The US Department of Defense has signed a contract worth $68.4 million with the Raytheon defense-industrial company for the production and delivery of 50 air-to-ground missiles to Taiwan, the Pentagon said on Saturday.
“Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Arizona, was awarded a $68,420,396 modification (P00001) to a firm-fixed-price order (N0001924F2560) … This modification exercising an option for the production and delivery of 50 Joint Standoff Weapon Air-To-Ground Missiles (AGM-154 Block III C) for the government of Taiwan,” Pentagon said in a statement.
The work under the contract is expected to be completed in March 2028, the statement read.
Taiwan has been governed independently of mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan — a territory with its own elected government — maintains that it is an autonomous country but stops short of declaring independence.
Beijing opposes any official contacts of foreign states with Taipei and considers Chinese sovereignty over the island indisputable. In response to visits of high-ranking US delegations to Taiwan in 2022 and 2023, the Chinese military launched large-scale drills near the island, in what it called a warning to Taiwanese separatists and foreign powers.
February 3, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | China, United States |
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On Friday, US President Joe Biden fulfilled his promise to strike Iranian targets in Syria and Iraq, further escalating the region even as the White House insists that it does not seek war with Iran.
Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense with nearly 30 years of experience, told Sputnik’s Fault Lines that the justification used by the White House could easily be applied by Russia to NATO countries supporting Ukraine.
“You’re hearing from congressmen and senators saying ‘but we need to hit Iran for supplying the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah,” Maloof explained. “Well, does Russia then have a right to hit US and NATO allies, as a result of supplying weapons to Ukraine to battle Russians?”
The United States has placed the blame on Iran for the Sunday drone attack that killed three US service members and injured dozens more on the border of Syria and Jordan. While the US admits that it has no evidence Iran helped plan the attack, the Biden administration has been clear it blames Iran because the country allegedly funds those groups and other militants.
“This afternoon, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets at facilities in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack U.S. forces,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement released Friday by the White House.
“I think that if Biden were to follow through, then that raises a whole new specter of opening up NATO countries to potential attack,” Maloof continued, adding that the US is simply hoping Russian President Vladimir Putin “doesn’t follow through” with that justification.
Maloof argued that the US should reevaluate the situation in the Middle East but it’s difficult because the US looks “at the Middle East through the prism of Israel all the time.”
“We’ve got to somehow figure a way out of it. Instead, we’re digging that hole deeper and even though there might be some attempts to try and persuade [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to calm down and have a ceasefire and try to resolve things, it’s doing just the opposite.
“The problem is that Biden has left the conduct of the war up to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu knows this and he’s basically dragging us along – we’re captives of Netanyahu,” Maloof explained.
“You don’t have any, there’s no leadership [the US] left it up to Netanyahu. He’s the tail wagging the dog,” he added later.
Maloof further argued that Israel has been getting the United States to do its dirty work for decades. “We always hear Netanyahu wanting the United States involved, or us to bomb the sites… This is the way we’ve been conducting ourselves since… 2003 when we invaded Iraq.”
Asked by Co-host Melik Abdul how the US should have responded to the attack, Maloof argued that the US should leave the region.
“I think we shouldn’t even be in those locations. And I think we should have gotten out some time ago.”
Otherwise, Maloof warns “This thing has unlimited possibilities of escalation very rapidly.”
February 3, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | Israel, Joe Biden, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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During COVID, the public was fed fearful numbers showing exaggerated death rates in unvaccinated populations. Where did they get this data and how accurate was it?
February 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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The looming threat to Middle East peace activism
As politicians and the Anti-Defamation League call for crackdowns on Middle East peace protesters, the ADL’s undue influence within the FBI as a trainer is finally exposed.
The Department of Justice released the Anti-Defamation League’s Basic Field Training Course (PDF). The course is mandatory for all FBI New Agent Trainees (NATs) and New Intelligence Analyst Trainees (NIATs). This release follows a decade of Freedom of Information Act requests and denials by the Department of Justice (PDF) and evasion by publicly funded content contributors.
The ADL course is developed and conducted by Anti-Defamation League (ADL) instructors. It selects materials from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. Marcus Appelbaum, Museum Director of Law, Justice and Society Initiatives in 2014 resisted any public review of the curriculum, stating, “Unfortunately we do not randomly send out the curriculum.” Appelbaum also denied that any of the large amounts of U.S. taxpayer funding supporting the museum paid for the curriculum.
Museum Director of Law, Justice and Society Initiatives Marcus Appelbaum denied curriculum release in 2014.
The ADL course facilitates a discussion of the USHMM video The Path to Nazi Genocide by asking trainees to watch and then consider “the challenges that police officers faced, and decisions they made in Germany during the Nazi era.” The video depicts the rise of Nazi Germany from WWI to the final WWII liberation of concentration camps replete with emaciated images of the dead and barely living.
The final question the video puts to agents in training is why the word “genocide” had to be coined in the aftermath. “As the world struggled to understand what had happened, a new word, genocide, was needed for these crimes — crimes committed by ordinary people from a society not unlike our own.”
The ADL training also requires viewing the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize: No Easy Walk. Supplemental reading exposes new FBI agents to the bureau’s past role undermining Martin Luther King Jr. and documents Bull Connor’s relentless fire hosing and mass arrests of black protesters engaged in civil disobedience. The video ends with the triumphant 1963 March on Washington and JFK’s proposal for a Civil Rights Act.
Taken in context, the entirety of the Basic Field Training Course makes it clear that FBI trainees are ADL subordinates who must strive to meet with its approval. Page 9 of the guide even states, “as a new hire, we would like you….”
The unstated purpose of the course is positioning Israeli activities in the US and the ADL itself outside the purview of law enforcement and especially FBI counterintelligence. The ADL today is framed as trusted trainers and civil rights partners. That was not always the case. The ADL’s current privileged insider role training all new FBI special agents is the result of a secretive influence campaign that began more than eight decades ago. Internal FBI files about that campaign reveal the ADL’s true reasons for infiltrating the FBI.
In 1940 the ADL launched an intense effort to liaise with the FBI by offering a list of undercover ADL investigators to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI was reluctant to accept the ADL list. One FBI special agent told Hoover he found a proposed investigator resource to be “mentally unbalanced.” Others offered up by ADL, such as longtime political campaign donation bundler Abraham Feinberg, was known to the FBI as a WWII surplus conventional weapons smuggler for Israel and alleged unregistered foreign agent. Feinberg later financed Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.
The ADL offered to investigate persons of interest to the FBI. FBI Assistant Director P. E. Foxworth nixed that idea, telling Hoover the ADL was engaged in “shakedowns” of “loyal and innocent” Americans and “interested only in their own material benefit…”
This did not keep the ADL from announcing in 1942 it had conducted “373 investigations” on behalf of the FBI. This prompted Hoover to respond that private investigative agencies had “no excuse for existence” and that the FBI “had never asked the ADL to conduct an investigation.” On June 30, 1943, Luigi S. Crisculo, an American investment banker involved in Italian American causes, reported being baited by Anti-Defamation League operatives who claimed to be “unofficial auxiliaries of the Department of Justice” and were attempting to link him to Nazism.
The ADL also wanted to directly seed its operatives into the FBI. Arnold Forster (AKA Fastenberg) began developing ADL’s legal team in 1938 while simultaneously applying to become an FBI special agent in 1937 and 1939. Forster was formally rejected because in the view of the FBI he “dressed poorly, did not appear resourceful and would probably not develop.” Forster then became ADL’s chief investigator in 1940 and held formal and informal positions until 2003. Another longtime ADL investigator and operative named Frank Prince even campaigned to replace Hoover as FBI director. When caught out in 1942, the ADL offered to “disband within 24 hours.” The FBI did not take the ADL up on this offer since “we [the FBI] are not running the Anti-Defamation League.”
Throughout the 1940s the ADL continuously lobbied FBI field offices for meetings and joint events which befuddled some bureau insiders. One special agent in command reported to Hoover he could not “understand the insistence of the ADL that a representative of this Bureau address this group.” He felt, “there is some ulterior motive that causes them to be so insistent.”
One ADL motive was gaining privileged access to FBI files. In 1944 ADL’s Nissan Gross asked to periodically check FBI files to avoid “duplication of investigation.” Special Agent in Command Drayton rebuffed the ADL because “under the procedure…ADL would have an opportunity to learn of the informants being utilized…and those under investigation.”
In 1968 FBI Director J Edgar Hoover finally dropped his longstanding opposition and ordered field offices “to immediately make certain that you have established liaison with the head of the ADL regional office in your territory…” Such liaisons continue to this day. Since then, joint public events, training sessions and even FBI director “love letters” to the ADL have been ongoing.
Given its insider status at the FBI, growing piles of Palestinian corpses in Gaza and resultant mass protests and civil disobedience in the U.S. may not be a challenge for the ADL which, along with other nodes of the Israel affinity ecosystem, works to censor open debate and protests of concern to Israel. As an FBI trainer, the ADL has finally transcended scrutiny. The FBI previously, acting on credible evidence, investigated ADL for domestic spying before political pressure on former Attorney General Janet Reno quashed the investigation. Such investigations of the ADL today would be unthinkable.
Even before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s attack on Gaza and settler rampages in the West Bank, the ADL was seeding the FBI with false threat reports conflating peaceful US based Palestinian rights groups with white nationalist movements.
ADL statistics and reports also attempt to reframe pro-Palestinian protests and civil disobedience in the United States as Antisemitism and “hate crimes” rather than anything resembling legitimate Civil Rights era nonviolent action. Under its forced “liaison” with the ADL, the FBI must pay close attention to and respond to all the ADL’s false and misleading allegations lest other nodes of the Israel affinity ecosystem work in concert to threaten its funding, political appointees or mundane issues such as a new headquarters.
The ADL and Israel lobby ecosystem acted quickly to compel Congressional “genocide threat” hearings—focused not on the reality of tens of thousands of dead in Gaza, but rather the discomfort felt by American Zionist students at elite Ivy league universities encountering campus cease fire rallies.
Following the ADL worldview, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently alleged that pro-Palestinian protesters picketing her home were acting on behalf of Russia and China and demanded that the FBI investigate them as foreign agents.
It is ironic that Pelosi, who has benefited all her career from support from AIPAC, an Israeli foreign influence operation set up with $60 million in foreign funds laundered into the US in the 1950s and 1960s, hurls foreign agent accusations at peaceful protesters.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaking at Israel’s Knesset in 2022
However, the threat of looming FBI crackdowns, covert or overt, on protesters calling for Middle East peace should not be discounted given the ADL’s success infiltrating its worldview into the bureau. Although FBI Director Christopher Wray has promised the FBI will not investigate or surveil peaceful pro-Palestine protests, his promise leaves out entrapment operations. The pressure for the bureau to “get results” by seeding plots, weapons and entrap mentally unbalanced individuals in “Palestinian terror plots” may soon become overwhelming. Such “successes” would instantly gain uncritical, widespread mainstream media diffusion and touch off more congressional hearings for further operations and funds to Israel.
One certainty is that even as the International Court of Justice demands Israel refrain from violations of the Genocide Convention, the ADL will certainly not teach such relevant current day lessons to new generations of special agents.
Review primary sources referenced in this article at the Israel Lobby Archive.
February 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | ADL, FBI, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for Washington, as the US is too internally weak to wage a new major in the Middle East, University of Tehran professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.
US officials have reportedly signaled that plans have been approved for a series of strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria.
That would be in response to a recent drone attack on US personnel in the Middle East — which claimed the lives of three soldiers and left 34 wounded.
In the wake of the strike Bloomberg claimed the Biden administration was considering a covert strike on Iran or Iranian officials as possible options.
But University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik that directly targeting Iran would be a major mistake and a major miscalculation by Washington.
He suggested that scenario was very unlikely, given Iran’s missile defense and drone capabilities, as well as the vulnerability of US bases which are scattered across the Middle Eastern region.
“Let’s assume that the United States strikes Iran,” Marandi said. “The United States has bases all across the Persian Gulf. The Iranians will hit out at those bases, and then the Iranians will also punish those countries that host those bases.”
Message for Joe Biden: Don’t Mess with Iran
The professor warned the fallout from the tit-for-tat attacks would send oil and gas prices “through the roof.”
“The Red sea would no longer be safe for oil and gas. The Western economies would collapse if there was a major escalation in our region,” Marandi underlined. “The United States, its assets across Iraq would be crushed. It would be overrun and by extension Syria as well and Lebanon. The world has changed. This is not just Iran, by the way. This is the whole of West Asia.”
Given the latest US media reports, it appears far more plausible that the US would attack targets in Iraq and Syria, Marandi continued.
“[The US] will claim some sort of ‘victory over terrorists’ and that sort of nonsense which they usually say,” the professor said. “But it will be like in Yemen, they will have very little impact because the resistance to the US occupation, the illegal occupation in Iraq and Syria is very well hidden. Their assets are underground, they are spread out. And all the United States would do would be to make people angrier and make the resistance more popular, both at home and abroad. That’s exactly what we saw in Yemen.”
Marandi noted that most recently instead of pushing the Israeli regime to end the slaughter in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the US tried to facilitate the genocide by attacking Yemen. Since early January the US and its allies conducted a series of strikes against the Ansar Allah-led government in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, also known as the Houthis after their leader.
“They launched many missiles, wasted a lot of money, but they were incapable of changing the balance of power. And Yemen continues to easily strike ships. Why?” the professor asked. “Because all of their assets are underground. Their mobile radar is well-protected underground. They are missiles and drones are well protected underground. They come out, strike the target and go back underground. So the Americans failed in Yemen. They made ‘Ansar Allah,’ or what the West likes to call the Houthis, very popular across the region and across the world, and they’ll only do the same in Iraq and Syria.”
In the aftermath of the strikes the Biden administrations came under criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. A bipartisan group of House representatives, comprising such strange bedfellows as Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, argued that the US’ “unauthorized strikes in Yemen” violate the Constitution and US statute.
They called on Biden “to seek authorization from Congress before involving the US in another conflict in the Middle East,” and warned the White House against provoking Iran and Iran-backed militia in the region which could swiftly spiral out of control and lead to a broader regional conflict.
US legislators’ concerns are justified as the US cannot afford to wage wars on multiple fronts, the academic pointed out.
“The United States cannot win another war,” said Marandi. “I have no doubt that if the Republicans were in charge, they would be… Whoever is in the white House, the people around him would be saying these things in private, and the Democrats in public would be denouncing the president for holding back. But the truth is that the United States is not the United States of the past. They can launch an attack on Iran. But the price would be extremely high and the United States wouldn’t win.”
Marandi questioned when the US had last won an overseas war.
“As the United States ‘won’ in Iraq as it won in Afghanistan. Did it win in Libya? Did it win in the genocide that it supported in Yemen? Did it win in Ukraine? The United States has a very poor record when it comes to launching wars and destroying nations and countries,” the acdemic said.
“They are capable of ruining lives and murdering millions and they don’t care. We see that in Gaza every day, but they simply don’t have the power to win. And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is not Vietnam,” Marandi stressed. “Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for the United States, and something that I don’t think those decision makers in Washington would ever seriously contemplate.”
“The Americans may be foolish enough to do so, but if they do so, then I think you’ll see the demise of the American empire take place much more rapidly than we’re seeing right now,” he concluded.
February 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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When it comes to explaining this question, i.e., why the US is attacking the Houthis in the Red Sea, most mainstream western media gives a similar answer, i.e., the Houthis are part of Iran’s “axis of resistance”; the Houthis seek Israel’s destruction; the Houthis are a terrorist group seeking to bring Yemen under their exclusive control, etc. Almost every major western media outlet has singularly highlighted what they call is the central Houthi slogan: “Death to America, Death to Israel, curse the Jews and victory to Islam”. The purpose is to criminalize them. Therefore, retaliating against them is crucial for the West to ensure its own security. But the US and its allies also need to frame it in a way that can get maximum political sympathy from within their countries. Speaking to reporters in Bahrain on the 10th of January, the US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, warned that continued Houthi attacks in the Red Sea could disrupt supply chains and in turn increase costs for everyday goods.
This particular framing of US counterattacks has direct appeal to the people, i.e., if the Houthis continue to attack ships in the Red Sea, it will disturb global supply chains, which will lead to the shortage of commodities, including food, that might contribute to inflation, making ordinary people’s lives difficult. Therefore, to ensure that people face minimum difficulties, the US is attacking the Houthis.
Contrast it with the fact that the Houthis’ target in the Red Sea are the Israel-bound shipments. But the West suppresses this reality. It is not untrue that the Houthis are against Israel and that the core purpose of their attacks is to dent Israel’s ability to wage its war. The US, on the other hand, has jumped on the anti-Houthi bandwagon to take care of the threat that the Houthis present to Israel so that the state of Israel can continue, safely, to wage its war on the Gazans.
But this is not how the US frames its attacks. The US-led task force called Operation Prosperity Guardian has been patrolling the Red Sea to, in Blinken’s words, “preserve freedom of navigation” and “freedom of shipping”. But the only freedom Washington cares about is its own ability to dictate geopolitics in its own exclusive ways; hence, the attacks. Still, if Washington and its allies see the Houthis as part of the “axis of resistance”, for the Houthis, for Iran, and for the people of Palestine, the “axis of resistance” exists, fundamentally, due to the ‘axis of domination’ the US wants to accomplish. For the Houthis and its allies, this ‘axis of domination’ includes the US and its NATO allies plus Israel and the West’s reluctant allies in the Middle East, i.e., states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
What the Houthis Say
For the Houthis, the main reason for their attacks is the collective inability or the unwillingness of the West to prevent the unimaginable loss of life at the hands of Israel in Palestine. A senior Houthi official said, in a statement released on ‘X’ (Twitter), in December that the Houthis would only halt their attacks if Israel’s “crimes in Gaza stop and food, medicines and fuel are allowed to reach its besieged population”. Later, in response to the US decision to launch a coalition force in the Red Sea, Houthi Major General Yusuf al-Madani said in a statement that “Any escalation in Gaza is an escalation in the Red Sea … Any country or party that comes between us and Palestine, we will confront it.”
The question, therefore, is: will the Houthis still be attacking if the West was playing a more responsible role, i.e., not allowing Israel to execute its own version of the so-called final solution to the Palestine question. The answer is probably no. But if this was not the case, i.e., if there was no crisis in the Red Sea, the US would have little excuse to launch a coalition and use the war to augment its dwindling position in the Middle East.
The Coalition
The US-led coalition is the US entry point in what the US calculates could be a long war in the region, a war that would become long only because Israel needs a lot of time to execute its cardinal objectives. Apparently, Israel’s objective is eliminating Hamas. But, as the war has progressed and its current trajectory, i.e., the utter destruction of the entire Gaza and the displacement of millions of Gazans, shows, Israel’s objective is to fundamentally change the socio-political reality of the Gaza Strip in a way that would allow it to permanently annex this region in its pursuit of ‘Greater Israel’.
Israel confirmed earlier this month that the war is unlikely to come to an end in 2024. The West, in response to this warning, has practically sealed its lips. On the contrary, the Houthi attacks have allowed the West to practically shift the blame on them for creating tensions. This is a classic western way of giving spins to issues in a way that a) not only allow it to execute its plans and b) frames them in a way that minimizes the political risk.
For Biden, it is important to minimize the political risk now more than ever because of the seemingly unstoppable Trump resurgence. If Trump wins the next election in the US, it does not mean an end to the US support for Israel. It might increase, given that the Trump administration, by accepting Israel’s decision to declare Jerusalem as its capital and supporting the Abraham Accords, directly contributed to the present war. But for Biden, this is still a political nightmare. Therefore, the Biden administration is excessively framing the issue as existential not only for Israel but also for the US. This makes a lot of sense for him for the elections, given that Biden’s unflinching support for Israel and his willingness to expand US involvement in favor of Israel has led to nearly three-quarters of Jewish Americans [grossly over-represented in campaign finance and media control] approving his policies. Biden’s domestic imperatives in this sense trump the imperative of saving innocent lives and preventing the war from spreading. It is for this reason that Washington is attacking the Houthis.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
February 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Israel, Palestine, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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“The Iranians have a strategy, and we don’t”, a former senior U.S. Defence Department official told Al-Monitor: “We’re getting bogged down in tactical weeds – of whom to target and how – and nobody’s thinking strategically”.
The former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar has coined the term ‘swarming’ to describe this process of non-state actors miring the U.S. in the tactical attrition – from the Levant to the Persian Gulf.
‘Swarming’ has been associated more recently with a radical evolution in modern warfare (most evident in Ukraine), where the use of autonomous swarming drones, continuously communicating with each other via AI, select and direct the attack to targets identified by the swarm.
In the Ukraine, Russia has pursued a patient, calibrated attrition to drive hard-Right ultranationalists from the field of battle (in central and eastern Ukraine), together with their western NATO facilitators.
NATO attempts at deterrence towards Russia (that recently have veered off into ‘terrorist’ attacks inside Russia – i.e. on Belgorod) notably have failed to produce results. Rather, Biden’s close embrace of Kiev has left him exposed politically, as U.S. and European zeal for the project implodes. The war has bogged down the U.S., without any electorally acceptable exit – and all can see it. Moscow drew-in Biden to an elaborate attritional web. He should ‘get out’ quick – but the 2024 campaign binds him.
So, Iran has been setting a very similar strategy throughout the Gulf, maybe taking its cue from the Ukraine conflict.
Less than a day after the attack on Tower 22, the military base ambiguously perched on the membrane between Jordan and the illegal U.S. al-Tanaf base in Syria, Biden promised that the U.S. would provide a quick and determined response to the attacks against it in Iraq and Syria (by what he calls ‘Iran-linked’ militia).
Simultaneously however, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby stated that the U.S. doesn’t want to expand military operations opposite Iran. Just as in Ukraine, where the White House has been loath to provoke Moscow into all-out war versus NATO, so too in the region, Biden is (rightly) wary of out-right war with Iran.
Biden’s political considerations in this election-year will be uppermost. And that, at least partly, will depend on the fine calibration by the Pentagon of just how exposed to missile and drone attacks U.S. forces are in Iraq and Syria.
The bases there are ‘sitting ducks’; a fact would be an embarrassing admission. But a hurried evacuation (with overtones of the last flights from Kabul) would be worse; it could be electorally disastrous.
The U.S. seemingly aims to find a way to hurt Iranian and Resistance forces just enough to show that Biden is ‘very angry’, yet without perhaps doing real damage – i.e. it is a form of ‘militarised psychotherapy’, rather than hard politics.
Risks remain: bomb too much, and the wider regional war will ignite to a new level. Bomb too little, and the swarm just rolls on, ‘swarming’ the U.S. on multiple fronts until it finally caves – and finally exits the Levant.
Biden thus finds himself in an exhausting, ongoing secondary war with groups and militias rather than states (whom the Axis seeks to shield). In spite of its militia character, however the war has been causing major damage to the economies of states in the region. They have fathomed that American deterrence has not been showing results (i.e., with Ansarallah in the Red Sea).
Some of those countries – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have initiated ‘private’ steps that were not coordinated with the U.S. They are not only speaking with these militia and movements, but also directly with Iran.
The strategy to ‘swarm’ the U.S. on multiple fronts was plainly stated at the recent ‘Astana Format’ meeting between Russia, Iran, and Turkey on 24-25 January. The latter triumvirate are busy preparing the endgame in Syria (and ultimately, in the Region as a whole).
The joint statement after the Astana Format meeting in Kazakhstan, MK Bhadrakumar has noted:
“is a remarkable document predicated almost entirely on an end to the U.S. occupation of Syria. It indirectly urges Washington to give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates “operating under different names in various parts of Syria” as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism.’ It demands an end to the U.S.’ illegal seizure and transfer of oil resources “that should belong to Syria””.
The statement thus spells out the objectives starkly. In sum, patience has run out over the U.S. weaponising the Kurds and attempting to revitalise ISIS in order to disrupt the tripartite plans for a Syria settlement. The trio want the U.S. out.
It is with these objectives – insisting that Washington give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism’ – that the ‘Astana’ Russian and Iranian strategy for Syria finds common ground with that of the Resistance’s strategy.
The latter may reflect an Iranian strategy overall – but the Astana Statement shows the underlying principles to be Russia’s too.
In his first substantive statement after 7 October, Seyed Nasrallah (speaking for the Axis of Resistance as a whole) indicated a strategic Resistance pivot: Whereas the conflict triggered by events in Gaza was centrally connected with Israel, Seyed Nasrallah additionally underlined that the backdrop to Israel’s disruptive behaviour lay with America’s ‘forever wars’ of divide-and-rule in support of Israel.
In short, he tied the causality of America’s many regional wars to the interests of Israel.
So, here, we come to the third strand to the ‘swarming of Biden’.
Only it is not regional actors that are contriving to box-in Biden – it is America’s own protégé: Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Netanyahu and Israel are the principal target of the bigger regional ‘swarm’, but Biden has allowed himself to be enmeshed by it. It seems that he cannot say ‘no’. So here Biden is: boxed-in by Russia in Ukraine; boxed-in in Syria and Iraq, and boxed-in by Netanyahu and an Israel that fears the walls closing-in on their Zionist project.
There is likely no electoral ‘sweet-spot’ to be found here for Biden, between inserting America into an unpopular and electorally disastrous, all-out Middle East war, and between ‘green-lighting’ Israel’s huge gamble on victory over war against Hizbullah.
The confluence between the failed Ukrainian ploy to weaken Russia, and the risky ploy for Israel’s war on Hizbullah, is unlikely to be lost on Americans.
Netanyahu too is between a rock and a hard place. He knows that ‘a victory’ that boils down to just the release of the hostages, and confidence-building measures to establish a Palestinian state, would not restore Israeli deterrence – inside or outside the state. On the contrary, it would erode it. It would be ‘a defeat’ – and without a clear victory in the south (over Hamas), a victory in the north would be demanded by many Israelis, including key members of his own cabinet.
Recall the mood within Israel: The latest Peace Index survey shows that 94% percent of Israeli Jews think Israel used the right amount of firepower in Gaza – or not enough (43%). And three-quarters of Israelis think the number of Palestinians harmed since October is justified.
If Netanyahu is boxed in, so is Biden.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu former said:
“We will not end this war with anything less than the achievement of all its objectives … We will not withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip and we won’t release thousands of terrorists. None of that is going to happen. What is going to happen? Total victory.”
“Is Netanyahu capable of veering strongly to the left… entering into an historic process that will end the war in Gaza and lead to a Palestinian state – coupled with an historic peace agreement with Saudi Arabia? Probably not. Netanyahu has kicked over many other similar buckets before they were filled”, opined veteran commentator, Ben Caspit, in Ma’ariv (in Hebrew).
Biden is making a huge bet. Best to wait on what Hamas and the Gaza Resistance answers to the hostage proposal. The omens, however, do not look positive for Biden —
Senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials responded yesterday to the latest proposal:
“The Paris proposal is no different from previous proposals submitted by Egypt … [The proposal] does not lead to a ceasefire. We want guarantees to end the genocidal war against our people. The resistance is not weak. No conditions will be imposed on it” (Ali Abu Shahin, member of Islamic Jihad’s political bureau).
“Our position is a ceasefire, the opening of the Rafah crossing, international and Arab guarantees for the restoration of the Gaza Strip, the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Gaza, finding a housing solution for the displaced and the release of prisoners according to the principle of all for all … I am confident that we are heading for victory. The patience of the American administration is running out because Netanyahu is not bringing achievements” (Senior Hamas official, Alli Baraka).
February 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Wars for Israel | Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Joe Biden, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Republican representative in the US Congress from Florida, Brian Mast, appeared to call for a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, saying there were no innocent children there.
In a video circulating on social media, two activists ask Mast, “You haven’t seen the pictures of all the babies being killed?” To which he replied: “These are not innocent Palestinian civilians.”
When confronted by two CodePink activists who explained that Israel has destroyed more infrastructure in Gaza than was destroyed in the German city of Dresden during World War II, Mast replies: “And there’s more infrastructure that needs to be destroyed… Did you not hear me? There is more that needs to be destroyed. And there will be more that gets destroyed.”
Mast describes the United Nations as “moronic” for creating the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). This comes after Washington’s announcement that it has suspended its financial support for the agency.
“And I do wanna make sure that we don’t give $1, one penny to UNRWA and that it actually be totally abolished,” Mast said, adding: “I’ll make sure your tax dollars don’t go to UNRWA.”
Mast had served in the Israeli occupation army, and stood inside the US Congress in October 2023, wearing his Israeli military uniform.
“As the only member to serve with both the United States Army and the Israel Defence Forces, I will always stand with Israel,” he wrote in a post on X on 13 October.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Benjamin Netanyahu shows Joe Biden who’s boss
Over the past ten days there have been several interesting developments in the continuing ethnic cleansing of Gaza, as well as increasingly on the West Bank, by the Israeli military supplemented by armed settlers. In one particularly grotesque killing, Israeli commandos disguised as medical staff and Arab civilians burst into a hospital room in Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank and shot dead three Palestinians. The Israeli military said one of the victims belonged to Hamas and was planning an imminent attack “inspired by the events of October 7” but provided no evidence in support of the claim. Palestinian hospital staff reported afterwards how “They raided one of the patients’ rooms and killed him, and the people who were in the room with him, his brother and friend. He was a patient, paralyzed and using a wheelchair.” One might observe that Israel, like the White House, lies about everything.
To be sure, Israel and the United States deservedly continue to be subjected to legal challenges, both internationally and in the United States, over their carrying out of a policy in Gaza that many, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, might eventually consider to be a full scale and active genocide, the most notorious crime against humanity. The court’s Order last Friday to Israel “to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and punish incitement for genocide accepts the possibility of Israel being a perpetrator of genocide” and not just a perpetual historical victim, as it chooses to depict itself. As the court continues to pursue the completely plausible claim of genocide submitted by South Africa and to come to a final ruling, which could easily take months to complete, it has “already made history.” But in the meanwhile, manipulation of both the judicial and constitutional processes by the United States to support Israel has enabled the Jewish state to keep bombing and killing an average of 300 Palestinians each day while also controlling and cutting off relief supplies desperately needed by the starving and dying two million nearly all civilians physically imprisoned by the barriers erected by Israel surrounding Gaza.
In the latest act of undoubted collusion staged to kill even more Palestinians, Israel claimed that 12 members of the United Nations Gaza Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) participated in the Hamas October 7th attack on Israel. The UN has fired some of those accused out of its 13,000 employees in the organization and it is investigating further but that did not prevent the US from immediately cutting its funding to UNRWA in spite of the fact that Israel had produced no evidence to back up its claim and there was no explanation provided why such a report was not issued until more than 100 days after the alleged incident. Timing is everything. Clearly the moves were preplanned by President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to help counter the negative impact of the ICJ report, which was released several days before, and it will accomplish nothing except to increase the misery of the Palestinians.
The international focus on Israel and the United States regarding Gaza is because of the widely held and absolutely correct perception that Israel keeps getting away with murder, literally, and Washington is the accomplice in the crime, using its power and United Nations veto to avoid holding the Jewish state accountable for its misdeeds. Ironically, Israeli behavior often negatively impacts on the actual interests of the United States to include killing American citizens without there being and consequences for the perpetrators. This recklessness has recently been on display not only in Gaza but also on the occupied West Bank where just last week another Palestinian-American has been shot dead in what appears to be something like a vigilante killing.
According to witnesses, the completely unprovoked recent killing consisted of the fatal shooting of American-Palestinian teen Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, a Louisiana native, who was driving a pickup truck near his village Al-Mazra’a Ash-Sharquiya on the Israeli occupied West Bank. Without any warning, a volley of Israeli gunfire struck the back of the truck, hitting Tawfik in the head and killing him, resulting in the out-of-control vehicle turning over several times on a dirt road. Family members who rushed to the scene were confronted by Israeli soldiers at gunpoint, who blocked their access to the truck. In an initial statement, Israeli police admitted that the shooting targeted Tawfic, but claimed the victim was “purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities.” Police would not identify who fired the shots but did describe the incident as “ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian.” That suggests an armed settler was involved. The US Embassy has demanded an explanation but Israel never convicts Jews who kill Palestinians. That is what is expected in this case, which recalls the May 2022 killing by an army sniper of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh at a demonstration which she was covering at the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli occupied West Bank. She was wearing a clearly identifiable journalist’s jacket. No one was ever held accountable and even the Zionist dominated US State Department eventually believed she had been targeted and deliberately executed. Indeed, there is currently a law pending in the Knesset that blocks prosecution of any Israeli soldier or policeman who kills an Arab.
And when it comes to other dead Americans, there is the still uninvestigated killing of 34 crewmen on the USS Liberty in June 1967 by Israeli warplanes and gunboats, the killing of activist Rachel Corrie by being run over by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003, and the killing of Turkish-American boy Furkan Dogan and eight others in international waters on the Mavi Marmara ferry in 2010. If Israel decides to kill Americans it does not hesitate and the US never does anything but whine after the fact, if that. In that case of the Liberty the White House and Pentagon actually participated in the cover-up, such is the power of the Israel Lobby.
So once again the gloves are off in terms of the abuse that the United States has to take at the hands of “best friend” Israel, particularly now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a group of fascist ultra-nationalists have formed a war cabinet that is intent on driving out or exterminating the Palestinians. Both in Gaza and on the West Bank any living Palestinian is little more than target practice for the Israel Defense Force half trained thugs in uniform.
And Netanyahu is not even trying to hide what he wants to do to Palestine, even though he is now running into concern from President Joe Biden who apparently is afraid that all the bloodshed in Gaza being endorsed and enabled by Washington will damage his re-election prospects. Netanyahu has not budged however and has made some significant comments over the past two weeks, one of which directly rejects a Biden call to look at options for reviving the so-called Two States plan that would give the Palestinians a mini-state that has actual sovereignty at some level, unlike the almost total military and police occupation by Israel that prevails currently.
Speaking at a press conference on January 22nd, Netanyahu insisted that “I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of the Jordan River”. His statement also prefigures an assault on the West Bank and the seizure of all Palestinian-held territory. War would “continue until the end, until the victory, until the elimination of Hamas” and “nothing will stop us.” Ending the war prematurely “would harm Israel’s security for generations,” he said, suggesting this could mean military action continuing until next year.
Netanyahu has said that there will be no Palestinian state with actual sovereignty and that Israel will control all of the former historic Palestine “From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Yes, Netanyahu is using the very words that Israel’s friends have condemned as “antisemitic” when used by Palestinian demonstrators in the US objecting to the slaughter in Gaza.
Meanwhile, a number of Israeli cabinet and other senior officials have indicated clearly that achieving the goal of an Israeli state incorporating the whole area into what will legally be defined as a Jewish state will be achieved no matter what will have to be done to the Palestinians. This will all start with the ethnic cleansing and resettlement of Gaza by Jews, no matter how long it takes to accomplish, and then will proceed to the West Bank. The displacement of the Palestinians is being justified by claiming that that population is not redeemable as they are nothing but “terrorists,” to include incitement from government officials with comments like “We kill the children otherwise they will grow up to kill Jews.”
To be sure, there has been some pushback against the Netanyahu revelation, coming from many dissatisfied Israelis and even originating within the normally massively pro-Israel US Congress. Calls have come for a cease fire and 15 Jewish Democratic congressmen have supported a two-state solution with a Palestine state having true sovereignty. They issued a brief statement saying “We strongly disagree with prime minister [Netanyahu]. A two-state solution is the path forward.” And there also has been something of a rebellion from the civil service in Washington, where there was a walkout of employees rejecting the Biden Administration’s Gaza policy.
Senator Bernie Sanders and some others in Congress have repeated calls to stop funding what Israel is doing, particularly as the war is already spilling over to Yemen and Iraq and Syria where illegal US military bases are under attack producing most recently three deaths by drone fired from an Iraqi shi’ite militia, allegedly hitting a base in Jordan, and causing more than thirty injuries. The incident will possibly lead to further escalation as Joe Biden has said there will be some retaliation against the militia group that staged the attack and its sponsors. Predictably, Joe and others in Washington are actually blaming the attack on Iran though there is no evidence supporting that claim. Several Congressmen and presidential candidate Nikki Haley have nevertheless already called for an attack on Iranian military and economic installations and CBS news is now reporting that preparations are underway for the US to hit “Iranian targets” in Syria and Iraq. The Iranian government has said it was not involved in the incident and has already announced that it would retaliate if attacked. A better policy would be a withdrawal from those illegal bases, reportedly under consideration by the Pentagon, but it has been denied by the inimitable Victoria Nuland at the State Department.
US President Joe Biden also followed up on the recent Netanyahu statements with what was reportedly his first phone call with Netanyahu for a month, after which he suggested that the Israeli leader might consider some “type” of two-state solution. But Netanyahu’s spokesman dismissed Biden’s claim on the following day, saying that “In his conversation with President Biden, prime minister Netanyahu reiterated his policy that, after Hamas is destroyed, Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty.”
Netanyahu then personally expanded on the message, saying how “I emphasized to President Biden our determination to achieve all the goals of the war, and to ensure that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel.” Under his leadership, Netanyahu pledged that Israel would go beyond that to wage a far wider regional war “on all fronts and in all sectors. We are not giving immunity to any terrorist: not in Gaza, not in Lebanon, not in Syria, and not anywhere.”
Netanyahu and his generals have repeatedly stated that Israel is waging war not just on the Palestinians but also against Iran and its allies, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant explaining that Israel is confronted by a war on seven fronts: Gaza, the West Bank, and Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Replying to a question from a reporter asking why Israel is not attacking Iran directly, Netanyahu responded, “Who says we aren’t attacking Iran? We are attacking Iran.” Indeed, Israeli forces have repeatedly bombed Syria’s capital, Damascus, targeting Iranian forces allied to the Syrian government. In the most recent incident, Israeli missiles fired from the occupied Golan Heights killed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Syria intelligence chief and four more IRGC members.
As a final observation, Netanyahu and his supporters appear to be using the prospect of a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential elections in November to put more pressure on Biden to make him back off from supporting any concessions over Gaza and a Palestinian state. Bibi is also intent on extending the war until the end of 2024 to make his domestic opponents who are demanding his resignation appear unpatriotic, many of whom believe that the Israeli actions vis-à-vis Gaza have been motivated by Netanyahu’s own political and personal interests. As Netanyahu might well otherwise be in jail currently due to corruption charges, many critics now support the theory that Gaza may have been a false flag setup with the Prime Minister himself giving the green light to an operation that would open the door to keeping himself in power while also destroying Gaza and ridding Israel of the Palestinians forever. If Netanyahu plays his cards right with the clueless Biden he might also be able to convince the United States to attack Iran very soon, something that he has been seeking for more than twenty years. That may be what is coming next.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Joe Biden is contending that the United States has the right to attack Iran as a result of the deadly strike on a U.S. base in Jordan which killed three American troops.
Biden is throwing rocks in a glass house if we then look at the case of the IL-76 shoot-down over Russia when 74 people were killed.
It is by no means clear if Iran was involved in the Jordan base raid. Tehran strongly denies it and even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack.
Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily. If Biden can make that case, then the United States and its NATO allies should be held accountable for the shooting down of the IL-76 transport plane over Russia killing all onboard, according to the reasoning of none other than the US President.
By “accountable” that means Russia has the right to take retaliatory military action against the culprit of the crime in which 74 people were killed. Again, this is according to Biden’s own reasoning.
Biden was not speaking about the fatal IL-76 incident that occurred on January 24 when nine Russian servicemen and 65 Ukrainian prisoners were killed after their cargo plane was hit in mid-air with a warhead.
The president was responding to U.S. journalists questioning him about the deaths of three American military personnel at a base in Jordan that Iraqi militants attacked on January 28.
Biden said he held Iran responsible for the American fatalities and vowed to retaliate. Somewhat contradictorily, the president and his spokesmen have said the United States does not seek to have a wider war with Iran even though Biden said he intends to attack Iranian assets in a “tiered way at a time of his choosing”. If that’s not a wider war, what is?
Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the drone attack on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq. The strike was claimed by Iraqi militia known as Islamic Resistance which is allied with Iran.
Asked if he blamed Iran, Biden said he did “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Iran and the Iraqi militants are affiliated in a similar way to Tehran’s support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen. All are motivated by staunch opposition to U.S. military occupation in the Middle East and Washington’s support for Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza. Collectively, Iran and its allies are known as the Axis of Resistance.
There is no evidence that Iran supplied the weapons to the militants who killed the three American troops. Iran contends that each resistance member possesses its own agency and decision-making.
By contrast, however, the supply of American and other NATO weaponry to the Kiev regime is publicly recorded. It is estimated that the West has funded Ukraine with a total of $200 billion since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. About half of that has been spent on weapons that include long-range missiles such as Patriot, Shadow Storm, Scalp and Iris-T systems. British and French cruise missiles have been repeatedly used to hit pre-war Russian territory such as Belgorod resulting in dozens of civilian deaths.
The strike on the IL-76 transport plane is believed to have been carried out with Western-supplied weapons.
Russian crash investigators have this week confirmed earlier claims that the cargo plane was shot down with a NATO weapon, either a U.S.-made Patriot missile system or a German Iris-T surface-to-air missile.
When the IL-76 was blown out of the sky on January 24 over Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian radars detected the launch of two anti-aircraft warheads nearly 100 kilometers away from the target. The missiles were allegedly fired from the location of Liptsy in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkov province. It is believed that only NATO-supplied weapons to the Ukrainian forces could have achieved that extensive range.
At the time of the IL-76 shoot-down, the Kremlin said that if it confirmed that Western weapons were responsible then Russia would deem the West to be complicit in the crime.
On January 26, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said: “According to preliminary investigation, Ukrainian armed forces carried out this terrorist attack using an anti-aircraft missile system. The missiles were launched from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov region.”
He added: “These could have been either American Patriot or German-made Iris-T missiles. If confirmed, this will make the Western suppliers of this ammo complicit in this crime. Just as they are complicit in shelling of peaceful neighborhoods of Russian cities that Ukrainian armed forces carry out with Western weapons.”
Russian crash investigators have now confirmed that Western weapons were the cause of the deadly crash.
The United States or one of its NATO allies supplied those weapons. That makes the U.S. or NATO complicit in an act of deadly aggression against Russia.
And by using the same logic as Joe Biden that culpability makes the U.S. or its allies accountable to Russia… “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Biden has made the case for Russia to directly hit American or NATO assets.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Middle East, Ukraine, United States |
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Washington plans to ship its first batch of ground-launched long-range bombs to Kiev this week. The arms were designed for the Ukrainian military and will give Kiev another option for deep strikes.
The new weapon was developed by Boeing and Saab. It combines a 250-pound guided bomb intended to be launched by an aircraft and straps it to a rocket motor. Washington believes it has a range of 90 miles.
Boeing and Saab pitched combining the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor in November 2022. President Joe Biden approved the transfer of the long-range bomb to Ukraine in February 2023. However, the delivery of the munitions was delayed because it needed to be developed and tested.
Politico spoke with four officials who confirmed the first batch would arrive in Ukraine this week. The officials touted the weapons as giving Ukraine “a significant capability.” “It gives them a deeper strike capability they haven’t had, it complements their long-range fire arsenal,” the US official said. “It’s just an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more.”
The officials did not say how many bombs will be sent to Ukraine. At times, Washington has sent an extremely limited number of some types of arms to Kiev. Ukrainian forces recently conducted strikes deep in Russian-held territory on civilian targets. Earlier this month, at least 27 people were killed in a Ukrainian attack on a market on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk in the Russian-controlled portion of the Donetsk Oblast.
While the bombs may give Ukraine another option for deep strikes, it does not fill massive gaps in Kiev’s war needs. Ukraine is running short on manpower. Additionally, front-line troops lack artillery shells to fight back advancing Russian forces, and Kiev is short on air defense interceptors to protect its key infrastructure.
Ukraine’s Western backers are facing multiple hurdles to providing Kiev with more weapons. In Washington, the White House is gridlocked with Republicans in Congress on the supplemental defense spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. However, even if the legislation is passed, Western reserves of 155 mm artillery shells and air defense interceptors are nearly depleted.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Ukraine, United States |
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