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French bank pays huge US fine for doing business in Cuba, Iran

RT | November 20, 2018

Societe Generale has agreed to pay $1.34 billion to US federal and state authorities to settle a pending legal dispute over violations of US trade sanctions against Iran and other countries.

One of France’s largest banks has also pledged to pay $95 million to resolve another dispute over violations of anti-money laundering regulations.

“We acknowledge and regret the shortcomings that were identified in these settlements, and have cooperated with the US authorities to resolve these matters,” the group CEO Frederic Oudea said in a statement.

“These resolutions, following on the heels of the resolution of other investigations earlier this year, allow the bank to close a chapter on our most important historical disputes.”

The bank, informally known as SocGen, reportedly violated the Trading with the Enemy Act by illegally transferring billions of dollars to partners registered or located in countries targeted by US embargos, including Iran, Sudan, Cuba and Libya.

The banking giant said the settlement wouldn’t have an extra impact on its results for the current financial year. SocGen had previously agreed to $1.3 billion (€1.14 billion) in the US and France to settle investigations over transactions with Libya, and over the suspected rigging of Libor, a benchmark rate tied to finance products and debts. Last year, the bank had paid €963 million ($1.1 billion) over another dispute with the Libyan Investment Authority.

According to the Manhattan US Attorney’s office, the latest fine imposed on SocGen is the second biggest financial penalty issued on a bank for breaching US sanctions. In 2015, French international banking group BNP Paribas agreed to pay $8.9 billion to settle a probe on sanctions violations.

November 20, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU Mulls Iran Sanctions in Light of Alleged Plots in France, Denmark – Reports

Sputnik – 20.11.2018

Until now the EU has been unwilling to join the US sanctions on Iran preferring to maintain close trade ties with the Islamic Republic.

In a most recent policy U-turn, European Union foreign ministers hinted on Monday that their countries could be prepared to impose new economic sanctions on Iran, Reuters reported.

The sudden shift of policy came after France and Denmark accused Tehran of being allegedly behind a series of plots to carry out attacks on their soil. During a meeting in Brussels French and Danish foreign ministers filled in their fellow EU counterparts on the details of the alleged Iranian plots, although no details or names were discussed, Reuters quoted diplomats as saying on Tuesday.

France has imposed sanctions on two Iranians and Iran’s intelligence service over what it says was a botched attempt to stage a bomb attack at a rally near Paris organised by an exiled Iranian opposition group.

In October, France said it was certain about the Iranian intelligence ministry’s role in the June plot to attack a demonstration by Iranian exiles near Paris.

Also in October, Denmark said it suspected an Iranian government intelligence service of plotting an assassination on its territory and is also ready to join possible EU-wide sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran has denied any involvement in either alleged plot and warned that it could pull out of the nuclear deal if EU powers do not stand up for its trade and financial benefits.

The readiness to punish Tehran would be the first such move in years by the EU, which has been trying keep in place the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran. Brussels has been unwilling to consider sanctions, instead seeking talks with Tehran.

In March, a joint proposal by Britain, France and Germany to sanction Iran over its development of ballistic missiles and its role in the Syrian war failed to gather sufficient support across the EU, including from Italy which wants to maintain business ties with Iran.

During the meeting on Monday, the EU foreign ministers tried to balance the EU’s policy towards Iran by speeding up the creation of a special mechanism to trade with Tehran that could be under EU, not national, law.

Dubbed the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), this mechanism could be used to help match Iranian oil and gas exports against purchases of EU goods as part of a barter arrangement, thus circumventing US sanctions, which are based on global use of the dollar for oil sales.

Despite technical difficulties and delays, the EU hopes this arrangement could protect individual member states from being hit by the sanctions Washington has threatened to use against countries that continue doing business with Iran.

November 20, 2018 Posted by | Economics, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Reason for Killing Iranians

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | November 19, 2018

While U.S. sanctions technically permit Iran to import medicines, it is actually just a ruse to make it look like U.S. officials are kind, compassionate, and benevolent. In actuality, the way the sanctions work will mean that the Iranian people will inevitably be deprived of much-needed medicines. That’s because the U.S. extends its sanctions system to banks that process payments to Iran, which is likely to inhibit the importation of medicines into Iran.

But that’s the point behind the sanctions: to kill as many Iranians as possible in the hope that they will rise up in a violent revolution, oust Iran’s anti-U.S. regime from power, and install another pro-U.S. regime, like that of the Shah of Iran, who the CIA installed into power in its 1953 coup that destroyed Iran’s experiment with democracy.

Never mind that the Iranians, who live in a country that has strict gun control, lack the means to violently overthrow their government. And never mind that hundreds of thousands of Iranians would likely die in such a revolution, just like what has happened in the U.S.-supported revolution in Syria.

Those deaths wouldn’t matter to U.S. officials. They would be considered “worth it,” especially if they brought a pro-U.S. regime into power in Iran.

Recall that those were the words that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations used back in 1996, when the U.S. government was enforcing sanctions against Iraq.

The Iraq sanctions had already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. The idea was that if Iraqi parents became sufficiently upset with their children dying, they would oust their dictator, Saddam Hussein, from power and replace him with a pro-U.S. dictator.

After some six years of deaths of Iraqi children, however, the sanctions had still not produced the desired result. Saddam was still in power. The CBS news program “Sixty Minutes” asked Albright if the sanctions were worth it. She replied that the sanctions were, in fact, worth it. She was expressing the official position of the Clinton administration. That’s because killing those Iraqi children was viewed in the same way as killing Iranians today: as a means by which a pro-U.S. regime could be installed into power.

One of the ironies of the Iraq sanctions is that in the previous decade, U.S. officials had partnered with Saddam, even furnishing him those infamous WMDs that would later serve as the bogus excuse for invading Iraq in 2001. (See here and here.)

Why was the U.S. government partnering in the 1980s with Saddam, the man they would try to oust from power in the 1990s by killing Iraqi children? They were helping him kill Iranians in the war that he had started against Iran. U.S. officials were so angry that the Iranian people had ousted the CIA-installed Shah in their 1979 revolution that they decided to use Saddam in the 1980s to exact their revenge by helping him to kill Iranians.

What U.S. officials did to an American man named Bert Sacks serves as a valuable lesson for anyone, including banks who process payments, who tries to help the Iranian people. Sachs believed that the sanctions were a moral abomination. He wasn’t the only one. Three high officials in the United Nations resigned their positions in a crisis of conscience against what was considered by some to be a U.S. genocide against Iraqi children.

Sacks decided to take medicines into Iraq, and U.S. officials went after him with a vengeance. They fined him $10,000 and then spent about a decade trying to collect the fine, which Sachs, to his everlasting credit, refused to pay.

It’s no different, of course, with the U.S. sanctions on North Korea and the decades-old, Cold War-era U.S. embargo on Cuba. The idea is to kill as many North Koreans and Cubans as possible in the hopes that they will finally rise up in a violent revolution and oust their dictatorial regimes from power. No number of deaths is considered too high. They are all considered worth it.

Meanwhile, many sanctions supporters continue to go to church on Sundays and pat themselves on the back for living in a country whose government is kind, compassionate, and benevolent.

November 19, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

John Bolton Wins “Defender of Israel” Award From Zionist Lobby Group That Helped Appoint Him

Pictured left to right: Joseph Frager, Alan Dershowitz, and John Bolton at the 2018 Zionist Organization of America awards. Photo | ZOA
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | November 12, 2018

The ZOA, Bolton’s enthusiastic sponsor, led the campaign to remove former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster from his post after railing against McMaster’s “anti-Israel” positions, most notably his support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal.

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) recently awarded U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton the “Defender of Israel Award” during its annual awards dinner, which took place in New York on Sunday night.

Other awardees included U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as well as Fox News television host Mark Levin. Both Grenell and Levin are close to Bolton, with the former having served as Bolton’s spokesman and the latter having worked closely with Bolton at the Department of Justice in the Reagan administration.

Though Bolton has received several awards from the Israel lobby in the past, due to his fervent promotion of Zionism and Israeli government policy, this more recent award is notable, as the ZOA is largely responsible for Bolton’s appointment as National Security Adviser within the Trump administration.

Indeed, beginning in August 2017, the ZOA – under the leadership of its president, Morton Klein – led the campaign to remove former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster from his post after railing against McMaster’s “anti-Israel” positions, most notably his support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal.

However, McMaster had also earned the ire of American Zionists for allegedly referring to Israel as an “occupying power” and acknowledging the existence of Palestine — as Zionists at ZOA and like-minded organizations support a revisionist history of the creation of the Israeli state that asserts that Palestine as a state never existed prior to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

Leaked emails reported on by MintPress earlier this year revealed that ZOA’s campaign to remove McMaster soon won the support of Trump’s top political donor, Zionist billionaire Sheldon Adelson. It was later revealed that Adelson had been instrumental in placing Bolton in the position McMaster vacated, as Bolton had long been a confidant of the politically influential casino magnate and Adelson had previously lobbied Trump – then president-elect – to include Bolton in his cabinet.

Bolton has not disappointed his sponsors

Since his appointment in April, Bolton has promoted and helped bring to fruition policies long supported by Adelson and the ZOA – which Adelson helps fund – as well as related groups. Under Bolton’s influence, President Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA and imposed harsh sanctions against Iran, which disproportionately affect Iranian civilians. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently stated that Iranian leaders would need to fall in line if “they want their people to eat,” underscoring the fact that the Iranian people are by and large the target of the U.S. sanctions targeting Iran.

In addition, Bolton has also used his role as National Security Adviser to advocate for other troubling policies in the Middle East to the benefit of Israel, such as the continuation and expansion of the U.S.’ occupation of around 30 percent of Syrian territory.

Bolton announced in July that the U.S. would maintain its military presence in Syria until the “Iranian menace was wiped off the map.” Bolton’s announcement became administration policy just two months later in September. However, just days before Bolton took over for McMaster, Trump had announced that he wanted to remove U.S. troops from Syria “very quickly.”

Ultimately, Bolton’s recent award from the Adelson-backed ZOA for “defending Israel” is the result of events that ZOA itself helped made possible. Now that Bolton – who they helped install into power – has helped bring about the very policies they had hoped he would manifest, ZOA has granted him a “prestigious” award. Perhaps it is only fitting that he receive such thanks for the service to Zionism he was installed to provide. Indeed, it is a cause and ideology that Bolton has repeatedly supported – often at the expense of U.S. government interests and even U.S. national security.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

See also:

Bolton’s Past Advocacy for Israel at US Expense Heralds Dangerous New Era in Geopolitics

Copyright © Whitney Webb, MintPress News, 2018

November 13, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Blocks $199Mln in Assets Belonging to Iran, Syria, N Korea in 2017 – Treasury

Sputnik – 07.11.2018

WASHINGTON – The United States blocked nearly $200 million in assets belonging to Syria, Iran, and North Korea in 2017 as a result of the sanctions imposed on the three countries, the Treasury Department said in its annual report to Congress released on Wednesday.

“Approximately $199 million in assets relating to the three designated state sponsors of terrorism in 2017 have been identified by OFAC as blocked pursuant to economic sanctions imposed by the United States,” the report said.

The statement comes days after the US fully reinstated sanctions against Iran, including measures that curb Tehran’s oil industry. At the same time, the United States temporarily exempted eight nations — China, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey — from the sanctions on importing oil from Iran.

In May, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and reimpose sanctions against Tehran that were previously lifted under the accord, including secondary restrictions.

The first round of the US sanctions was reimposed in August, while the second round, targeting over 700 Iranian individuals, entities, banks, aircraft and vessels, came into force this week.

November 7, 2018 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lavrov Calls US Sanctions on Iran ‘Illegitimate’, Slams Pressure on SWIFT

Sputnik – 06.11.2018

Washington implemented tough unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic on Monday following President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has condemned Washington’s decision to slap Tehran with sanctions, calling the restrictions “absolutely illegitimate” and deeply disappointing, and saying that it was “unacceptable” to hold dialogue in the language of ultimatums.

“As far as the US measures against Iran are concerned, they are absolutely illegitimate,” Lavrov said on Tuesday in Madrid following a meeting with Spanish officials.

“They are being implemented in flagrant violation of the decisions of the UN Security Council, and the way in which these measures are announced and implemented cannot but cause a deep sense of disappointment. We proceed from the idea that the norms of not only international law, but of international dialogue, have not been repealed,” Lavrov stressed.

“Pursuing a policy based on ultimatums and one-sided demands is hardly permissible in our times,” according to the Russian foreign minister.

Pressure on SWIFT Also Unacceptable

Commenting on suspected US pressure on international financial messaging system SWIFT, which implied Monday that it would comply with US sanctions against Iranian financial institutions, Lavrov said that such pressure was also illegitimate.

“Within the framework of the participants of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement, mechanisms are being developed which will allow for the continued implementation of the provisions of this document, first of all as regards [nations’] economic ties to Iran without US participation, and this is not a simple matter,” the foreign minister explained. “You can see how, using unacceptable methods, pressure has been placed on the operators of the SWIFT system. But experts are actively engaged in these issues, and they have a sufficiently stable understanding that this is possible and that such measures will be found.”

On Monday, Washington followed through with plans to renew sanctions against Iran following President Trump’s exit from the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal. The tough sanctions target Iran’s energy, banking and sea-based transport sectors, and threaten so-called secondary sanctions against foreign companies and countries doing business with the Islamic Republic.

The Belgium-based SWIFT financial messaging service announced that it would be suspending some Iranian banks’ access to the system, making no mention of US sanctions. Calling the move “regrettable,” SWIFT’s statement said it had taken the step “in the interest of the stability and integrity of the wider global financial system.”

All of the JCPOA’s other signatories, including Iran, Russia, China and several European powers, have made an effort to save the landmark nuclear deal and bypass the US sanctions or otherwise limit their impact. This has included the development of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) on trade. China and India, the largest importers of Iranian crude oil, have resisted US secondary sanctions threats, and were granted exemptions along with five other oil-importing countries plus Taiwan.

November 6, 2018 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

India should stay the course on Iran oil

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | November 5, 2018

The new kids on the block are unaware that not a year had passed since the Islamic Revolution in Iran 40 years ago when US sanctions against that country wasn’t a fact of life. Iran has weathered multiple rounds of sanctions before.

As a BBC commentary put it, “Iranians will be forced into finding creative ways to sell oil, relying on their years of experience of life under previous sanctions. And to fill the gap left by lost European investment, Iran will be looking east to forge new links with Russia and China.”

This is also the signal one gets from the Iranian reaction to the Trump administration’s re-imposition of sanctions. At the most authoritative level, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been plainly dismissive. Some excerpts from his remarks on Saturday:

“The enemy made every attempts against us, with a variety of actions; the US engaged in military, economic, and media warfare against us. Via all these actions, the US aspired, in vain, to regain its previous domineering status over Iran — that it enjoyed during the Pahlavi Regime.”

“Today, an overview of the situation of the US shows that the US’s power is declining. The US is today much weaker than it was forty years ago… US’s soft power has degraded… US’s hard power — that is, its economic and military power — is also declining… It suffers from more than $15 trillion dollars public debt and $800 billion budget deficit… The US is declining. Everyone should know this.”

Clearly, for Tehran, talks with the US will be simply out of the question.

On the other hand, there are no knee-jerk reactions, either – such as that Iran is going to dump the 2015 nuclear deal. As the Iranian ambassador to the UK Hamid Baeidinejad (who was a leading member of Iran’s negotiating team with the US during 2013-2015) put it, “The aspiration that we have with the European Union, Britain, France and Germany, China and Russia, is that we keep the Iran Nuclear Deal alive and give time to the U.S. to rethink and revise its position.”

Baeidinejad added, Tehran will not accept any idea of changing or renegotiating the nuclear deal, because if one word is changed other aspects of the deal will either be changed or compromised. “We have a total loss of confidence” in negotiating with the US, but “we are trying very hard with European countries, with China and Russia, to find mechanisms that this deal could (still) be effectively implemented.”

The ambassador said, “There will be pressure against some countries, particularly European countries, and economic and trade institutions from attempting to enter into working with Iran, there will probably be some risks.” However, there is “total determination” by European countries and other world partners to find “practical solutions” so that the deal will be kept alive.

These remarks sum up the Iranian position. Tehran estimates that it has much elbowroom left to force a rethink on the Trump administration.

Curiously, this is also the assessment of some Israeli experts. A commentary in the Jerusalem Post gives the expert opinion that while the US’ oil sanctions will no doubt hurt Iran, “Tehran maintains key support from Asia,” which means that the sanctions are “insufficient to compel Iran to accept a new tougher nuclear deal.” Equally, support for Iran from China, Russia, India and South Korea would be too strong too [sic] sufficiently isolate the Islamic Republic’s economy… the fundamental dynamics protecting Iran from a total collapse if anything are even more solid (today).”

Interestingly, Tehran is not perturbed about the US threat to cut Iran off from the SWIFT. The fact of the matter is that Iran has an alternative to SWIFT – Russia’s SPFS. By the way, SPFS’ clients already include three of the top importers of Iranian oil – China, India and Turkey. (India probably used it recently to make payments for its purchase of the Russian S-400 ABM system!)

Suffice to say, Washington not only needs to accept that SPFS is a viable workaround for countries to import Iranian oil, but also a factor in the long-term implications of the emergence of such a new and parallel monetary system.

Therefore, the Trump administration’s decision to give the ‘waiver’ on import of Iranian oil is understandable. It is only prudent not to jeopardize the US’ relations with countries such as India or Turkey on account of the Iran oil sanctions when these countries are in any case going to find ingenious ways to import Iranian oil.

Then, there are other factors at work. One, as mentioned above, the US realizes that it lacks the ability to bring Iran’s oil exports to anywhere near zero level, as it once boasted. Two, oil sanctions against Iran will impact the world oil prices. Can Trump afford the political cost of oil prices cascading to, say, $100 bpd or more when he gears up for his re-election bid in 2020?

Third, there is great uncertainty about US-Saudi relations in the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. It is turning out to be a high stakes game of rogue operation by intelligence agencies for regime change in Saudi Arabia, which went horribly wrong. The searing experience seriously damages US-Saudi relations. And Saudi Arabia happens to be the only OPEC country that has the means to boost oil production to make up for shortfalls due to US’ oil sanctions against Iran. (Even Saudi surplus capacity is severely restricted.)

The bottom line is that New Delhi must stay the course, no matter what the American lobby in Delhi may say. The point is, the Trump administration is heading toward a cul-de-sac. When this realization dawns on Trump, he’ll, typically, make the course correction. As Ambassador Baeidinejad explained, Iran’s plan is to isolate the US and give it time to rethink. In this wise approach, Iran is getting strong support from the EU and Russia and China. Read the joint statement by the EU + EU-3 foreign ministers here.

November 5, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Suspect’s Iranian Origin an Excuse for New Sanctions Against Tehran – Scholars

Sputnik | November 4, 2018

Denmark and Iran are in conflict. While leading European countries are trying to preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, Denmark is engaged in a strong confrontation with Iran.

Danish police have announced that they have arrested a Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin linked to an alleged attack on the head of the Danish branch of the “Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz.”

According to the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, Iranian intelligence services supported the incident. In addition, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recalled its ambassador from Tehran. The country’s foreign minister, Anders Samuelsen, has announced that Copenhagen would advocate for the EU imposing sanctions on Iran.

Commenting on the situation for Sputnik, Sergei Demidenko, an associate professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, pointed out that the confrontation between Tehran and Copenhagen is very controversial but minor in terms of the political climate between the EU and Iran.

“There are many ways that the leaders of terrorist and separatist movements could use to get into the country. The primary one is presenting yourself as a member of some illegal political entity. In a country like Denmark, despite commonsense logic, this person will automatically receive the status of a ‘victim of political repression’,  as well as the right to political asylum and welfare for a comfortable living.Generally speaking, Denmark doesn’t have a stance on the Iranian issue, unlike the US and the UK.  That is why the Iranian case is very controversial. One may assume that these are political speculations and provocations, organized by some third party.”

The expert pointed out that Denmark’s position in the EU is not important enough to induce the union to impose new sanctions.

“Speaking about the EU, its position is not always identical with the US. The union always had an economic interest in Iran, not a political one. It’s hard to believe that the EU really needs to conduct an anti-Iranian campaign. This case is unlikely to affect the dynamics of the relationship between the EU and Iran. In some instances, the European Union may support the US against Iran, but not in all domains and not unanimously.”

Seyed Hadi Afghahi, an Iranian political scientist, leading expert on the Middle East, diplomat and a former official of the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon, shared the Russian expert’s point of view concerning the provocation against Iran possibly being organized by a third party. He added that there is an interested party to this diplomatic conflict. It is the United States.”The accusations against Iran that have been made recently as part of this conflict are not something new, especially since the new American sanctions package against Iran is to take effect soon. The US is actively preparing the ground for rationalizing new sanctions by trying to denigrate Iran in public opinion, pushing a narrative of us being sponsors of terrorism.

For this, Washington uses its allies. As you remember, there was the case of one of our diplomats being arrested in France for alleged support of terrorism against the leader of ‘Mojahedin-e Khalq’. However, the proof of these accusations hasn’t been provided. Now, let’s move on to the Danish case. The authorities of this country are accusing a citizen of Iranian origin of trying to organize a terrorist act against the leader of the local wing of the ‘Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz’.

The real question here is: why do the leaders of a separatist group that has conducted numerous terrorist attacks in Iran live in Denmark with political immunity? Don’t the Danish authorities know that just recently, during a military parade in Ahvaz, members of this group, in cooperation with Daesh, conducted a horrible terrorist attack against innocent Iranian civilians? It is a commonly known fact. In the meantime, Denmark, considering itself a civilized state, grants these terrorists political asylum and hides them on its territory, not revealing this fact to the public.

The second amazing fact about the campaign against Iran is the murder case of Jamal Khashoggi. Despite existing evidence, the authorities of Saudi Arabia are not being blamed by the US or the EU for assassinating the journalist.

The statement of the Danish authorities is a part of the anti-Iran plot prepared by the US to justify new sanctions. They found an innocent person connected to Iran, presented him as a murderer at an international level without having any evidence, and now they are threatening us with new sanctions. While the Saudi journalist case remains open, no European country has so far demonstrated a firm stance towards those responsible for his death and has not demanded to introduce sanctions against Saudi Arabia.It’s quite obvious that the Danish case is an attempt to avoid the responsibilities of the nuclear deal. In other words, the EU will justify its passivity in regards to preserving the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and not helping Iran by saying that the Islamic Republic is a sponsor of terrorism and could organize attacks in European capitals.

It could be concluded that this is all an intrigue and conspiracy against Iran. We see no practical steps by the EU to preserve the nuclear deal. It looks like Europe, influenced by the US, is trying to take the anti-Iranian position.”

Israel in the Middle of the Scandal

Denmark doesn’t provide personal information of the “Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz” separatist wing leader and doesn’t say how many of the movement’s members are on its territory. Tehran rejects the allegation of involvement of its intelligence services in the case.

When Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi commented on the accusations made by Denmark, he said: “When Iran-Europe relations are normalizing, some parties are trying to create division between them.” He considered Denmark’s sanctions decision to be “unpredictable” and pointed out: “This action was planned by counter-revolutionaries and terrorists in Europe, in the Middle East and in the US. Its purpose is psychological warfare against Iran.”It should be noted that the Israeli Public Broadcasting company Kan reported that Denmark had received information from Mossad that the Iranian intelligence services were planning to liquidate an opposition politician on its territory.

Seyed Hadi Afghahi thinks that these actions are a part of the anti-Iranian plot. Tel Aviv’s information was falsified and shouldn’t be trusted.

“Israel always gives false information to European leaders and heads of Persian Gulf countries, claiming that Iran is going to establish hegemony, conquer several Arab countries, etc. Iran is represented as a dangerous player, a conqueror and a source of all evil. Arab diplomats told me that during his visit to Oman, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said provocative information that Iran was planning to take over Oman in two years.

Israel offered Oman to reinforce cooperation, stop rapprochement with Iran and guaranteed its support in the event of an Iranian invasion; although Iran has been keeping close, friendly ties with Oman for 40 years.

Israel’s statements that Iran is building nuclear bombs were ridiculous. The IAEA didn’t trust it, saying that Israel’s evidence doesn’t have value.

It is simply beneficial for Israel to give falsified information to denigrate Iran’s image. That is why Israel is always in the middle of the US’ attempts to unravel Europe and Iran.”

November 4, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

The US Is Linking Hezbollah With The Cartels To Advance The Anti-Iranian Infowar

By Andrew KORYBKO – Oriental Review – 24/10/2018

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions created an elite task force for specifically investigating Mexican drug cartel and Hezbollah activity in America.

His move comes just weeks before the upcoming midterms in early November and represents Trump following through on his campaign promise to investigate these groups, with the differentiating factor being that the US also regards Hezbollah as a “terrorist organization” despite Russia and many other countries not sharing this position. Another point is that the current administration is basically equating this Mideast-based socio-political movement with MS-13 and other infamous drug trafficking gangs, which could hint at its intentions in laying the basis for the forthcoming infowar narrative that it might supposedly represent an Iranian-backed “Hybrid War threat” to the American Heartland. The buildup to this state-backed storyline perfectly coincides with the impending re-imposition of US sanctions against Iran, too.

Furthermore, it was revealed late last year that the Obama Administration suppressed what has been referred to as “Operation Cassandra”, which was allegedly a wide-ranging investigation into Hezbollah’s activities across the entire Western Hemisphere and specifically inside the US itself. Whether the accusations from that time about the group’s involvement in organized crime are true or not, the important point is that the Trump Administration appears to believe them or at the very least wants to procure more public evidence – whether real or fabricated – of this. Successfully doing so could enable the President to “defend” his destabilizing actions against Iran with the specious excuse that Iran is also “meddling” in American affairs too and has supposedly been since even before his inauguration.

Moving beyond the rhetoric and into the realm of practical policy application, Sessions’ crusade against the cartels and Hezbollah is designed to advance the administration’s law-and-order agenda, which would be a great thing for average Americans if it does indeed end up putting dangerous criminals behind bars regardless of whoever they might be. That’s not to say that Hezbollah in and of itself should objectively be considered a criminal entity, nor that there aren’t powerful arguments in favor of its existence and the causes that it supports, but just that its members need to obey the same laws that everyone else has to follow and shouldn’t harm innocent Americans through the financial, drug, violent, and other crimes that they might be engaged in to fund their organization.

Having said that, Sessions clearly has political motives for singling out Hezbollah from the US’ many other and much more influential suspected criminal organizations and lumping it together with well-known and infamous ones such as MS-13 in the context of his newly created taskforce. One of the main reasons for doing this appears to be the government’s plan to popularize the notion that Hezbollah is equivalent to the cartels prior to using this narrative as joint “justification” for more openly meddling in Iran’s domestic affairs and taking an even stricter approach towards the group’s activities in the Mideast. These probable forthcoming policy moves perfectly align with the interests of Israel, which believes that it’s existentially threatened by both Iran and its Hezbollah partners.

This means that Sessions’ taskforce is intended to advance Israel’s interests just as much as America’s, and it’s likely that they’ll work hand-in-hand in the course of these newly announced investigations.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Oct 19, 2018.

October 24, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1983 US Barracks Bombing in Beirut: Will Iran Ever Get Its Frozen Billions Back?

Sputnik – 24.10.2018

Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of the October 23, 1983 terrorist truck bombings of buildings containing US and French forces in Beirut, Lebanon. In the attacks’ aftermath, Washington accused Tehran of involvement, froze nearly $2 billion in Iranian assets, and decided to seize and appropriate these funds in 2016.

As a result of the barracks blast, 241 US Marines and 58 French paratroopers were killed, along with 6 Lebanese civilians. A group called Islamic Jihad Organization claimed responsibility for the blast, but Israeli and US officials have claimed Iranian involvement.

In 2016, the US Supreme Court ordered Iranian assets frozen in US banks to be paid out to the families of the US servicemen killed in the blast. Iran decried the decision, calling it “theft,” and took its case to the International Court of Justice. Earlier this month, US lawyers urged the ICJ to dismiss the Iranian suit, arguing that its appeal was “legally flawed.”

Speaking to Sputnik Persian about the anniversary of the blast, and US authorities’ decision to seize and appropriate Iranian assets, Dr. Seyed Hadi Afgahi, renowned expert on Middle East affairs and former diplomat at Iran’s embassy in Lebanon, said Tehran was unlikely to get its money back.

Commenting on the US claims against Iran, Afgahi said that the Beirut bombing was not the first time that the US has baselessly accused Iran of carrying out actions directed against US interests, citizens, military and diplomatic personnel, and certainly wouldn’t be the last.

“The US is filing lawsuits against Iran, but is forming these courts themselves, and making the rulings themselves. Where else in the world can one see a situation where the investigation is carried out by the same people who file the lawsuit, and the ruling is made by the same people, as well?” the observer asked, pointed to the multiple suits filed in US courts over the years accusing Iran of involvement in various terror acts.

“Recently, for example, the International Court of Justice ruled in Iran’s favor and demanded that the US lift some of its sanctions against Iran. The response from the US was that this decision means nothing to them. This is Washington’s logic at its core – the logic of unilateral claims,” Afgahi added.

As far as the Beirut bombings case is concerned, the former diplomat suggested that whatever Tehran does in international courts, it can’t force Washington to adhere to the courts’ decisions. “The International Court of Justice in the Hague is an organ controlled by the UN, but the US simply refuses to comply with its decisions,” he lamented.

Regarding the real perpetrators standing behind the 1983 blast, Afgahi said that it’s necessary to take a broader view, accounting for US actions, and not just those of the terrorists. “The Americans were the ones who attacked the people of Lebanon, killed them, bombed them, with their ships regularly bombing Beirut’s coast. They placed a base in the city, seizing buildings, landing their forces without the permission of the Lebanese authorities,” the observer recalled. “This is the same thing that they’re doing today – invading, killing and bombing,” he argued.

Ultimately, Afgahi believes that in the present circumstances, Iran will be unlikely to achieve justice and the return of its assets, particularly after the unilateral US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal and the introduction of new, aggressive sanctions against Tehran.

October 24, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

US Will Walk Out of Nuke Treaty Again if Iran Agrees to New Deal – Scholar

Sputnik – 17.10.2018

Six months after Donald Trump announced the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, Washington is proposing to sign a new agreement with Tehran.

The US is ready to give “a whole lot” to sign a new treaty with Iran that would take into account all of Washington’s concerns, including Tehran’s missile program, the US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said.

It is not the first time that Washington has invited Iran to conclude a new treaty since it walked out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

Tehran insists that it won’t ink a new agreement with the US after Washington’s mistake of withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In his address to the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly in September, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Tehran would agree to negotiate with the US but only if Washington changed its attitude towards the Islamic Republic.

In an interview with Sputnik Persian, Iranian political observer Ali Reza Rezakhah and a Tehran University expert in US affairs, Mohammad Marandi, spoke about the terms on which Tehran would be ready to sign a new accord with Washington.

According to Dr. Rezakhah, signing a new a new agreement with the US made no sense as Washington’s departure from the JCPOA showed everyone that it can’t be trusted.

“Statements alone are not enough, because the US has repeatedly declared its intention of concluding a new treaty with Iran. Singing a new treaty with the United States makes no sense. This is logical too because one can conclude a new agreement only with someone who fulfills his obligations. This means that we need to be confident about what the United States is saying,” Reza Rezakhah said.

He added that there weren’t any guarantees that the US would fulfill its obligations under a new treaty.

“It unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA treaty, violating all its international obligations. Neither Iran nor any other country can agree to sign a treaty with the United States, since they (the United States) do not honor their obligations. When speaking at the UN General Assembly, President Hassan Rouhani stated that Iran is ready to negotiate, provided that the United States takes the first step by adhering to the JCPOA.”

Mohammad Marandi flatly ruled out any new agreement with the US.

“It will not happen. Iran will not sign a new agreement with the United States or re-negotiate with it. With the JCPOA in place, what new agreement can we talk about? If the Americans do not understand this, then they know the Iranians even worse than we could have imagined.”

According to him, by violating the JCPOA the US proved that it can’t live up to its commitments.

“Tomorrow we will conclude an agreement with the United States, and they will walk out of it again. This defies logic,” Dr. Marandi argued.

“Even if Iran agrees to negotiate (a new agreement), the United States will take this as a sign of its pressure having worked and will ramp it up even more,” Marandi continued.

Iran would agree to negotiate with the US only if Washington returns to the JCPOA and negotiates within its framework,” Mohammad Marandi concluded.

In May, President Donald Trump said he was withdrawing the US from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran and promised to impose the “highest level” of sanctions on the country’s energy petrochemical and financial sectors despite objections from Europe as well as Russia and China — the other parties to the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Washington has also warned countries to stop buying Iranian oil starting from November 4 and threatened to use sanctions against those who do not.

The first wave of US sanctions on Iran took effect on August 6, targeting the country’s automotive sector, trade in gold, and other vital metals.

The remaining sanctions will come into effect on November 4, targeting Tehran’s energy sector, petroleum-based transactions, and transactions with Iran’s Central Bank.

October 17, 2018 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Benjamin Netanyahu Is No Friend to America

By Scott Ritter | TruthDig | October 4, 2018

Benjamin Netanyahu is no stranger to the American spotlight. A career Israeli politician who attended school in the United States, he specializes in the kind of rhetoric that his American counterparts revel in—a kind of narcissism that’s more used car salesman than educator.

Netanyahu specializes in selling danger to the American people. This is an art he has practiced on numerous occasions, whether it be at the gatherings of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), his many appearances before the U.S. Congress, at televised events or during the general debate in the United Nations General Assembly, an annual gathering of global leaders and diplomats where each nation’s representative is provided the opportunity to address counterparts and the world on issues he or she deems to be of particular import.

Bibi (as he is known, affectionately or otherwise) delivered his latest address to the General Assembly on Sept. 27. Like others he had delivered previously, this one was a tour de force of angst, fear and anger with a nearly singular focus on the issue that has seized Netanyahu for more than two decades—Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program.

In his 1995 campaign autobiography, “Fighting Terrorism,” Netanyahu, preparing to run for the office of prime minister of Israel, asserted that Iran was “three to five years” away from having a nuclear bomb. Bibi repeated this claim several times over the next 20-plus years, apparently unconcerned by the fact that his self-appointed timetable kept coming and going without the Iranian nuclear threat manifesting itself.

In September 2002, when he briefly found himself a private citizen, Netanyahu shifted his aim to Iraq, which he confidently asserted had a nuclear weapons program as he touted the benefits of removing Saddam Hussein from power—this during so-called “expert” testimony before the U.S. Congress. He was wrong on both counts, a fact that seems to slip the minds of those who continue to assign him a semblance of credibility given his proximity to Israel’s vaunted intelligence service.

As someone who spent four years (from 1994 to 1998) working closely with Israel’s intelligence service to uncover the truth about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs, I can attest that Israeli intelligence is better than most at what it does, but far from perfect. For every good lead the Israelis delivered to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), for which I was working at the time, they provided a dozen or more that did not pan out. Their detailed analysis about the alleged organization and structure of Iraq’s covert nuclear program proved to be far removed from the truth. They got names wrong, affiliations wrong, locations wrong—in short, the Israelis made the exact same mistakes as any other intelligence service.

Iraq was a denied area, made less so by the presence of UNSCOM weapons inspectors like me who had unprecedented access to the most sensitive national security sites in the country. And still the Israelis got it wrong. They did so not because of “bad intelligence,” but because they, like the CIA and other intelligence agencies around the world, were privy to the vast amount of information and data collected by UNSCOM inspectors about the true state of Iraq’s proscribed weapons and related programs. They suffered from the same lack of imagination as did the others that postulated a nuclear-armed Iraq circa 2002, unwilling to consider the possibility that Saddam Hussein might be telling the truth about not having retained any weapons and related capabilities prohibited by the Security Council resolution. This same lack of imagination appears to fuel Netanyahu’s increasingly wild claims about Iran.

It is no secret that Netanyahu has opposed the Iran nuclear deal—officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action, or JCPOA—since the possibility of a negotiated solution to the stand-off between Iran and the rest of the world was put on the table by the Obama administration in 2012. He lobbied hard against the agreement, interjecting himself in American domestic politics in an unprecedented fashion to undermine the negotiations.

When Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Netanyahu found a kindred spirit whose intellectual curiosity would not permit any effective challenge to the narrative constructed by the Israeli prime minister. And when Trump faced resistance from his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, he simply replaced them with more compliant persons, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton respectively.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA was facilitated not by any supporting brief from the U.S. intelligence community, which held fast to the assessment that Iran was fully compliant with its obligations under the JCPOA, but rather by intel provided by Israel that featured wild claims of an operation in the heart of Tehran; hundreds of thousands of documents purported to outline a nuclear program that Iran insisted did not exist. In April 2018, Bibi unveiled the existence of what he termed Iran’s “Atomic Archive” as he detailed some of its contents, allegedly recovered during an Israeli operation.

While Netanyahu’s dramatic presentation proved to be enough to help push Trump into withdrawing from the JCPOA the following month, it failed to convince the rest of the world that Iran was operating in bad faith when it came to declaring the totality of its nuclear program. One of the main reasons for this is that the tale put forward by Bibi simply didn’t add up. Documents he presented as being derived from the newly captured archive were recognized by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—which, along with supporting governments, is responsible for implementing the JCPOA—as matching those presented to the agency more than a decade ago. That cache of documents was allegedly recovered from a laptop computer sourced to an Iranian opposition group by Israeli intelligence.

At best, there is nothing new in these materials, and all the underlying issues alleged to have been “exposed” had already been discussed and rectified by the IAEA and Iran prior to the rectification of the JCPOA. At worst, Netanyahu was lying about the Israeli intelligence operation, and simply recycling old material—which may have been manufactured by Israel to begin with back in 2004—simply to provide political cover for Donald Trump.

Netanyahu spent much of his Sept. 27 address before the General Assembly detailing an alleged “Atomic Warehouse,” supposedly uncovered by Israeli intelligence in the heart of Tehran. As was the case with the “Atomic Archive” facility, Netanyahu made grand claims about Iranian malfeasance: The site contained “15 ship containers full of nuclear-related equipment and material,” along with “15 kilograms of radioactive material” that Iran allegedly evacuated from the site to evade detection. (Netanyahu seems to have overlooked the fact that the U.S. Department of Energy, prior to the JCPOA and in anticipation of such a scenario, “evacuated” nuclear material from one of its facilities during an exercise, only to have evidence of its existence uncovered by inspectors wielding the same detection capabilities as the IAEA.)

Netanyahu alleged that Iran was maintaining both an “Atomic Archive” and an “Atomic Warehouse” so that it could reconstitute its nuclear weapons program when the “time is right,” ostensibly when the sunset clauses of the JCPOA, which limit the number of centrifuges Iran can operate, expire. As with the “Atomic Archive” story, however, outside of Trump and his inner circle of anti-Iranian acolytes, informed American officials aren’t buying the Israeli leader’s tale, noting that Netanyahu has exaggerated the scope and scale of the warehouse in question. (These officials claim that the “material” being stored there is documentary in nature, a far cry from the “equipment” claimed by Netanyahu.)

Netanyahu bemoaned the fact that the world was promised “anywhere, anytime” inspections in Iran, and yet the IAEA has failed to take any steps to investigate the revelations provided by Israel. The reality is that the JCPOA promised no such thing. “Anywhere, anytime” was an artificial construct cobbled together by opponents of the deal by denigrating the investigatory capabilities of the IAEA. Moreover, the IAEA is intimately familiar with the quality of the intelligence information provided by Israel in the past, having spent months with Iran carefully deconstructing the claims contained within. The agency is hesitant to fall victim to Israeli exaggerations and falsifications again, and rightfully so.

More importantly, the JCPOA has a detailed mechanism in place to investigate claims such as those put forth by Israel. But by precipitously withdrawing from the JCPOA, the Trump administration has removed itself from that process. This means that Israel would need to turn to the Europeans, Russians or Chinese to plead its case. And the fact that neither France nor Germany nor the United Kingdom has picked up the mantle of Israel’s claims points to the inherent weakness of its intelligence. Netanyahu may be able to play siren to Trump’s Ulysses in order to crash America’s ship onto Iranian shoals, but the rest of the world is not following suit.

The American people should not tolerate this continued intrusion into their affairs by an outsider whose previous lies, prevarications and provocations helped get the United States entangled in one war, all the while advocating for our involvement in another. Bibi Netanyahu has a problem with telling the truth, and we give power to his words and deeds by not calling him out for what he truly is—a habitual liar with the blood of thousands of our fellow citizens on his hands. Netanyahu claims he is a friend of the American people. He is, in fact, the furthest thing from it.

Scott Ritter is the author of “Dealbreaker: Donald Trump and the Unmaking of the Iran Nuclear Deal,” published by Clarity Press, October 2018.

October 9, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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