China prepares its ‘nuclear option’ in trade war

“If there is any further pushback from the US on any of these Chinese projects in Iran, then Beijing will invoke in full force the ‘nuclear option’ of selling all or a significant part of its US$1.4 trillion holding of US Treasury Bills, with a major chunk of the paper due to be sold in September on this basis. This massive holding of these bonds – through which the US finances its economy and is an important factor both in the value of the dollar and therefore in the health of US international companies especially – has been used as a bargaining chip before by China, especially when it feels threatened.”

Source

http://www.rt.com

17 Aug, 2019

FILE PHOTO: The mushroom cloud of the first test of a hydrogen bomb, “Ivy Mike” © Reuters

As the trade war continues to escalate, China is becoming increasingly active in Iran and is considering retaliating with what has long been described as the country’s ‘nuclear option’.

For the first of these projects – Phase 11 of the supergiant South Pars non-associated gas field (SP11) – last week saw a statement from the chief executive officer of the Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC) that talks had resumed with Chinese developers to advance the project. Originally the subject of an extensive contract signed by France’s Total before it pulled out due to re-imposed US sanctions on Iran, talks had been well-advanced with the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to take up the slack on development. As per the original contract, CNPC had been assigned Total’s 50.1 percent stake in the field when the French firm withdrew, giving it a total of 80.1 percent in the site, with Iran’s own Petropars Company holding the remainder. At the same time, Iran was desperate to increase the pace of development of the fields in its oil-rich West Karoun area, including North Azadegan, South Azadegan, North Yaran, South Yaran, and Yadavaran, in order to optimise oil flows ahead of further clampdowns on exports by the US.

Read more

China’s other nuclear option in trade war with US – Rare earth materials

China, though, which at that time was engaged in just the opening shots of the trade war with the US was loathe to completely disregard all US sensibilities when it came to Iran but equally saw itself as a longstanding partner of the Islamic Republic, not to mention always being cognisant of its need to ensure diversity of energy supply. At that point, China agreed a trade-off with the US that in exchange for it halting active development of SP11 it would be allowed to continue its activities in North Azadegan and would be able to go ahead with its development of Yadavaran – the second of China’s major Iran projects. China told the US that its continued involvement in North Azadegan could easily be justified to anyone else who might be interested – such as the mainstream media – on the basis that it had already spent billions of dollars developing the second phase of the 460 square kilometre field. Similarly, China said at the time, its ongoing activities on Yadavaran could be justified by dint of the fact that the original contract had been signed in good faith in 2007, way before the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal in May 2018 and thus, legally speaking, it had every right to go ahead.

The third of China’s major as yet unfinished projects in Iran was the build-out of the Jask oil export terminal, which – crucially, particularly in the current security situation – does not lie within the Strait of Hormuz or even in the Persian Gulf, but rather in the Gulf Of Oman. Even before the new US sanctions, the Kharg export terminal was not ideal for use by tankers as the narrowness of the Strait of Hormuz means that they have to go very slowly through it. With the new sanctions in place and tit-for-tat tanker seizures regularly occurring, China would have little choice but to put at least a couple of its own warships into the Gulf to safeguard their passage or stop buying Iranian oil entirely, neither of which Beijing particularly wants to do.

ALSO ON RT.COMChina continues importing Iranian oil in defiance of US sanctions

So, according to the plans, a US$2 billion or so 1,000 kilometre oil pipeline will connect Guriyeh in the Shoaybiyeh-ye Gharbi Rural District, in Khuzestan Province (south-west Iran), to Jask County, in Hormozgan Province (south Iran), with any financing required over and above that provided for Iran to be made readily available  from China. Also to be constructed in Jask is an initial 20 storage tanks each capable of storing 500,000 barrels of oil, and related shipping facilities, at a cost of around US$200 million. Overall, the intention is for Jask to have the capacity to store up to 30 million barrels and export one million barrels per day of crude oil. There are adjunct plans to build a large petrochemicals and refining complex in Jask as well, with the prime market for produced petchems – including gasoline, gas oil, jet fuel, sulphur, butadiene, ethylene and propylene, and mono-ethylene glycol – again being China. According to a recent comment by the director of projects at Iran’s National Petrochemical Company, Ali Mohammad Bossaqzadeh, the project would be built and run by Bakhtar Petrochemicals Holding, although ‘other foreign companies’ may take part. In fact, according to the Iran source, China has also offered to send as many engineers and other professionals required in such a project to Iran for as long as necessary.

ALSO ON RT.COMWhat are rare earth metals & why they are China’s ‘nuclear option’ in trade war with US

Having said that, and aware of the leverage that it had with Iran as one of the very few countries still willing to engage in developing its fields in the midst of increasingly vigorously-imposed sanctions, China has sought deal sweeteners from Iran, and has been given them. In order for it to reactivate its development of SP11, China will get a 17.25 percent discount for nine years on the value of all gas it recovers. “This is the value of the gas as applied to CNPC’s cost-return formula against the open market valuation, and currently the net present value of the site is US$116 billion,” the Iran source told OilPrice.com. For its part, China has agreed to increase the production from its oil fields in the West Karoun area – including North Azadegan and Yadavaran – by an additional 500,000 bpd by the end of 2020. This dovetails with Iran’s plan to increase the recovery rate from these West Karoun fields that it shares with Iraq from the current 5 percent (compared to Saudi Arabia’s 50 percent). “For every one percent increase, the recoverable reserves figure would increase by 670 million barrels, or around US$34 billion in revenues with oil even at US$50 a barrel,” the Iran source said.

Read more

China’s nuclear option of dumping US bonds would cause absolute chaos in global markets – expert

If there is any further pushback from the US on any of these Chinese projects in Iran, then Beijing will invoke in full force the ‘nuclear option’ of selling all or a significant part of its US$1.4 trillion holding of US Treasury Bills, with a major chunk of the paper due to be sold in September on this basis. This massive holding of these bonds – through which the US finances its economy and is an important factor both in the value of the dollar and therefore in the health of US international companies especially – has been used as a bargaining chip before by China, especially when it feels threatened. Back in 2007, just before the great financial crisis, a number of senior Chinese figures at various state-run think tanks – through which China often signals its big geopolitical threats – stated that the large-scale selling of this massive Treasury Bill holding would trigger a dollar crash, a huge spike in bond yields, the collapse of the housing market and stock market chaos.

Such a tactic would neatly fit into China’s overall strategy to have the renminbi challenge the US dollar’s status as the key global reserve currency and the prime currency for global energy transactions. “The long-planned sequencing for this was inclusion in the SDR {Special Drawing Rights] mix, which happened in 2016, increasing use as a trading currency, which followed that, use as the key currency of an international energy trading exchange, which has occurred with the creation of the renminbi-denominated Shanghai International Energy Exchange in last year, and the calls from big oil producers and other major trading nations to use the renminbi, which has been happening over the past few years,” the head of a New York-based commodities hedge fund told OilPrice.com. Only recently, Leonid Mikhelson, chief executive officer of Russian oil major, Novatek, said that future sales to China denominated in renminbi is under consideration and that US sanctions accelerate the process of Russia trying to switch away from US dollar-centric oil and gas trading and the damage from potential sanctions that go with it. “This has been discussed for a while with Russia’s largest trading partners such as India and China, and even Arab countries are starting to think about it… If they do create difficulties for our Russian banks then all we have to do is replace dollars,” he said. “The trade war between the US and China will only accelerate the process,” he added.

The trade war with the US, though, may be the very reason why this policy is not being pushed right now by China, Rory Green, Asia economist for TS Lombard told OilPrice.com last week. “With the renminbi weakening, and set to reach 7.50 to the [US] dollar level if the US imposes 25 percent tariffs on all Chinese exports, it is more difficult for China to persuade the big oil producers like Russia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, to make the switch away from the dollar,” he said. “For China as well, the timing is not quite right, as its use of Eurodollar financing is currently significant, it has a lot of dollar-denominated bonds rolling over shortly, and its balance of payments needs a relatively healthy US demand profile, but China wants to get away from the dollar system and that is the overall direction of travel,” he concluded.

This article was originally published on Oilprice.com

America Dumps INF Treaty. Time for Russian Missiles in Latin America?

“A more likely scenario, however, is that Putin, in the event Trump ‘goes nuclear’ in Eastern Europe, will deploy round-the-clock stealth submarines armed with ballistic missiles near the American shoreline as an insurance policy.”

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Robert Bridge

August 9, 2019

Washington’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty is just the latest move against Russia that will serve to intensify an arms race on the European continent that is already underway. It may also force Russia to take things to the next level.

Aside from the unprecedented stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction on an epic scale, a whirlwind of regional developments are now underway that foreshadow extremely unsettling consequences. First and foremost is this month’s formal announcement by the Trump administration that it would be pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), signed into force by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan back in 1987.

With the INF consigned to the dustbin of history, the US and Russia are free to design and produce ballistic and cruise missiles within a 500-5,500 kilometer range (310-3,420 miles). Would any NATO country be so foolish as to host these American-made weapons on their territory, thereby opening itself up to a devastating first-strike attack in some worst-case scenario? Poland is one possible candidate. After all, Polish President Andrzej Duda last year offered the United States $2 billion in financing for the construction of a permanent American base on Poland’s eastern border. While the two NATO countries are still considering the idea, it is clear that the eradication of the INF Treaty promises to ratchet up tensions between Russia and its neighbors.

Washington’s pullout from the INF did not occur in a vacuum, of course. It followed in the tank tracks of George W. Bush’s disastrous decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, one of many opportunistic moves committed by the United States in the aftermath of 9/11. With the ABM out of the way, the United States was able to establish a missile defense shield in Romania, just miles from the Russian border. Washington’s overtures to Moscow that it would welcome Russian participation in the project were eventually revealed as a deceitful stalling tactic. Russian President Vladimir Putin was not fooled, however, and wasted no time researching and developing of a lethal array of new weapon systems, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range.

RT

✔@RT_com

‘Listen to us now’: #Putin unveils new Russian nuclear arsenal https://on.rt.com/908e 

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09:09 – 1 мар. 2018 г.

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At this point in the updated ‘Great Game’ there is a temptation to say that the US and Russia have entered yet another ‘MAD’ moment, that is, ‘mutually assured destruction’ should one side or the other attempt fate with a first-strike attack. Check mate, as it were. After all, Russia has got its “unstoppable” nuclear-powered cruise missile and other fearsome hardware, while the US has its missile defense shield, as well as numerous NATO set pieces, bolted down in Europe. Everything is wonderful in the neighborhood, right? Well, not exactly.

Comparing the present standoff between the US and Russia to the Cold War realities is erroneous and dangerous for a number of reasons. First, the opportunity for some sort of mishap resulting in all-out war has never been greater. The reason is not simply due to the dizzying amount of firepower involved, but rather due to the proximity of the firepower to the Russian border.  During the Cold War standoff, Moscow, the nerve center of the Soviet empire, was well guarded by the buffer of Warsaw Pact republics. Today, that buffer has practically vanished, and NATO is not only encamped deep inside of Eastern Europe, but – in the case of the Baltic States of Estonia and Latvia – smack up against the Russian border. Although the entire concept of time, distance and space has been made somewhat redundant by the exceptional speed of modern missiles and aircraft, this has not reduced the possibility of NATO and Russia accidentally stumbling into a very bad situation.

Now with the INF Treaty out of the way there is the possibility that Washington will place intermediate-range missiles in Russia’s backyard. Such a move would flush with Washington’s revised nuclear doctrine, which not only aims for increasing its nuclear arsenal, but – in pure Dr. Strangelove fashion – lowering the threshold for which nuclear weapons may be used. To think that Russia will watch passively on the sidelines as the US disrupts the regional strategic balance in its favor would be wishful thinking.

Even as the corpse of the INF treaty was still warm, Mark T. Esper, the new US secretary of defense said he favored the deployment of new American ground-based missiles to Asia, without specifying a precise location.

“It’s fair to say, though, that we would like to deploy a capability sooner rather than later,” Esper said while en route to Australia for foreign policy meetings. “I would prefer months. I just don’t have the latest state of play on timelines.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is reportedly moving ahead with the development of missile systems, including a cruise missile with an expected 1,000 km range and an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a 3,000 to 4,000 km range. With the ‘shield’ of a US missile defense system already established in Eastern Europe, Russia will not sit by idly and wait for NATO’s other hand to pick up a sword.

What options are open to Russia at this point? Aside from its Russia-based defenses already mentioned, Moscow will feel very compelled to move its strike abilities closer to the United States in order to match NATO’s newfound capacity just over the Russian border.

Putin has emphasized that Russia will not deploy ballistic missiles unless the US does so first. If he were required to respond, would Russia consider a permanent missile base somewhere in Latin America, just miles from US shores, mirroring the same situation that Russia faces in Eastern Europe? Imagine a situation where ‘Trump’s Mexican Wall’ became in reality a host of Russian launch pads. Although ti would solve America’s migrant problem, it probably won’t do much to help Americans sleep better at night. Impossible to imagine, of course, yet that is the exact dire scenario Russia faces on its own border with the Baltic States.

A more likely scenario, however, is that Putin, in the event Trump ‘goes nuclear’ in Eastern Europe, will deploy round-the-clock stealth submarines armed with ballistic missiles near the American shoreline as an insurance policy. It is a dreadful new reality to consider, yet as the United States continues with its reckless treaty-trashing posture it is a reality the world will be forced to live with.

Rattling the Nuclear Cage: India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and the US

Rattling the Nuclear Cage: India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and the US

“The “only nuclear criminal in the world”, according to the “supreme leader’s” successor, Ali Khamanei, “is falsely claiming to fight the proliferation of nuclear weapons”.”

 

“And both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. Indeed, there was nothing more pathetic, after Pakistan’s first nuclear tests in 1998, than to travel around this other “Islamic republic” and, amid the abject poverty of its villages, gaze at the awful commemorative papier-mache recreations of the granite mountains in which the explosions took place. There is, I suppose, no point in adding that there are more armed extremist Islamists on Islamabad’s payroll in both Pakistan and Afghanistan – coddled by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency – than there are in the whole of Iran.”

 

http://www.counterpunch.org

by ROBERT FISK

AUGUST 12, 2019

Photograph Source: Leslie Groves, Manhattan Project director, with a map of Japan – Public Domain

 

We like our anniversaries in blocks of 50 or 100 – at a push we’ll tolerate a 25. The 100th anniversary of the Somme (2016), the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain (2015). Next year, we’ll remember the end of the Second World War, the first – and so far the only – nuclear war in history.

This week marks only the 74th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It doesn’t fit in to our journalistic scorecards and “timelines”. Over the past few days, I’ve had to look hard to find a headline about the two Japanese cities.

But, especially in the Middle East and what we like to call southeast Asia, we should be remembering these gruesome anniversaries every month. Hiroshima was atomic-bombed 74 years ago on Tuesday, Nagasaki 74 years ago on Friday. Given the extent of the casualty figures, you’d think they’d be unforgettable. But we don’t quite know (nor ever will) what they were.

The bombing of the two cities, we are told, left between 129,000 and 226,000 dead. The first US statistics suggested only 66,000 dead in Hiroshima, 39,000 in Nagasaki. But in later years, the Hiroshima authorities estimated their dead alone at 202,118 – taking account of those who later died of radiation sickness, rather than just the incinerated corpses and human shadows left in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.

In the Middle East, where Aleppo and Mosul and Raqqa count the dead from conventional bombs – American, Russian, Syrian – in the tens of thousands, you might think the 1945 statistics would leave the folk who live there pretty cold. But the book of crises unfolding in the region – by the chapter, almost every month – is of critical importance to every soul who lives between the Mediterranean and India.

For India itself is a nuclear power. So is Pakistan. And so, of course, is Israel. None of them have signed the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT). All are threatening war, over Kashmir, or over Iran, the only nation under threat which has not (yet) got nuclear weapons.

Ayatollah Khomeini originally seized on America’s refusal to express its remorse at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings: “They’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people … many years have passed and they can’t even bring themselves to apologise,” he said, and the current Iranian leadership has continued Khomeini’s theme. The “only nuclear criminal in the world”, according to the “supreme leader’s” successor, Ali Khamanei, “is falsely claiming to fight the proliferation of nuclear weapons”.

Iran, it should be added, did sign the NPT, but was later found in non-compliance of the safeguard agreement. And Iran, of course, is the non-nuclear power now being constantly threatened with war by two nuclear powers – America and Israel – the first of which, under Donald Trump, tore up his country’s commitment to the only international agreement that ever existed to limit Iran’s nuclear programme.

As the US applies new sanctions to Iran – miserably supported by the ever-compliant banks and big businesses of Europe – Iran marginally breaks its side of the nuclear control agreement. And thus becomes the recipient of even more ferocious threats from Washington and Israel.

The word “nuclear” is not just a harmless adjective. Look at the old photographs of the blisters on the dying Japanese of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Iran itself suffered the horrors of gas warfare when Iraq – supported at the time by the US – used chemicals on Iranian soldiers and civilians. I saw their gas-gangrene wounds with my own eyes in the late 1980s and they reminded me of the Hiroshima snapshots. The Iranians really do know the effects of “weapons of mass destruction”.

Yet they, we are supposed to believe, are the nuclear “threat” in the Middle East. The Islamic republic is no saints’ paradise. Its corruption (within the government), its cruelty towards its own dissenters, its hangman’s noose justice against its own people and its prim disgust at even the most innocent demand for freedom scarcely qualify the immensely wealthy Revolutionary Guards Corps – “heroes” of a new “tanker war” and masters of Houthi drone technology – to give lectures on morality. And if we thought that the Iranians held in reserve – let us say – 200 nuclear warheads, we should be trembling in our boots. But they don’t. It’s Israel that conceals – but will not say so – perhaps 200 nuclear warheads.

Not only do we not complain about this. We regard any suggestion of their existence as akin to interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Israel has never confirmed that their nuclear weapons exist: therefore we must not say that they do. Enquire about their exact number and you are treated by Israel’s supporters with deep suspicion. It’s a private matter, we are led to understand. Anyway, the Israelis can be trusted with such vile weapons. Can’t they?

Which brings us to Saudi Arabia. Every nation in the Middle East which seeks nuclear power – and the list includes Egypt, by the way – insists, like Iran, that the technology is needed to build power plants.

Yet when Reuters – whose investigations of human rights and secret criminal activities in the region are first-class in both courage and detail – reports on the accurate leaks that US energy secretary Rick Perry approved six secret authorisations to give nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia, few outside congress issued a murmur of concern. Not even Israel – which always rages when America’s arms manufacturers hoover up billions of dollars from Arab arms buyers, especially from Saudi Arabia.

South Koreans – those endangered people always under nuclear threat from the Rocket Man turned good guy further north – are also bidding for the Saudi nuclear deal. So are the Russians. So how come, now that the Saudi regime has talked of “cutting off the head of the snake” in Iran, we don’t regard Riyadh as a potential nuclear threat?

How soon will it be before we wonder if the Saudis aren’t going a bit too far down the nuclear path and we suggest a nuclear control agreement along the lines of Obama’s Iran deal? After all, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman – and let’s not bring up the little matter of the Saudi evisceration and chopping up of poor Jamal Khashoggi at this point – told CBS last year that his kingdom would develop nuclear weapons if Iran did.

And as we digest all this – although we really are not talking about it at all, are we? – India decides to tear up its own legal arrangements in Jammu and Kashmir. As the only Muslim-majority state in India, it is now to be split into two union territories, diminishing Muslim power and allowing non-Muslim Indians from other regions to move into this dangerous remnant of the old Raj. The Hindu-led government used a presidential order to revoke the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan, which holds the other bit of Kashmir – both claim the whole area as their own – is understandably infuriated by this change in the status quo.

And both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. Indeed, there was nothing more pathetic, after Pakistan’s first nuclear tests in 1998, than to travel around this other “Islamic republic” and, amid the abject poverty of its villages, gaze at the awful commemorative papier-mache recreations of the granite mountains in which the explosions took place. There is, I suppose, no point in adding that there are more armed extremist Islamists on Islamabad’s payroll in both Pakistan and Afghanistan – coddled by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency – than there are in the whole of Iran.

So this is a very good week, as we typically ignore the commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for us to remember the nuclear threat in the Middle East. At least one nation in every potential conflict in the region is a nuclear power or a prospective one. India against Pakistan and vice versa, the US with Iran, the Israelis with Iran – or just about any other Levantine power – and the Saudis versus Iran, and Iran against almost anyone else except Syria.

Oh yes, and Donald Trump has just pulled out of the Cold War Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia – blaming Russia for violating the ban on missiles ranging up to 3,400 miles. All Russia’s fault, says Mike Pompeo. The treaty is now “dead”, the Russian foreign ministry confirms. So it’s time, perhaps, to rewatch those old documentaries of the the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay and the bomb codenamed “Little Boy” and the brilliant mushroom cloud and all those scorched corpses at Hiroshima.

More articles by:ROBERT FISK

Robert Fisk writes for the Independent, where this column originally appeared. 

‘If you go home, take your nukes with you!’ Top German MP taunts US threat of troop withdrawal

Source

http://www.rt.com

10 Aug, 2019

People take pictures of a 3D street painting titled „the nuclear abyss“ in front of the Reichstag building, seat of the German lower house of parliament Bundestag, on September 30, 2016 © AFP/TOBIAS SCHWARZ

The US must take its nukes off German soil if it is serious about relocating troops to Poland, a top opposition MP said in a tongue-in-cheek response to a veiled ultimatum from the American envoy.

German lawmakers have reacted to threats made by the US envoy to Berlin, Richard Grenell, saying that Berlin may use the ultimatum as an opportunity to push for the withdrawal of all American assets from Germany.

“The US ambassador is right: US taxpayers should not have to pay for US troops in Germany,”Bartsch said, according to the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. He also suggested that any potential troop withdrawal should be total and complete. “If the Americans pull out their soldiers, they also have to pull out their nuclear weapons,” he insisted.

And of course, these must be brought back home and not to Poland because it would provoke a further escalation in our ties with Russia, which doesn’t serve European and German interests.

The spat began earlier this week when Grenell demanded that Germany increase its defense spending, arguing that it was “really insulting to expect the US taxpayer to keep paying for over 50,000 Americans” stationed in the European country.

The complaint was followed by a suggestion from the US envoy in Warsaw, who advocated for US troops to relocate to Poland – an ally which, unlike Germany, “spends two percent of its GDP on NATO.”

ALSO ON RT.COMUS needles Berlin with threat to relocate German-based troops to ‘welcoming’ Poland

Other lawmakers were also unappreciative of Grenell’s ultimatum. Thomas Hitschler, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), described the ambassador’s remarks as “highly problematic” and “indecent.” He added that Grenell’s criticisms of Germany’s financial contribution towards NATO do not correspond with reality.

Hitschler described how Pentagon officials had praised Berlin’s defense commitments during a recent visit he’d made to Washington.

The secretary-general of the SPD, Lars Klingbeil, went one step further, accusing Grenell of trying to bully Berlin. “We will not be blackmailed by the Americans,” he told the Augsburger Allgemeine.

READ MORE: US envoy fumes at Germany’s reluctance to take part in Hormuz naval mission

Germany has been at odds with its longtime strategic ally for quite some time, having been reluctant to involve itself in Washington’s most recent military adventures. Berlin has refused to join US- and UK-led naval patrols in the Persian Gulf, after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker in retaliation for its own oil carrier being captured by the UK near Gibraltar.

INF treaty: US withdraws from arms control agreement with Russia

Critics say move could ‘exacerbate the mistrust’ between the two rivals and provoke a new arms race.

Source

http://www.aljazeera.com

by Martin de Bourmont

Aug 2, 2019

Friday’s withdrawal means only one soon-to-expire arms control treaty between the US and Russia remains [Kevin Lamarque/Reuters]

Washington DC – The United States on Friday will formally withdraw from a landmark arms control treaty with Russia, claiming it undermines its national security interests.

The move means that only one, soon-to-expire, arms control treaty between the US and Russia remains, leaving critics of the Trump administration and proliferation experts worried about the potential for a new arms race.

In February, Washington had announced that in six months it would suspend its participation in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty unless Moscow destroyed missiles which the US and its NATO allies alleged that they violate the agreement.

“We can no longer be restricted by the treaty while Russia shamelessly violates it,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on February 1.

US President Donald Trump later alluded to the possibility of a new treaty, saying, “I hope we’re able to get everybody in a big, beautiful room and do a new treaty that would be much better,” though the specific nature of such a treaty remains unclear.

For its part, Russia denied the US allegations and accused Washington of flouting the treaty itself, before giving notice that it would also pull out of the bilateral agreement.

What is the INF treaty?

Signed in 1987 by US and Soviet Union leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the INF treaty was meant to eliminate the presence of land-based nuclear missiles and medium-range arsenals between 500km to 5,500km from Europe.

The treaty’s expiration now enables the US to resume development of its own medium-range, land-based arsenal.

Currently, the US military plans to test a land-based cruise missile and a ballistic missile previously banned under the INF treaty between August and November of this year.

US officials say that the treaty’s collapse ultimately resulted from consistent Russian failures to adhere to its terms.

More specifically, the US and NATO wanted Russia to destroy its 9M729/SSC-8 nuclear-capable cruise missile system.

Russia, on the other hand, insists that it complied with the treaty and that the US withdrawal is part of a larger ploy to weaken norms surrounding the use of nuclear weapons.

Years in the making

Between 2004 and 2005, Russia suggested to the US that since China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran all possessed medium- and intermediate-range missiles, it might have good reason to leave the treaty.

Without actually exiting, Russia then began the covert development of a cruise missile forbidden by the INF treaty, according to US officials.

Speaking to the Hill, Frank Rose, a former assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance during the previous US administration, said he saw the INF’s demise as “the latest installment in a larger story – and that’s the collapse of the US-Russia bilateral strategic stability framework”.

“These arms control treaties have not kept up to the changes to the security environment,” Rose, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, added.

Jeffrey Lewis, a US expert in nuclear nonproliferation and geopolitics, contends the reason for the INF’s collapse is much simpler.

“There are lots of reasons to pull out, but I think in Trump’s case it’s just wanting to look tough. It’s not more complicated than that. It’s wanting to be transgressive,” said Lewis, an adjunct professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Lewis added that because the INF treaty never seriously prevented the US from maintaining its capacity to defend itself with missiles, he could not accept the government’s contention that scrapping the agreement would improve national security.

“The INF treaty limits intermediate-range missiles that are land-based,” Lewis said.

“It doesn’t limit sea-based or air-based intermediate-range missiles. If there had been some kind of tremendous shortage of these missiles then you know we could’ve seen an expansion of sea-based or air-based missiles, but that’s never happened.”

NATO’s and Russia’s stance

NATO sides with the US on its withdrawal decision, placing the blame squarely on Russia.

In a statement released last February, NATO said that unless Russia honoured its obligations through “the verifiable destruction of all of its 9M729 systems, thereby returning to full and verifiable compliance before the US withdrawal takes effect … Russia will bear sole responsibility for the end of the Treaty.”

On Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated a call to Russia to comply with the treaty in order to save it, while conceding that the agreement’s termination seemed “imminent”.

He also told reporters that NATO “will do what is necessary to have credible deterrence and defence”, though defence ministers in the 29-member military alliance also maintain that “NATO has no intention to deploy new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe.”

Addressing the Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday, Russia’s deputy permanent representative in Geneva, Andrey Belousov, said the US would soon exit the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CNTBT), which bans the testing of nuclear weapons.

“It would appear that through propaganda around false claims about Russia’s compliance there are attempts to prepare international opinion for a US exit from the CTBT and then to blame Russia again for everything,” Belousov said.

US Ambassador Robert Wood furiously denied the charge, calling it “crafty, Soviet-like propaganda”.

New arms race?

The expiration of the August 2 deadline means that the US will now have just one arms control agreement with Russia left.

But the New Start Treaty, which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads Russia and the US can have to 1,550, is also under threat of dissolution, with US National Security Adviser John Bolton declaring in June that Washington was unlikely to extend it past its 2021 expiration deadline.

“The withdrawal [from the INF Treaty] without a follow-on is the invitation for an arms race,” said Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Russia will clearly spend money on updating and amplifying its weapons systems.”

While arms control experts are not in complete agreement that Friday’s move will spur a new arms race, they agree with Menendez that allowing for the development of new nuclear weapons is a frightening prospect.

Michael Krepon, the co-founder of the Stimson Center think-tank, said that while he thinks an arms race between the two countries is unlikely due to the US’s ability to vastly spend more than Russia, Washington’s withdrawal from the treaty is “part of the of a much larger and unsettling story of the cutting of the safety net”.

David Wright, a co-director and senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists described the INF treaty as a major diplomatic success that went a long way to making the world safer.

“The fact that the US and the Soviet Union at that point were able to come to an agreement was a tremendous breakthrough. It gave people a lot of hope that even things that seemed like they were sort of insoluble problems between two superpowers locked in the Cold War, there was a way out of that by negotiating,” Wright said.

“If the US pulls out, it’s likely to increase the number of missiles around the world and it’s likely to exacerbate the mistrust between the two countries and the level of spending they put in that’s intended to counter or match what the other side is doing.”

Europeans will be ‘sanctioned to ground’ for Iran ties: Graham

Source

http://www.presstv.com

Tue Jul 16, 2019

US Senator Lindsey Graham leaves after meeting with Speaker of the House Representative Nancy Pelosi on June 27, 2019 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

The United States should sanction “to the ground” European countries that continue to trade with Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal and refuse to join America’s pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic, says top Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

Speaking to Fox News, Graham said the European signatories of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the UK, France and Germany – were too “weak” too abide by America’s unilateral sanctions against Tehran.

“I will tell the Europeans, ‘If you want to side with the Iranians, be my guest, but you won’t use an American bank or do business with the American economy,'” Graham said.

The remarks came days after Tehran announced it was beginning to cut back on its commitments under the nuclear deal in response to the Europe’s inability to protect bilateral trade from US sanctions.

Iranian officials have officially announced that the country is now enriching uranium beyond the 3.67 percent limit set forth in the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement and that its enriched uranium stockpile has surpassed the 300 kilograms cap.

The European signatories of the deal pledged after Washington’s decision to abandon the deal in May 2018 that they would introduce a special payment channel to protect trade and ultimately salvage the agreement.

They have recently confirmed that the mechanism, called INSTEX, will soon become operational.

‘US should pressure Europe to support new deal’

Graham said during the interview that he supported Trump’s call for renegotiating a new deal instead of the JCPOA, adding he would use sanctions and economic pressure to force Europeans to join Washington.

“Are you prepared to sanction whatever company or country within Europe does?” Fox News Host Maria Bartiromo asked Graham.

“To the ground,” replied the senator, who is a close ally of the president.

He said a better deal would fully curb Iran’s right to enriching uranium while the JCPOA allows for 3.67 percent enrichment.

Upon announcing his departure from the landmark agreement, Trump said he would launch a pressure campaign against Iran that will make use of sanctions and other hostile measures to force the Islamic into renegotiating a new deal that would address its ballistic missile program and curb its regional influence.

Since then, the US has imposed sanctions against Iranian oil exports while also sending troops and military equipment to the Persian Gulf region to confront what it refers to as “threats” coming from Iran.

The Trump administration’s most recent round of sanctions targeted Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatalloh Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

The US Treasury Department was expected to announce sanctions against Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as well but has shelved those plans for now. The State Department has announced that it would grant Zarif a limited visa ahead of his visit this week to the United Nations in New York City.

European countries have so far rejected the Trump administration’s calls to quit the JCPOA. Iran has also made it clear that it would never accept any alternatives to the current deal.

Trump ruined Iran nuclear deal ‘to spite Obama’ – former UK envoy in new leak

Source

http://www.rt.com

14 Jul, 2019

The reactor at the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, 1200 kilometers (746 miles) south of Tehran © Reuters / Caren Firouz

Trump completely lacked an exit strategy when he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and made the decision out of pure animosity towards his predecessor, the ex-UK ambassador to the US said, according to a new embarrassing leak.

Desperate to save the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), then-UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson flew to the US in May 2018 to persuade President Donald Trump to abide by the accord. Despite intense negotiations at the White House with Trump’s closest aides that lasted for 26 hours, Johnson returned empty-handed, simply because Trump wanted to spite Barack Obama for negotiating the agreement, the UK’s former ambassador to the US, Sir Kim Darroch, told 10 Downing Street, according to a leaked diplomatic cable published by the Mail on Sunday.

The Administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons – it was Obama’s deal.

The cable sent out on May 8 last year also claimed that the White House had lacked any strategy on how to handle the withdrawal and suggested that there were strong disagreements among Trump’s closest advisers.

They can’t articulate any ‘day-after’ strategy; and contacts with State Department this morning suggest no sort of plan for reaching out to partners and allies, whether in Europe or the region.

In another cable sent out the same day, Sir Darroch blamed Trump for following the line of National Security Advisor John Bolton, who promulgated withdrawal from the deal and the re-imposition of sanctions.

ALSO ON RT.COMBritish ambassador to the US Darroch quits over leaked Trump secret memos row

The British tabloid went on to release the second batch of Sir Darroch’s wires despite the warning by the Metropolitan Police not to publish the government leaks. The initial publication of cables last week caused a diplomatic scandal between Washington and the UK. It resulted in Sir Darroch’s resignation on Wednesday, after Trump unleashed a salvo of attacks against the diplomat, who described his administration as “dysfunctional” and “inept.” The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command is now investigating the source of the leak.