kidnap Israeli civilians and officials around the world, but there’s no evidence Tehran was planning to target Israelis abroad.

Two people affiliated with the IRGC told the Times that Khodaei was a logistics officer who played a key role in transporting drone and missile technology to Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon and advised militias in Syria. Iran has said Khodaei was involved in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Israel is suspected to have subsequently poisoned and murdered two Iranian scientists including Ayoub Entezari, an aerospace engineer, who reportedly worked on missile and drone projects, and Kamran Aghamolaei, a geologist.

Last month, a few dozen miles south of Tehran, quadcopter suicide drones attacked the Parchin military complex. The drones hit a building being used for drone development and killed a young engineer. In February, Israel used six quadcopter drones in a strike targeting another Iranian drone facility in Kermanshah which did significant damage. In Tabriz, there were reports of another Israeli attack on a drone factory, as many as three people may have been killed. This month, two additional IRGC members also working in the aerospace industry died during mysterious accidents in Iran. Both deaths were declared “martyrdoms.”

In the midst of these soaring tensions, Robert Malley, Biden’s Iran envoy, is telling Congress “all options are on the table.”

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted to pass a non-binding resolution which insists they would never support a restoration of the JCPOA if the IRGC were removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) blacklist. The FTO designation is ostensibly one of the final sticking points preventing the deal’s straightforward revival. Congress has been sending messages, loud and clear, to Tehran and Biden that the deal has virtually no support.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is peddling baseless stories about Tehran attempting to assassinate his predecessor Mike Pompeo. Pompeo enthusiastically supported Trump’s Maximum Pressure campaign as well as the drone strike murder of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, leader of the IRGC Quds Force. Though these claims of Pompeo’s life being endangered remain unproven, U.S. taxpayers pay millions per month for a security detail to put his and Blinken’s mind at ease.

Much like Tel Aviv’s unproven accusations that the IRGC is out to kidnap and murder Israelis, especially in Istanbul for some reason, this obviously plays well with the overall anti-JCPOA campaign.

The IRGC is the only state military organization on the terrorism blacklist. Considering the myriad preexisting sanctions on the unit, it is a superfluous insult. In 2019, Trump implemented this policy at the behest of Israeli-partisan hawks like Mark Dubowitz at the Foundation For Defense of Democracies, a notoriously anti-Iran think tank. This is one of the largest bricks in the so called “sanctions wall” precluding any of Trump’s successors from ever returning to the deal for fear of the built-in political toxicity. It is enough to keep Biden and the cowardly Democrats from backing what is ultimately Barack Obama’s deal in favor of a neoconservative-style Iran policy.

As May began, Israel started making these claims about a global Iranian plot to kill Israelis. At that time, the JCPOA negotiations were seemingly stalled irrevocably because of the IRGC-FTO issue. But then the Vienna talks’ broker, European Union nuclear negotiator Enrique Mora, traveled to Tehran. He took meetings with Iran’s lead negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani as a last ditch effort to break the deadlock. Mora was sent by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. As a result of the American led sanctions blitz on Russia, Europeans are in desperate need of another crude supplier as Borrell has noted. The same week, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, also made a trip to Tehran and pushed for progress during meetings with President Ebrahim Raisi as well as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On May 13th, Borrell announced Mora’s mission went “better than expected,” Vienna talks had been unblocked, and a final deal was within reach.

Days later, coinciding with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s visit to Washington, and his meetings with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, Khodaei was murdered in the drive-by shooting. Israel’s assassination campaign had commenced.

Two days after the Khodaei killing, Politico reported that the final decision to keep the IRGC on the FTO list was made. On Twitter, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett thanked Biden for the “principled decision and for being a true friend of the State of Israel.”

Following Trump, Biden’s administration is also continuing to seize tankers, stealing Iranian oil and pirating it for profit. Ironically, after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, there was some talk from Biden officials about making a deal with the Islamic Republic to put Iran’s abundant oil back on the market to reduce global energy prices. But this was apparently never taken seriously.

Biden instead prefers to kowtow to the genocidal Saudi regime which along with Abu Dhabi and Washington have starved to death and bombed over 400,000 Yemenis, including more than 263,000 children.

Those deaths mean little to the Abraham Accords caucus. This bipartisan coalition in Congress is working to ensure Washington arms these tyrants further while the Pentagon assists them in joining forces, as well as integrating missile defenses with Tel Aviv eyeing Tehran. As Biden heads to the Middle East, there is even talk of the U.S. offering security guarantees to the United Arab Emirates.

For almost a year, the Israelis have been pushing an anti-Iran, NATO-style, U.S. led alliance in the Middle East. In recent weeks, Gantz has openly promoted this strategy which Bennett is said to have suggested to Biden during a White House meeting last year.

As Iran is encircled militarily and strangled economically, the American Empire is refusing to allow them any breathing room. Each day the U.S. forgoes lifting sanctions and restoring the deal the likelihood of a hot war increases.

Given the size of Iran, its population, its geostrategic location, substantial ballistic missile deterrent, its Axis of Resistance partners, and the wide variety of U.S. military targets in the region, a war with Tehran would likely dwarf the catastrophic damage, scope, and deaths of America’s other Middle East wars.

If the JCPOA fails, the hawks armed to the teeth surrounding Iran may try to goad Tehran into leaving the NPT. Whether this happens ultimately or not, Israel may use the coming breakdown in diplomacy to justify instigating its long desired war. Rightfully, the Iranians will see such an Israeli attack as an American declaration of war.

This week, Tehran has formally dropped their demand for removing the IRGC from the FTO list. Washington has not yet responded. Contrary to the corporate press narrative, the ball is now firmly in Washington’s court.

Iran called Biden’s bluff. It is imperative that the American people now assert our support for terminating the unjustified and brutal Maximum Pressure campaign as well as denounce Israel’s murderous aggressions.

The Iranian people deserve to live and trade in peace.

June 23, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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