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Iran Takes Defiant Steps Over New Sanctions - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-steps-over-new-sanctions.html war & peace Iran U.S.-foreign-policy EU sanctions Iranian-nukes-myth straits of hormuz
shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Iran took defiant steps on Monday in response to the intensified Western sanctions aimed at stifling its oil exports, announcing legislation intended to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf shipping lane, and testing missiles in a desert drill clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States.
  • The legislation calls for Iran's military to block any oil tanker heading through the strait en route to countries no longer buying Iranian crude because of the European Union embargo, which took effect on Sunday. It was unclear whether the legislation would pass or precisely how Iran would enforce it, given that the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet patrols the strait. Pentagon officials have said Iran's military is capable of closing the strait temporarily, and the Obama administration has warned that any such move would constitute a "red line" that would provoke an American response. The strait, connecting the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf, is the conduit for one fifth of the world's oil supply and has been called the world's most important "oil chokepoint" by the United States Department of Energy.
  • Iranian news services quoted Ibrahim Agha-Mohammadi, a member of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, as saying the panel drafted the legislation "as an answer to the European Union's oil sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran." The European embargo, along with new American restrictions that took effect on Friday, are intended to penalize Iran for refusing to suspend all uranium enrichment. Western nations and Israel suspect the enrichment program is aimed at creating the ability to make nuclear weapons, which Iran denies. While high-level talks have faltered, a meeting of lower level negotiators is planned for Tuesday. In the second saber-rattling step, Iranian news agencies announced that the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps had begun three days of missile testing in the desert region of the central province of Semnan. Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a commander of the exercises, was quoted as saying they were intended as practice responses to attacks by "adventurous nations," a reference to Israel and its most important ally, the United States.
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  • The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted General Hajizadeh as saying "if any form of incident happens, Iran's ground-to-ground missiles will rain like thunderbolts upon the aggressors."
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 14
     
    More at these sites: http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-considers-closure-of-strait-of-hormuz-after-european-union-sanctions-2012-7 http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/iran-oil-strait-or-hormuz.php http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/07/201272162622744173.html The U.S. Navy's claimed ability to reopen the straits within a few days is dubious, despite the announcement that another Navy minesweeper is on its way to the Persian Gulf. In tests about two years ago, a team of U.S. minesweepers found only 1 out of 20 practice mines over a period of several days. Niow add to the calculus Iran's thousands of below-radar cruise missiles, its ICBMs armed with conventiional warheads (the U.S. East Coast and the EU are both in range), torpedo boats, and its fleet of mini-submarines designed for stealth and operation in shallow waters. The U.S. has a single carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf. That's one carrier I would not want to be on if war erupts in the Straits of Hormuz. But at the same time, the Iranian Parliament has no power to declare war. That power resides with Ayatolla Khomeni and the Supreme Council of the Revolutionary Guards.  So the legislation is more symbolic than a similar bill in the U.S. would be. But still, it's a strong message that Parliament has Khomeni's back if he decides to retaliate against U.S. and E.U. economic warfare. 
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Iran Able to Block Strait of Hormuz, General Dempsey Says on CBS - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...general-dempsey-tells-cbs.html straits of hormuz war & peace uh-oh
shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Iran has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of time,” and the U.S. would take action to reopen it, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey said. “They’ve invested in capabilities that could, in fact, for a period of time block the Strait of Hormuz,” Dempsey said in an interview aired yesterday on the CBS “Face the Nation” program. “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens, we can defeat that.”
  • Should Iran try to close Hormuz, the U.S. “would take action and reopen” the waterway, said Dempsey, President Barack Obama’s top military adviser.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 12
     
    But back in January, we were told that "Should Iran try to close Hormuz, the U.S. 'would take action and reopen' the waterway" by Gerneral Martin Dempsey, President Barack Obama's top military adviser. 
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A New Reserve Currency to Challenge the Dollar | Veterans Today - 0 views

www.veteranstoday.com/...ng-on-in-the-straits-of-hormuz Banksters GOLD David-Malone Oil Islamic-Wars
shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 12
     
    Author David Malone digs into world events, suggesting that all the saber rattling over Iran and nuclear weapons is really about GOLD!   He argues that the dollar is rapidly being replaced as the world's "settlement" currency.  As a function, "settlement" is different than "reserve", but since WWII and the Basel Conference, the USA Dollar has been both the currency of "reserve" and settlement".  That is now changing, and fast! David further suggests that the Iraqi wars with Saddam Hussein were also about his use of the Euro to "settle" oil purchases.  It could also be argued that Muamma Gaddafi in Lybia was removed because he was organizing all of Africa to "settle" oil and other commodity purchases in GOLD, and not the USA Dollar. Are the Islamic wars really about oil?  Or are they about how oil purchases are "settled"? David further argues that Russia, India, China and Japan are actively pursuing a GOLD based settlement currency agreement series where the Chinese Yuan plays a central role.  Interestingly, all of these countries have cut agreements with Iran.  Which seems to have triggered the December 2011 Obama response banning any banks, both private and government controlled, from dealings with Iran.   It's increasingly looking like it's not the Iranian nuclear weapons program that is upsetting to Obama and his Bankster buddies.  It's the rapid replacement of the worthless paper USA dollar as a settlement currency. One of the interesting points the venerable "Veterans Today" news sight is making is that our military is being used to forcefully prop up an inflationary Bankster Dollar, and force oil producing countries into accepting that inflated Bankster Dollar as payment.  The one thing the International Bankster Cartel doesn't want is for the trade of important commodities, especially energy, to be paid for in GOLD instead of the worthless paper they control. excerpt: I think the stand-off with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz over sanctions is a
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The U.S. has Spent $8 Trillion Protecting the Straits of Hormuz - 0 views

oilprice.com/...ing-the-Straits-of-Hormuz.html war & peace straits of hormuz financial-collapse big oil
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 May 13 - No Cached
  • Roger Stern, a professor at the University of Tulsa National Energy Policy Institute, wrote a study in 2010 in which he estimated that the US had spent $8 trillion on protecting oil cargoes in the Persian Gulf since 1976, when its military presence in the region was boosted following the first Arab oil embargo. This is all despite the fact that only 10% of the oil passing through the straits is actually destined for the US.Stern explained the true meaning behind the US’s reasons for heading to the Gulf en masse in an interview: “The fear grew out of a belief not just in a global peak oil, but a strong CIA conviction, that was shared by the National Security Council, that the Soviets were running out of oil, that their production was going to tank in just a few years and the Soviets had no choice but to march to the Persian gulf to get oil, so that was the rationale for the idea that a force was needed.”
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The Greatest Danger to Israel is the Stupidity of Its Leaders » CounterPunch:... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...s-the-stupidity-of-its-leaders Israel U.S. foreign policy Israel-politics must-read
shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The greatest danger to Israel is not the putative Iranian nuclear bomb. The greatest danger is the stupidity of our leaders. This is not a uniquely Israeli phenomenon. A great many of the world’s leaders are plain stupid, and always have been. Enough to look at what happened in Europe in July 1914, when an incredible accumulation of stupid politicians and incompetent generals plunged humanity into World War I. But lately, Binyamin Netanyahu and almost the entire Israeli political establishment have achieved a new record in foolishness.
  • Much has been said about the total dependence of Israel on the US in almost all fields. But to grasp the immensity of the folly, one aspect in particular must be mentioned. Israel controls, in effect, the access to the US centers of power. All nations, especially the smaller and poorer ones, know that to enter the halls of the American Sultan, in order to get aid and support, they have to bribe the doorkeeper. The bribe may be political (privileges from their ruler), economic (raw materials). diplomatic (votes in the UN), military (a base or intelligence “cooperation”), or whatever. If it is big enough, AIPAC will help to gain support from Congress. This unparalleled asset rests solely on the perception of Israel’s unique position in the US. Netanyahu’s unmitigated defeat on US relations with Iran has badly damaged, if not destroyed, this perception. The loss is incalculable.
  • I am tempted to boast that more than two years ago I wrote that any military attack on Iran, either by Israel or the US, is impossible But it was not prophesy, inspired by some unknown deity. It was not even very clever. It was just the result of a simple look at the map. The Strait of Hormuz. Any military action against Iran was bound to lead to a major war, something in the category of Vietnam, in addition to the collapse of world oil supplies. Even if the US public had not been so war weary, in order to start such an adventure one would not only have to be a fool, but practically mad. The military option is not “off the table” – it never was “on the table”. It was an empty pistol, and the Iranians knew this well.
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  • The loaded weapon was the sanctions regime. It hurt the people. It convinced the supreme leader, Ali Husseini Khamenei, to completely change the regime and install a new and very different president. The Americans realized this, and acted accordingly. Netanyahu, obsessed with the bomb, did not. Worse, he still does not. If it is a symptom of madness to keep trying something that has failed again and again, we should start to worry about “King Bibi”. To save itself from the image of utter failure, AIPAC has started to order its senators and congressmen to work out new sanctions to be instituted in some indefinite future.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Nov 13
     
    One of the most astute analyses of current internal Israeli politics I have read in a long time, by an Israeli. He paints a convincing picture of the reasons Obama had to deny Netanyahu the war against Iran that Bibi so desired and why Netanyahu has done such serious harm to Israel itself by demanding what could not be given by Obama. Even the formidable Israel Lobby in the U.S. was not powerful enough to endanger the Straits of Hormuz and the global economy; the banksters and Big Oil trump even the Israel Lobby.  
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U.S. Navy, Allies Find Less Than Half the Sea Mines Planted in Key Exercise | PBS NewsHour - 0 views

www.pbs.org/...s-planted-in-key-exercise.html straits of hormuz war & peace uh-oh financial-collapse
shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • A major international naval exercise last month in and around the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, led by the U.S. Navy with more than 30 other nations participating, located fewer than half of the practice mines laid at sea. This outcome of the highly publicized military drills — not publicly known until now — underscores how difficult it may be for the United States and its partners to detect and incapacitate waterborne explosive devices that Iran has threatened to plant if its nuclear facilities come under attack.
  • Out of the 29 simulated mines that were dropped in the water, “I don’t think a great many were found,” retired Navy Capt. Robert O’Donnell, a former mine warfare director for his service, told the NewsHour. “It was probably around half or less.”
  • The surprising mine-detection result came in what one senior Navy official told the NewsHour was “one of the most significant and strategically important exercises of the year.” It was also the largest exercise of its kind ever held in the region. Being able to find and destroy sea mines is critical to maintaining stable world oil prices and global economic growth.
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  • The drill, dubbed International Mine Countermeasures Exercise 2012 or IMCMEX, brought together countries from all over the world at a time when tensions with Iran have been heating up. Tehran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important choke points through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows.
  • However, some analysts with extensive experience in evaluating Navy mine exercises say the rate of success in detecting practice mines is critically important. “I would be surprised if the post-exercise analysis didn’t include some kind of a scoring mechanism of how well did we do against this set” of imitation mines, said Scott Savitz, a senior RAND engineer who, in a prior job, led Navy-contracted teams to analyze counter-mine exercises. The central point of a mine-hunting exercise is “to find them all, because in the real-world scenario you want to minimize the subsequent mine risk,” he said.
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Review & Outlook: Loose Lips on Syria - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4591204579039011328308776.html war & peace Syria Obama war crimes Pipelinestan
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • An American military attack on Syria could begin as early as Thursday and will involve three days of missile strikes, according to "senior U.S. officials" talking to NBC News. The Washington Post has the bombing at "no more than two days," though long-range bombers could "possibly" join the missiles. "Factors weighing into the timing of any action include a desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week," reports CNN, citing a "senior administration official." The New York Times, quoting a Pentagon official, adds that "the initial target list has fewer than 50 sites, including air bases where Syria's Russian-made attack helicopters are deployed." The Times adds that "like several other military officials contacted for this report, the official agreed to discuss planning options only on condition of anonymity." Thus do the legal and moral requirements of secret military operations lose out in this Administration to the imperatives of in-the-know spin and political gestures.
  • It's always possible that all of this leaking about when, how and for how long the U.S. will attack Syria is an elaborate head-fake, like Patton's ghost army on the eve of D-Day, poised for the assault on Calais. But based on this Administration's past behavior, such as the leaked bin Laden raid details, chances are most of this really is the war plan. Which makes us wonder why the Administration even bothers to pursue the likes of Edward Snowden when it is giving away its plan of attack to anyone in Damascus with an Internet connection. The answer, it seems, is that the attack in Syria isn't really about damaging the Bashar Assad regime's capacity to murder its own people, much less about ending the Assad regime for good. "I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are not about regime change," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. Translation: We're not coming for you, Bashar, so don't worry. And by the way, you might want to fly those attack choppers off base, at least until next week.
  • So what is the purpose of a U.S. attack? Mr. Carney elaborated that it's "about responding to [a] clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons." He added that the U.S. had a national security interest that Assad's use of chemical weapons "not go unanswered." This is another way of saying that the attacks are primarily about making a political statement, and vindicating President Obama's ill-considered promise of "consequences," rather than materially degrading Assad's ability to continue to wage war against his own people. It should go without saying that the principal purpose of a military strike is to have a military effect. Political statements can always be delivered politically, and U.S. airmen should not be put in harm's way to deliver what amounts to an extremely loud diplomatic demarche. That's especially so with a "do something" strike that is, in fact, deliberately calibrated to do very little. We wrote Tuesday that there is likely to be no good outcome in Syria until Assad and his regime are gone. Military strikes that advance that goal—either by targeting Assad directly or crippling his army's ability to fight—deserve the support of the American people and our international partners. That's not what this Administration seems to have in mind.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 13
     
    This typically pompous Wall Street Journal editorial gets part of it right but ignores several elephants in the room. -- No way this goes down without Russia having agreed to it. Russia's only foreign military base is a naval port in Syria. Russia has deployed anti-aircraft missile batteries in Syria. Russia has supplied the Syrian government with state-of-the-art antiaircraft shoulder-held missiles. Several months ago, the Russians moved a fleet of warships into the Mediterranean for the first time, to protect Syria from foreign attack, including at least one submarine equipped with anti-ship missiles.  The U.S. and Russia have been engaged in building up their forces positioned around for over a year, in an escalating fashion. Russia has a huge economic incentive to keep Assad in power because he is blocking the natural gas pipeline that western interests want to run through Syria Russia has also built up its forces within Syria, a pipeline that would break Russia's near-monopoly on supplying natural gas to the European Union. A direct military intervention in Syria doesn't go down without Russia's approval, notwithstanding what their later statements might be. Obama is an accomplished liar but he's politically timid. Touching off World War III is not on his agenda. 2. Iran also has to acquiesce in advance. Syria and Iran have a mutual defense treaty, the first announced in 2005, a later treaty announced in 2008. http://tinyurl.com/oez2dq7 (.) Thousands of crack Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops are already stationed in Syria. As the only other Shia-majority state in the region, Syria is critical to Iran's own defense. Iran has the ability to close the Straits of Hormuz, thereby toppling the western world economy as petroleum supplies suddenly dry up. The U.S. Navy lacks the ability to quickly clear the Straits of mines, as was proved in embarrassingly bad tests the U.S. Navy did last year. Iran is not a world power but its military might is nothing to sneez
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REVEALED: GCHQ's BEYOND TOP SECRET Middle Eastern INTERNET SPY BASE * The Register - 0 views

www.theregister.co.uk/...e_middleeast_internet_spy_base surveillance-state GCHQ Snowden El-Reg Seeb
shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Exclusive Above-top-secret details of Britain’s covert surveillance programme - including the location of a clandestine British base tapping undersea cables in the Middle East - have so far remained secret, despite being leaked by fugitive NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden. Government pressure has meant that some media organisations, despite being in possession of these facts, have declined to reveal them. Today, however, the Register publishes them in full.The secret British spy base is part of a programme codenamed “CIRCUIT” and also referred to as Overseas Processing Centre 1 (OPC-1). It is located at Seeb, on the northern coast of Oman, where it taps in to various undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Seeb is one of a three site GCHQ network in Oman, at locations codenamed “TIMPANI”, “GUITAR” and “CLARINET”. TIMPANI, near the Strait of Hormuz, can monitor Iraqi communications. CLARINET, in the south of Oman, is strategically close to Yemen. British national telco BT, referred to within GCHQ and the American NSA under the ultra-classified codename “REMEDY”, and Vodafone Cable (which owns the former Cable & Wireless company, aka “GERONTIC”) are the two top earners of secret GCHQ payments running into tens of millions of pounds annually.
  • The actual locations of such codenamed “access points” into the worldwide cable backbone are classified 3 levels above Top Secret and labelled “Strap 3”. The true identities of the companies hidden behind codenames such as “REMEDY”, “GERONTIC”, “STREETCAR” or “PINNAGE” are classified one level below this, at “Strap 2”.After these details were withheld, the government opted not to move against the Guardian newspaper last year for publishing above-top-secret information at the lower level designated “Strap 1”. This included details of the billion-pound interception storage system, Project TEMPORA, which were revealed in 2013 and which have triggered Parliamentary enquiries in Britain and Europe, and cases at the European Court of Human Rights. The Guardian was forced to destroy hard drives of leaked information to prevent political embarrassment over extensive commercial arrangements with these and other telecommunications companies who have secretly agreed to tap their own and their customers’ or partners’ overseas cables for the intelligence agency GCHQ. Intelligence chiefs also wished to conceal the identities of countries helping GCHQ and its US partner the NSA by sharing information or providing facilities
  • According to documents revealed by Edward Snowden to journalists including Glenn Greenwald among others, the intelligence agency annually pays selected companies tens of millions of pounds to run secret teams which install hidden connections which copy customers' data and messages to the spooks’ processing centres. The GCHQ-contracted companies also install optical fibre taps or “probes” into equipment belonging to other companies without their knowledge or consent. Within GCHQ, each company has a special section called a “Sensitive Relationship Team” or SRT.BT and Vodafone/C&W also operate extensive long distance optical fibre communications networks throughout the UK, installed and paid for by GCHQ, NSA, or by a third and little known UK intelligence support organization called the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC).
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jun 14
     
    Report on GCHQ documents that The Guardian had agreed not to write about. Nice picture of the secret Seeb base.
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The coming collapse of Iran sanctions - Opinion - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...201322584515426148.html iran sanctions european union China WTO foreign policy blunders
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Western policymakers and commentators wrongly assume that sanctions will force Iranian concessions in nuclear talks that resume this week in Kazakhstan - or perhaps even undermine the Islamic Republic's basic stability in advance of the next Iranian presidential election in June.  Besides exaggerating sanctions' impact on Iranian attitudes and decision-making, this argument ignores potentially fatal flaws in the US-led sanctions regime itself - flaws highlighted by ongoing developments in Europe and Asia, and that are likely to prompt the erosion, if not outright collapse of America's sanctions policy.       Virtually since the 1979 Iranian revolution, US administrations have imposed unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic. These measures, though, have not significantly damaged Iran's economy and have certainly not changed Iranian policies Washington doesn't like. 
  • Secondary sanctions are a legal and political house of cards. They almost certainly violate American commitments under the World Trade Organisation, which allows members to cut trade with states they deem national security threats but not to sanction other members over lawful business conducted in third countries. If challenged on the issue in the WTO's Dispute Resolution Mechanism, Washington would surely lose.  
  • Last year, the European Union - which for years had condemned America's prospective "extraterritorial" application of national trade law and warned it would go to the WTO's Dispute Resolution Mechanism if Washington ever sanctioned European firms over Iran-related business - finally subordinated its Iran policy to American preferences, banning Iranian oil and imposing close to a comprehensive economic embargo against the Islamic Republic.   In recent weeks, however, Europe's General Court overturned European sanctions against two of Iran's biggest banks, ruling that the EU never substantiated its claims that the banks provided "financial services for entities procuring on behalf of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes". 
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  • On the other side of the world, America is on a collision course with China over sanctions. In recent years, Beijing has tried to accommodate US concerns about Iran. It has not developed trade and investment positions there as rapidly as it might have, and has shifted some Iran-related transactional flows into renminbito to help the Obama administration avoid sanctioning Chinese banks (similarly, India now pays for some Iranian oil imports in rupees). Whether Beijing has really lowered its aggregate imports of Iranian oil is unclear - but it clearly reduces them when the administration is deciding about six-month sanctions waivers for countries buying Iranian crude.  
  • However, as Congress enacts additional layers of secondary sanctions, President Obama's room to manoeuver is being progressively reduced. Therein lies the looming policy train wreck.  
  • If, at congressional insistence, the administration later this year demands that China sharply cut Iranian oil imports and that Chinese banks stop virtually any Iran-related transactions, Beijing will say no. If Washington retreats, the deterrent effect of secondary sanctions will erode rapidly. Iran's oil exports are rising again, largely from Chinese demand.
  • Once it becomes evident Washington won't seriously impose secondary sanctions, growth in Iranian oil shipments to China and other non-Western economies (for example, India and South Korea) will accelerate. Likewise, non-Western powers are central to Iran's quest for alternatives to US-dominated mechanisms for conducting and settling international transactions - a project that will also gain momentum after Washington's bluff is called.   Conversely, if Washington sanctions major Chinese banks and energy companies, Beijing will respond - at least by taking America to the WTO's Dispute Resolution Mechanism (where China will win), perhaps by retaliating against US companies in China. 
  • Chinese policymakers are increasingly concerned Washington is reneging on its part of the core bargain that grounded Sino-American rapprochement in the 1970s - to accept China's relative economic and political rise and not try to secure a hegemonic position in Asia.   Beijing is already less willing to work in the Security Council on a new (even watered-down) sanctions resolution and more willing to resist US initiatives that, in its view, challenge Chinese interests (witness China's vetoes of three US-backed resolutions on Syria).  In this context, Chinese leaders will not accept American high-handedness on Iran sanctions. At this point, Beijing has more ways to impose costs on America for violations of international economic law that impinge on Chinese interests than Washington has levers to coerce China's compliance.   As America's sanctions policy unravels, President Obama will have to decide whether to stay on a path of open-ended hostility toward Iran that ultimately leads to another US-initiated war in the Middle East, or develop a very different vision for America's Middle East strategy - a vision emphasising genuine diplomacy with Tehran, rooted in American acceptance of the Islamic Republic as a legitimate political order representing legitimate national interests and aimed at fundamentally realigning US-Iranian relations.  
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 13
     
    Keep in mind that Iran has the military power to close the Straits of Hormuz, thereby sending the West into an economic depression as the world's oil supply  suddenly contracts. 
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Tom Cotton: Bombing Iran Would Take "Several Days," Be Nothing Like Iraq War - BuzzFeed... - 0 views

www.buzzfeed.com/...take-several-days-be-nothing-l war & peace Cotton Iran home-by-Christmas
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Sen. Tom Cotton says bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would take several days and be nothing like Iraq War.
  • Cotton challenged Obama’s assertion that “no deal is better than a bad deal” with the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the alternative to a bad deal is “a better deal.” Cotton said any military action against Iran would not be like the Iraq War and would instead be similar to 1999’s Operation Desert Fox, a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq ordered by President Bill Clinton. “Even if military action were required — and we certainly should have kept the credible threat of military force on the table throughout which always improves diplomacy — the president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq and that’s simply not the case,” Cotton said. “It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox. Several days air and naval bombing against Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction facilities for exactly the same kind of behavior. For interfering with weapons inspectors and for disobeying Security Council resolutions. All we’re asking is that the president simply be as tough as in the protection of America’s national security interest as Bill Clinton was.”
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Apr 15
     
    Cotton apparently didn't read at least three memos: [i] the one about the head of Iran's defense department promising to close the Straits of Hormuz if attacked (Iran is fully capable of doing that); [ii] most of Iran's nuclear facilities are so deeply buried underground that they are not susceptible to non-nuclear bombs; and [iii] the one about air power never having bombed any nation into submission. (Contrary to the propaganda we were fed as children, the Japanese did not surrender because of the atomic bombings; it surrendered because Russia entered the war against Japan. Japan had tangled earlier in the century with Russia and Russian tanks rolling through Japanese troops in Manchuria left the Japanese in the situation of choosing which country they would prefer to surrender to.) 
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US military involvement in Syria a 'mistake': Gates | ArabNews - 0 views

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shared by Paul Merrell on 17 May 13 - No Cached
  • Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned yesterday that deepening US military involvement in Syria’s civil war would be a “mistake,” warning the outcome would be unpredictable and messy.
  • Gates’ comments on Syria come amid debate in Washington over whether to step up military support for rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad, even as the administration attempts a new peace initiative with Russia. “I thought it was a mistake in Libya, and I think it is a mistake in Syria, even if we had intervened more significantly in Syria a year ago or six months ago. We overestimate our ability to determine outcomes. “Caution, particularly in terms of arming these groups and in terms of US military involvement, is in order,” he said. “Anybody who says, ‘It’s going to be clean. It’s going to be neat. You can establish safe zones, and it’ll be just swell,’ well, most wars aren’t that way,” he said. Gates, who served under both George W Bush and President Barack Obama, was US defense secretary in 2011 when the United States joined a NATO-led air operation in Libya that helped rebels topple Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi.
  • WASHINGTON: Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned yesterday that deepening US military involvement in Syria’s civil war would be a “mistake,” warning the outcome would be unpredictable and messy.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 May 13
     
    Gates' remarks follow similar warnings by several retired U.S. generals that the outcome of war with Syria would be unpredictable. This is a proxy war being waged by the U.S., which is providing "humanitarian" aid to the "rebels," whilst Saudi Arabia and Qatar ostensibly provide their weapons. (Ostensibly, because most of their weapons are being transported by U.S. proxies from Libya and most of the "rebels" are non-Syrian foreign fighters, largely al Queda, infiltrated into Syria via Turkey.) The U.S. has moved anti-aircraft missile teams into areas of Turkey and Jordan that border Syria, a move that was met by Russia moving its own advanced anti-aircraft missile teams into Syria itself and repositioning a sizeable part of the Russian Navy in Syria and ramping up its naval presence in the Mediterranean.   Meanwhile, Lebanon's Hezbollah has pledged unity with Syria's existing government and is adding soldiers to the Syrian Army's forces. Israel has responded with two air assaults on Syria, ostensibly to deny advanced weaponry to Hezbollah. Iran has also pledged military involvement if needed to preserve the existing Syrian government.  In sum, Syria is a very large powder keg with a very short fuse that could easily erupt into a larger war with Russia and Iran too, with the resulting closing of the Straits of Hormuz and thereby plunging the world into economic disaster resulting from severe oil shortages. Nonetheless, Neocons and Zionists in the U.S. are pushing hard for the U.S. to directly wade in militarily.  Civilian casualties in the so-called Syrian "civil war" are estimated to be between 80,000 and 120,000 thus far.   
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Decision by Netanyahu, Barak to strike Iran is almost final -- Israel TV | The Times of... - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/s-almost-final-israeli-tv-says Auction 2012 Israel Iran war and peace
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have “almost finally” decided on an Israeli strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities this fall, and a final decision will be taken “soon,” Israel’s main TV news broadcast reported on Friday evening. Channel 2 News, the country’s leading news program, devoted much of its Friday night broadcast to the issue, detailing the pros and cons that, it said, have taken Netanyahu and Barak to the brink of approving an Israeli military attack despite opposition from the Obama administration and from many Israeli security chiefs.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 12
     
    Notwithstanding reports by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies that Iran has made no decision to create nuclear weapons and strong warnings from a former Israeli Mossad chief and two former commanding generals of the Israeli Defense Force of the existential danger of war with Iran, it's election season in Iraq. Nitanyahu and the other Zionist leadership in Israel need an issue to keep themselves in public office. Has Nitanyahu painted himself so completely in his war-with-Iran-before-U.S.-elections corner that his only way out is to launch that war? We'll know within the next four days. Hopefully, Obama will have the political courage to stay out of the fight if Nitanyahu commits idiocy before election. The Straits of Hormuz are at stake. 
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Fear And Loathing in the House of Saud - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...ear-loathing-saudi-arabia.html war & peace Saudis Iran U.S.-foreign-policy Saudi-desperation tipping-point
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Riyadh was fully aware the beheading of respected Saudi Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr was a deliberate provocation bound to elicit a rash Iranian response. The Saudis calculated they could get away with it; after all they employ the best American PR machine petrodollars can buy, and are viscerally defended by the usual gaggle of nasty US neo-cons.    In a post-Orwellian world "order" where war is peace and "moderate" jihadis get a free pass, a House of Saud oil hacienda cum beheading paradise — devoid of all civilized norms of political mediation and civil society participation — heads the UN Commission on Human Rights and fattens the US industrial-military complex to the tune of billions of dollars while merrily exporting demented Wahhabi/Salafi-jihadism from MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) to Europe and from the Caucasus to East Asia. 
  • And yet major trouble looms. Erratic King Salman's move of appointing his son, the supremely arrogant and supremely ignorant Prince Mohammad bin Salman to number two in the line of succession has been contested even among Wahhabi hardliners. But don't count on petrodollar-controlled Arab media to tell the story. English-language TV network Al-Arabiyya, for instance, based in the Emirates, long financed by House of Saud members, and owned by the MBC conglomerate, was bought by none other than Prince Mohammad himself, who will also buy MBC. With oil at less than $40 a barrel, largely thanks to Saudi Arabia's oil war against both Iran and Russia, Riyadh's conventional wars are taking a terrible toll. The budget has collapsed and the House of Saud has been forced to raise taxes. The illegal war on Yemen, conducted with full US acquiescence, led by — who else — Prince Mohammad, and largely carried out by the proverbial band of mercenaries, has instead handsomely profited al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP), just as the war on Syria has profited mostly Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria.
  • Saudi Arabia is essentially a huge desert island. Even though the oil hacienda is bordered by the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Saudis don't control what matters: the key channels of communication/energy exporting bottlenecks — the Bab el-Mandeb and the Straits of Hormuz, not to mention the Suez canal. Enter US "protection" as structured in a Mafia-style "offer you can't refuse" arrangement; we guarantee safe passage for the oil export flow through our naval patrols and you buy from us, non-stop, a festival of weapons and host our naval bases alongside other GCC minions. The "protection" used to be provided by the former British empire. So Saudi Arabia — as well as the GCC — remains essentially an Anglo-American satrapy.          Al Sharqiyya — the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia — holds only 4 million people, the overwhelming majority Shi'ites. And yet it produces no less than 80% of Saudi oil. The heart of the action is the provincial capital Al Qatif, where Nimr al-Nimr was born. We're talking about the largest oil hub on the planet, consisting of 12 crisscrossed pipelines that connect to massive Gulf oil terminals such as Dhahran and Ras Tanura.
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  • Enter the strategic importance of neighboring Bahrain. Historically, all the lands from Basra in southern Iraq to the peninsula of Musandam, in Oman — traditional trade posts between Europe and India — were known as Bahrain ("between two seas"). Tehran could easily use neighboring Bahrain to infiltrate Al Sharqiyya, detach it from Riyadh's control, and configure a "Greater Bahrain" allied with Iran. That's the crux of the narrative peddled by petrodollar-controlled media, the proverbial Western "experts", and incessantly parroted in the Beltway.  
  • There's no question Iranian hardliners cherish the possibility of a perpetual Bahraini thorn on Riyadh's side. That would imply weaponizing a popular revolution in Al Sharqiyya.  But the fact is not even Nimr al-Nimr was in favor of a secession of Al Sharqiyya.  And that's also the view of the Rouhani administration in Tehran. Whether disgruntled youth across Al Sharqiyya will finally have had enough with the beheading of al-Nimr it's another story; it may open a Pandora's box that will not exactly displease the IRGC in Tehran.   But the heart of the matter is that Team Rouhani perfectly understands the developing Southwest Asia chapter of the New Great Game, featuring the re-emergence of Iran as a regional superpower; all of the House of Saud's moves, from hopelessly inept to major strategic blunder, betray utter desperation with the end of the old order.  
  • That spans everything from an unwinnable war (Yemen) to a blatant provocation (the beheading of al-Nimr) and a non sequitur such as the new Islamic 34-nation anti-terror coalition which most alleged members didn't even know they were a part of.  The supreme House of Saud obsession rules, drenched in fear and loathing: the Iranian "threat". Riyadh, which is clueless on how to play geopolitical chess — or backgammon — will keep insisting on the oil war, as it cannot even contemplate a military confrontation with Tehran. And everything will be on hold, waiting for the next tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; will he/she be tempted to pivot back to Southwest Asia, and cling to the old order (not likely, as Washington relies on becoming independent from Saudi oil)? Or will the House of Saud be left to its own — puny — devices among the shark-infested waters of hardcore geopolitics?
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jan 16
     
    If Pepe Escobar has this right (and I've never known him to be wrong), the world is a tipping point in Saudi influence on the world stage with U.S. backing for continued Saudi exercise of power in the Mideast unlikely and with Iran as the beneficiary.  Unfortunately, Escobar did not discuss why this is true despite the Saudis critical role in propping up the U.S. economy via the petro-dollar. That the U.S. would abandon the petro-dollar at this point in history seems unlikely to say the least. Does Obama believe that Iran would be willing to occupy that Saudi role? Many unanswered questions here. But the fact that Escobar says these changes are in process counts heavily with me. 
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Washington's REAL Motives in North Korea and Afghanistan - Psychology, Geopolitics & Ra... - 0 views

stormcloudsgathering.com/-afghanistan-rare-earth-metals war & peace North-Korea rare-earth-metals
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 May 17 - No Cached
  • Washington also has a history of targeting countries that are sitting on strategic resources or transport routes, or which attempt to mount any form of economic resistance. Trump has openly endorsed this practice by the way (which is a break from the typical propaganda cover that is usually employed).
  • Were you aware that it was recently discovered that North Korea is sitting on the worlds largest deposit of rare earth metals? In fact their deposit is twice as large as the world’s total known reserves prior to this discovery. This is find is estimated to be worth trillions of dollars (that’s trillions with a T). Rare earth metals are essential in the manufacture of modern electronics, which makes it a matter of strategic importance, and China currently has a monopoly on global production. In the context of an escalation in the South China or the East China seas, this would be a significant vulnerability for the west.
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