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Optimism that the US and world powers can, after all, strike a nuclear deal with Iran by or shortly after the current November 24 deadline appeared to grow here in Washington substantially this week. Such a deal also gained a critical endorsement, one that should provide a lot of political cover to shaky Democrats, as well as voices in the US Jewish community who, in contrast to the right-wing leadership of AIPAC and other “mainstream” Jewish organizations, have long favored President Obama’s diplomatic efforts. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Amb. Stuart Eizenstat, who played a key role in promoting sanctions against Iran under both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and who succeeded Dennis Ross as chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), challenged Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz’s recent claim in a New York Times op-ed that the failure to reach an agreement “can be regarded a qualified success, because it would represent the integrity of an international community adhering to its principles rather than sacrificing the future of global security.”

According to Eizenstat, whose experience in Democratic foreign policy circles was described as “vast” by none other than Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard two years ago: No deal is not a success, because it means an unrestrained use of centrifuges, the Iranian plutonium plant at Arak continuing, no intrusive inspections, no elimination of 20-percent enriched uranium, and less likelihood of eliminating weaponization. …[A deal] would not be a bouquet of roses. It has a lot of thorns in it. But the alternative is nothing but thorns. It would almost force a military reaction, which even under the best circumstances  …would set back Iran two to three years and have ripple effects that would tremendously harm Israel, such as attacks from Hezbollah.

Eizenstat’s remarks came during a week in which, according to the Wall Street Journal’s well-connected Jay Solomon, the administration has begun actively promoting a possible nuclear deal with foreign allies, key members of Congress, and former senior foreign policy officials. While administration officials insist that important gaps between Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) remain on some key issues, it appears that last week’s meetings in Vienna made important progress. The Journal also reported that the two sides may be moving toward a compromise on one key issue that has gained a lot of attention here—the number of centrifuges (around 4,000) that Iran could keep spinning to produce low-enriched uranium under an accord.

The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. The company, founded by secretive right-wing Christian supremacist Erik Prince, pictured above, had deep ties to the Bush Administration and served as a sort of neoconservative Praetorian Guard for a borderless war launched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. While Barack Obama pledged to reign in mercenary forces when he was a senator, once he became president he continued to employ a massive shadow army of private contractors. Blackwater — despite numerous scandals, congressional investigations, FBI probes and documented killings of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan — remained a central part of the Obama administration’s global war machine throughout his first term in office.

Just as with the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, it is only the low level foot-soldiers of Blackwater that are being held accountable. Prince and other top Blackwater executives continue to reap profits from the mercenary and private intelligence industries. Prince now has a new company, Frontier Services Group, which he founded with substantial investment from Chinese enterprises and which focuses on opportunities in Africa. Prince recently suggested that his forces at Blackwater could have confronted Ebola and ISIS. “If the administration cannot rally the political nerve or funding to send adequate active duty ground forces to answer the call, let the private sector finish the job,” he wrote. None of the U.S. officials from the Bush and Obama administrations who unleashed Blackwater and other mercenary forces across the globe are being forced to answer for their role in creating the conditions for the Nisour Square shootings and other deadly incidents involving private contractors. Just as the main architect of the CIA interrogation program, Jose Rodriguez, is on a book tour for his propagandistic love letter to torture, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, so too is Erik Prince pushing his own revisionist memoir, Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.

While the Blackwater verdict is an important and rare moment of accountability in an overwhelmingly unaccountable private war industry, it does not erase the fact that those in power—the CEOs, the senior officials, the war profiteers—walk freely and will likely do so for the rest of their lives.

A truly stunning debasement of the U.S. justice system just occurred through the joint efforts of the Obama Justice Department and a meek and frightened Obama-appointed federal judge, Edgardo Ramos, all in order to protect an extremist neocon front group from scrutiny and accountability. The details are crucial for understanding the magnitude of the abuse here. At the center of it is an anti-Iranian group calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” (UANI), which is very likely a front for some combination of the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services. When launched, NBC described its mission as waging “economic and psychological warfare” against Iran. The group was founded and is run and guided by a roster of U.S., Israeli and British neocon extremists such as Joe Lieberman, former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and current CNN “analyst”) Fran Townsend, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan. One of its key advisers is Olli Heinonen, who just co-authored a Washington Post Op-Ed with former Bush CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden arguing that Washington is being too soft on Tehran.

This group of neocon extremists was literally just immunized by a federal court from the rule of law. That was based on the claim — advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos — that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital “state secrets.” The court’s ruling was based on assertions made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else — including the lawyers for the parties — kept in the dark. In May 2013, UANI launched a “name and shame” campaign designed to publicly identify — and malign — any individuals or entities enabling trade with Iran. One of the accused was the shipping company of Greek billionaire Victor Restis, who vehemently denies the accusation. He hired an American law firm and sued UANI for defamation in a New York federal court, claiming the “name and shame” campaign destroyed his reputation.

Up until that point, there was nothing unusual about any of this: just a garden-variety defamation case brought in court by someone who claims that public statements made about him are damaging and false. That happens every day. But then something quite extraordinary happened: In September of last year, the U.S. government, which was not a party, formally intervened in the lawsuit, and demanded that the court refuse to hear Restis’s claims and instead dismiss the lawsuit against UANI before it could even start, on the ground that allowing the case to proceed would damage national security. When the DOJ intervened in this case and asserted the “state secrets privilege,” it confounded almost everyone. The New York Times’s Matt Apuzzo noted at the time that “the group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so­-called state­ secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.” He quoted the ACLU’s Ben Wizner as saying: “I have never seen anything like this.” Reuters’s Allison Frankel labeled the DOJ’s involvement a “mystery” and said “the government’s brief is maddeningly opaque about its interest in a private libel case.”

According to a report by Algemeiner (November 11, 2015), Israel’s Air Force was involved in bombing inside Syria, hitting targets close to Damascus airport.  According to reports in Syrian media outlets affiliated with President Bashar Assad, Israel Air Force jets hit targets near the Damascus airport, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Wednesday evening. The report, a breaking story that interrupted the nightly news, was neither confirmed nor denied by Israeli authorities. Channel 2 military correspondent Roni Daniel said that Israel has made it clear it would not allow the transfer of weapons from Iran, via Damascus, to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is not the first time that air strikes in Syria have been attributed to Israel without confirmation from officials in the Jewish state. But this comes on the heels of meetings between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly held to coordinate operations in Syria — and ensure that there are no unwitting collisions between planes from their respective air forces. During a visit to the US this week, Netanyahu gave insight into Israel’s Syria policy. He told an audience at a gala for the American Enterprise Institute that he laid out Israel’s red lines in Syria to Putin in September.

“We will not allow Iran to set up a second front in the Golan, and we will act forcefully — and have acted forcefully — to prevent that. We will not allow the use of Syrian territory from which we’d be attacked by the Syrian army or anyone else and we have acted forcefully against that. And third, we will not allow the use of Syrian territory for the transfer of game-changing weapons into Lebanon into Hezbollah’s hands, and we have acted forcefully on that. I made it clear that we will continue to act like that,” he said. (Ruth Blum, Algemeiner, November 12, 2015) This report begs the question as to the ultimate objective of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. The Israeli delegation to Washington was also integrated by military and intelligence officials who no doubt had meetings with their counterparts at the Pentagon and Langley, not to mention the US Congress. A week prior to the Obama-Nentayahu “summit”,  Netanyahu dispatched his defense chief, Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, to Washington, “to help smooth the way for his own visit”. Was there an understanding that Israel would henceforth play a more active role in the war against Syria? In an earlier statement, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter intimated:

“It is a reasonable expectation that the defense relationship [with Israel] will be one of stability and endurance, …” (quoted by Defense One, November 3, 2015) Ya’alon was hosted in Washington  by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter who is credited for having stabilized the US-Israel relationship.  Were these talks between Carter and Ya’alon behind closed doors indicative of a shift in US-Israel military relations,  specifically with regard to Syria. Quoting Syrian opposition sources, the Israeli media dismissed the reports that the IDF was behind the air strikes: Syrian opposition activist Ahmed Yabrudi said: “Israeli warplanes entered from south Lebanon, arrived at Qalamoun and flew above the international airport in Damascus where they struck nearby military outposts.” He added that “the Israeli planes remained in Syria’s skies for a half hour, and there is no information about the outposts that were hit – except that they belonged to Hezbollah.” Official Syrian media failed to report on the air strikes attributed to Israel. [According to Algemeiner, it was announced on Syrian TV] Israeli defense officials also declined to comment on the foreign media reports. However, Israel did previously announce a strict-policy of intolerance towards threats to the state, such as weapons transfers to Hezbollah in Lebanon. (Jerusalem Post, November 12, 2015)

Risking World War III in Syria February 6, 2016 Exclusive: After Saudi-backed Syrian rebels balked at peace talks and the Russian-backed Syrian army cut off Turkish supply lines to jihadists and other Syrian rebels, the U.S. and its Mideast Sunni “allies” appear poised to invade Syria and force “regime change” even at the risk of fighting Russia, a gamble with nuclear war, writes Joe Lauria.By Joe LauriaDefense Secretary Ashton Carter last October said in a little noticed comment that the United States was ready to take “direct action on the ground” in Syria. Vice President Joe Biden said in Istanbul last month that if peace talks in Geneva failed, the United States was prepared for a “military solution” in that country.The peace talks collapsed on Wednesday even before they began. A day later Saudi Arabia said it is ready to invade Syria while Turkey is building up forces at its Syrian border.

The U.N. aims to restart the talks on Feb. 25 but there is little hope they can begin in earnest as the Saudi-run opposition has set numerous conditions. The most important is that Russia stop its military operation in support of the Syrian government, which has been making serious gains on the ground.A day after the talks collapsed, it was revealed that Turkey has begun preparations for an invasion of Syria, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. On Thursday, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said: “We have good reasons to believe that Turkey is actively preparing for a military invasion of a sovereign state – the Syrian Arab Republic. We’re detecting more and more signs of Turkish armed forces being engaged in covert preparations for direct military actions in Syria.” The U.N. and the State Department had no comment. But this intelligence was supported by a sound of alarm from Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Turkey, which has restarted its war against Kurdish PKK guerillas inside Turkey, is determined to crush the emergence of an independent Kurdish state inside Syria as well. Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan stopped the Syrian Kurds from attending the aborted Geneva talks.A Turkish invasion would appear poised to attack the Syrian Kurdish PYD party, which is allied with the PKK. The Syrian (and Iraqi) Kurds, with the Syrian army, are the main ground forces fighting the Islamic State. Turkey is pretending to fight ISIS, all the while actually supporting its quest to overthrow Assad, also a Turkish goal.Saudi Arabia then said on Thursday it was prepared to send its ground forces into Syria if asked. Carter welcomed it. Of course Biden, Erdogan, Carter and the Saudis are all saying a ground invasion would fight ISIS. But their war against ISIS has been half-hearted at best and they share ISIS’ same enemy: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. If the U.S. were serious about fighting ISIS it would have at least considered a proposal by Russia to join a coalition as the U.S. did against the Nazis.

What the colonial powers have done in Muslim countries is well known. Less well known are the machinations of Allen Dulles and the CIA in one of these colonial powers, France.Without the knowledge or consent of President John F. Kennedy, Allen Dulles orchestrated the efforts of retired French generals, rightwing French, Nazi sympathizers, and at least one White Russian, to overthrow Charles de Gaulle, who wanted to give Algeria its independence. Dulles et al feared an independent Algeria would go Communist, giving the Soviets a base in Africa.And there was another reason to hang onto Algeria: its natural resources. According to the US Energy Information Administration, it is “the leading natural gas producer in Africa, the second-largest natural gas supplier to Europe outside of the region, and is among the top three oil producers in Africa.”We note with great interest that the plot to bring down Charles De Gaulle — the kind of people involved, the role of Allen Dulles, the motive behind it — all bear an eerie similarity to the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But that is another story.

As we have said earlier, Dulles’s job, simply put, was to hijack the US government to benefit the wealthy. And in this fascinating series of excerpts from David Talbot’s new biography on Dulles, we see how his reach extended deeply into the government of France.WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent CranorThis is the second of a three-part series of excerpts from Chapter 15 (“Contempt”) of The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government. HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. Go here to see Part 1. Previously, we presented excerpts from Chapter 20, and to see them, go here, here, and here.

When the coup against de Gaulle began three months later, Kennedy was still in the dark. It was a tumultuous time for the young administration. As he continued to wrestle with fallout from the Bay of Pigs crisis, JFK was suddenly besieged with howls of outrage from a major ally, accusing his own security services of seditious activity.

The head of an international medical charity whose hospital in northern Afghanistan was destroyed in a U.S. airstrike says the "extensive, quite precise destruction" of the bombing raid casts doubt on American military assertions that it was a mistake. The Oct. 3 attack on the compound in Kunduz city, which killed at least 22 patients and hospital staff, should be investigated as a possible war crime, said Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, which is also known by its French abbreviation MSF. The trauma hospital was bombed during a firefight between Taliban and government troops, as U.S. advisers were helping Afghan forces retake the city after the insurgents overran it and seized control on Sept. 28. Afghan authorities say they are now largely back in control of Kunduz.

According to Associated Press reporting, American special operations analysts were scrutinizing the Afghan hospital days before it was destroyed because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity. The analysts knew it was a medical facility, according to a former intelligence official who is familiar with some of the documents describing the site. It's unclear whether that information ever got to commanders who unleashed the AC-130 gunship on the hospital. "The hospital was repeatedly hit both at the front and the rear and extensively destroyed and damaged, even though we have provided all the coordinates and all the right information to all the parties in the conflict," Stokes said, standing in the burned-out main hospital building. "The extensive, quite precise destruction of this hospital ... doesn't indicate a mistake. The hospital was repeatedly hit," Stokes said. The bombing went on for more than an hour, despite calls to Afghan, U.S. and NATO to call if off, MSF has said.

tokes, who has called for an independent inquiry into the incident, told The Associated Press in an interview in the remains of the hospital on Friday that MSF wanted a "clear explanation because all indications point to a grave breach of international humanitarian law, and therefore a war crime." Afghan authorities have refused to comment before investigations are complete. President Ashraf Ghani's deputy spokesman, Zafar Hashemi, told reporters on Saturday that the Afghan government has "faith" in investigations being conducted by the U.S. military, and by a joint Afghan-NATO team. MSF has denied there were any armed Taliban on the hospital grounds at the time of the attack. "The compound was not entered by Taliban soldiers with weapons," Stokes said. "What we have understood from our staff and guards is that there was very strong, very good control of what was happening in and around the compound and they reported no firing in the hours preceding the destruction of the hospital." More than 70 staff members were on duty, tending to more than 100 patients at the time, he said. According to its policy, MSF treats government troops and insurgent combatants equally. Hospitals are regarded as protected sites in war.

The decree, published on the Russian Cabinet’s website, states that: “In connection with the imposition of restrictions on cooperation with the Russian Federation in nuclear energy by the United States of America … to suspend the agreement between the government of the Russian Federation and the government of the United States of America on cooperation in research and development in the nuclear and energy sectors of September 16, 2013″. The Russian Foreign Ministry has been instructed to send a written notification of the suspension of the agreement to the United States. An explanatory note in the decree explains that “the actions taken by the US in connection with imposing sanctions against Russia have directly affected the areas of cooperation envisaged by the agreement. … The regular extension of anti-Russian sanctions by the US, which include the suspension of the Russian-US cooperation in nuclear energy, requires countermeasures against the American side”.

The decree also announces the termination of an agreement between the Rosatom State Corporation and the US Department of Energy. “To accept the proposal of the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation and the Russian Foreign Ministry agreed with the Russian Defense Ministry, the Russian Federal Security Service and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service on terminating the executive agreement between the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation and the US Department of Energy on cooperation in conducting research of the possible conversion of Russian research reactors for the use of the low enriched uranium fuel of December 7, 2010,” the decree reads. The agreement was signed on June 14, 2013. The bilateral framework on threat reduction aimed at long-standing US – Russian partnership on nonproliferation. This framework of the agreement was built on the 1992 Agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Federation Concerning the Safe and Secure Transportation, Storage and Destruction of Weapons and the Prevention of Weapons Proliferation, commonly known as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Umbrella Agreement, which expired on June 17, 2013.

The, now suspended, agreement also stipulates future joint nuclear security activities in the Russian Federation that will be conducted under the 2003 Framework Agreement on a Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme in the Russian Federation (MNEPR) and a related bilateral Protocol signed on June 14, 2013 in Washington, D.C.

Much Needed New Scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation   Will there ever be a serious investigation and prosecution of the Clinton cash machine? Maybe. Micah Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, has an important update in his latest Investigative Bulletin:   Rumors have been floating up from Little Rock for months now of a new investigation into the Clinton Foundation. John Solomon advanced the story recently in a January report for The Hill. FBI agents in the Arkansas capital, he wrote, “have taken the lead” in a new Justice Department inquiry “into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in any pay-to-play politics or other illegal activities while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state.” Solomon reports that the probe “may also examine whether any tax-exempt assets were converted for personal or political use and whether the foundation complied with applicable tax laws.”   Main Justice also is “re-examining whether there are any unresolved issues from the closed case into Clinton’s transmission of classified information through her personal email server,” Solomon notes.   Solomon is not alone. The Wall Street Journal is tracking the story. And earlier this month, investigative journalist Peter Schweizer cryptically told SiriusXM radio that federal authorities should “convene a grand jury” in Little Rock “and let the American people look at the evidence” about the Clinton Foundation.   Judicial Watch continues to turn up new evidence of Clinton pay-to-play and mishandling of classified information. In recent months, through FOIA litigation, Judicial Watch has forced the release of more than 2,600 emails and documents from Mrs. Clinton and her associates, with more to come. The emails include evidence of Clinton Foundation donors such XL Keystone lobbyist Gordon Griffin, futures brokerage firm CME Group chairman Terrence Duffy, and an associate of Shangri La Entertainment mogul Steve Bing seeking special favors from the State Department. Read more about Judicial Watch’s pay-to-play disclosures here.   Judicial Watch also revealed many previously unreported incidents of mishandling of classified information. Mrs. Clinton and her former State Department deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, sent and received classified information through unsecure channels. The emails and documents involved sensitive information about President Obama, the Middle East, Africa, Afghanistan, Mexico, Burma, India, intelligence-related operations and world leaders. For documents and details from Judicial Watch on the mishandling of classified information, see here, here, here and here.   Smelling a rat in Arkansas when it comes to the Clintons of course is nothing new, and the former First Couple are masters of the gray areas around pay-to-play. But mishandling of classified information is a serious matter. And the tax angle is intriguing, even if you’re not Al Capone. The tenacious financial expert Charles Ortel, who has been digging deep into Clinton finances for years, told us back in 2015 that there are “epic problems” with the entire Clinton Foundation edifice, which traces its origins back to Arkansas. He noted that independent accounting firms may have been “duped by false and materially misleading representations” made by Clinton charitable entities. Down in Arkansas, law enforcement may be finally catching up with Ortel’s insights.

We would like to draw attention to reports, which are received regularly, of “unidentified” aircraft that have been seen providing support to local ISIS militants in various parts of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IRA). In particular, this month, according to Jowzjan Province authorities, unmarked aircraft were spotted air-dropping consignments of weapons and other supplies to ISIS groups in at least three northern provinces of Afghanistan (Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e Pol). A representative of the Province of Gazni council in southern Afghanistan spoke publicly about the presence of unmarked helicopters in areas controlled by terrorists in the Waghaz and Khogyani districts. It is noteworthy that even amidst an anti-Russia campaign in some Afghan and Western media that aim to accuse Russia of supporting the Taliban, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and US Defence Intelligence Agency Chief Vincent Stewart said they had no evidence to corroborate these allegations. This begs the logical question that has to be put to the above NATO and US officials: what do they know about the identity of these so-called unidentified aircraft flying over Afghanistan, a country where a US and NATO military contingent has already been deployed for over 15 years and where the Afghan Air Force faces persistent shortages of fully functioning aircraft and skilled pilots?