During his victory speech, PierrePoilievre reiterates his pledge to scrap the controversial ArriveCAN app and end remaining Covid vaccine mandates

During his victory speech, @PierrePoilievre reiterates his pledge to scrap the controversial ArriveCAN app and end remaining Covid vaccine mandates. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/PzvXka20NL

— True North (@TrueNorthCentre) September 11, 2022

‘Your energy price ceiling will become price floor:’ Top Russian lawmaker warns Europe

Russia has denounced European attempts to cap Russian energy prices, saying such measures are doomed to fail and prices will rise far beyond the attempted artificial ceiling.

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2022/09/09/688916/EU-attempts%C2%A0to-cap-Russian-energy-doomed-to-fail–Russian-top-lawmaker

Friday, 09 September 2022

A view shows gas wells at the Bovanenkovo gas field owned by Gazprom on the Arctic Yamal peninsula, Russia May 21, 2019. (By Reuters)

Russia has denounced European attempts to cap Russian energy prices, saying such measures are doomed to fail and prices will rise far beyond the attempted artificial ceiling.

Moscow’s top lawmaker and the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, wrote on his Telegram channel on Friday that the global market is not limited to seven countries.

“What G7 state officials call a price ‘ceiling’ will become a price floor,” he said. “The marginal price announced by the West will become the lower bar.”

Volodin said that the countries involved in the program had failed to find an alternative for Russian energy and had concluded that they would no longer be able to purchase fuel from Russia “on the cheap.”

The top lawmaker’s remarks came in the wake of a plan by Group of Seven (G7) countries to impose a price cap on Russian oil exports last week, a move that could restrict Russia’s ability to secure tankers and insurance from countries beyond the G7.

Meanwhile, the EU ministers who had gathered on Friday to discuss imposing a price cap on Russian fuel were split on the issue.

Western governments, especially the European countries, have been experiencing a worsening energy crisis after sanctioning Russia for its military operation in Ukraine.

“We are in an energy war with Russia,” Czech Industry Minister Jozef Sikela said, adding that “we have to send a clear signal that we would do whatever it takes to support our households, our economies.”

Soaring costs of gas and electricity have been the main challenge for the European leaders, prompting them to try every possible way to limit the resulting energy price shock.

An EU proposal to cap Russian gas prices has so far failed to win support from a majority of countries, with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to completely cut off energy supplies and warning the West it would be “frozen” like a wolf’s tail in a famous Russian fairy tale.

Central and eastern European states, which are more reliant on Russian fuel than others, fear losing all their supplies.

“If price restrictions were to be imposed exclusively on Russian gas, that would evidently lead to an immediate cut-off in Russian gas supplies. It does not take a Nobel Prize to recognize that,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck suggested that the EU should prepare legislation to decouple the gas price from the price consumers pay for power from other energy carriers.

Accordingly, the European Commission is set to propose a measure this week to claw back revenues from non-gas power generators (such as wind, nuclear and coal generators) and spend the cash on cutting consumer bills.

The commission is set to take the step in a bid to skim off excess profits made by non-gas producers that have lower running costs but have still been able to sell their power at soaring prices.

“The measures the Commission has recommended in taking some of those excess profits and recycling them back into the households makes sense,” Irish Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said.

The EU is bracing for a recession in the wake of skyrocketing gas prices and soaring inflation, as the coming winter is likely to be “one of the worst in history,” according to the EU’s economics commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni.

The European Union has pledged to end its dependence on Russian energy sources, a decision that seems to be backfiring ahead of the cold winter.

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The Real Oil Villains

Gas prices are rising at their fastest pace ever and have topped $4 for the first time since 2008.

Just a reminder that America gets 1% of its oil from Russia, while Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell profits are at their highest level in over 7 years.

— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) March 7, 2022

Award for the most despicable disaster capitalist in a pandemic

Iraq – Why Doesn’t the US Move Out Despite the Iraqi Parliament’s Decision?

Source

By Peter Koenig

Global Research, January 11, 2020

Why doesn’t the U.S. respect the decision made by the Iraqi Parliament and move out of Iraqi territory? – The short answer is, because the US doesn’t respect anybody’s – any country’s – decision or sovereignty, as long as it doesn’t meet their objectives.

Now, the US is steadfast and will not leave the region. Already President Assad has requested that the US leave Syrian territory. They didn’t. The stakes are too immense for the US. It has all to do with their move towards world hegemony by territory and by finance – meaning by the US dollar.

 The conflict with Iran is not over. By any means.

We are just experiencing a respite for regrouping – and subsequently continuing and escalating the conflict. US bases in Iraq and military presence, at present more than 5,000 troops, are the most convenient means of force against Iran.

Other than controlling the rich and highly strategic territory of the Middle-East as an important step towards world hegemony, the US continuous presence in the region also has to do with profits for the war industry and with the price and control of hydrocarbons, especially gas.

We have seen, soon after the cowardly murder of General Qassem Suleimani, the share values of the war industry jumped up, of course in anticipation of a hot war – and huge weapons sales. The war industry profits insanely from killing. Wars and conflicts are increasingly what drives the western economies. Already in the US the war industry and related industries and services make up for about half of the country’s GDP. The US economy without war is unthinkable. Therefore, the Middle-East is a perfect eternal battle ground – a sine qua non for the west. War is addictive. The western economy is already addicted to it. But most people haven’t realized that – yet. Revolving and renewed conflicts and wars is a must. Imagine, if the US were to leave the Middle-East, PEACE might break out. This is not admissible. Soon, your job my depend on war – if you live in the west.

Then there is the Iranian gas. Daily 20% to 25% of all the energy consumed to drive the world’s economy – including wars – transits through the Golf of Hormuz which is controlled by Iran. Immediately after the heinous murder on General Suleimani, the oil and gas prices spiked by about 4%, later declining again. This, in anticipation of a major conflict which could have Iran reduce her gas production, or block the passage of Hormuz. In either case a collapse of the world economy could not be excluded.

Trump – from China to Iran to Venezuela – Threats and Sanctions Everywhere – A Chronicle of Disorganized Chaos Foretold

As a parenthesis – it is so absolutely necessary that the world frees itself from this nefarious source of energy – hydrocarbons – and converts to other, cheaper, cleaner and FREER sources of power to drive our industries and activities. Like solar energy of which Mother Earth receives every day more than 10,000 time what it needs for all her industrial and creative activities on every Continent.

The US, with a flailing multi-trillion fracking industry which just failed the European market, due Russian gas via Nord Stream2, and just inaugurated Turkstream, would like to control the price of hydrocarbon, so as to revive the highly indebted fracking industry. What better way than to control Iran, and her enormous reserves of gas, shared with Qatar?

Then there is the close alliance between Iran and China – China being Iran’s largest customer of gas. China is perceived by Washington as a deadly competitor, and barring her from the energy that makes China’s economy thrive, is one of those devilish objectives of the United States. They are unable to compete on an even playing field. Cheating, lying and manipulating has become part of their, and the western life style. It is deeply ingrained in western history and culture.

Of, course there are other ways of supplying China with the hydrocarbons she needs. Russia with the world’s largest gas reserves, could easily increase her supplies.

In brief, the US is unlikely to leave the Middle-East, although some generals – and even some high-ranking Pentagon brass – believe this would be the smartest thing to do – they see the light, and the light is not war, but PEACE.

How to Get the US out of Iraq

What could Iraq do to get the US out of Iraq and eventually out of the Region? After all, the Iraqi Parliament has taken a majority decision to regain Iraq’s sovereignty and autonomy, without foreign troops. Most countries with troops stationed in Iraq respect that decision. Denmark, Australia, Poland and Germany are preparing to move their troops out of Iraq. Only the UK with her 800 military men and women decided for now to stay alongside the US.

Iraq may want to strengthened her alliance with Russia and China, hereby increasing the pressure on the US to honor Iraq’s sovereign request for the US to leave. How much that would take to materialize, if at all, is a difficult question to answer. Maybe ‘never’. Except, if the US-dollar hegemony over western economies can be broken. And at the moment, a strong down-turn of the dollar’s role in the world economy is showing, as the western world is increasingly seeking ways to de-dollarize her economy and to associate with the East, led by China and Russia, where de-dollarization is advancing rapidly.

When that happens, chances are that the US of A’s dictates over the nations of the world will be mute, will not be listened to anymore, and that Washington will have to rethink its future – and very likely a US presence in the Middle-East will be history.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Peter Koenig, Global Research, 2020

What’s behind the West’s hatred of Iran?

Source

http://www.redressonline.com

By Stuart Littlewood

10th January 2020

Mossadeq’s great sin: he “broke the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests”. US and Britain are still smarting.

Nobody saw that coming. Trump ordering Qassim Soleimani’s execution, I mean.

Nobody thought even he was quite so stupid.

It follows his last year’s caper when the “cocked and loaded” drama-queen ordered military strikes against Iran’s radar and missile batteries in retaliation for their shooting down of a US spy drone. He changed his mind with only minutes to spare on account of a reminder that such lunacy might actually cost human lives.

Plus the fact that the drone was eight miles from the coast, well inside the 12 nautical miles considered to be Iran’s territorial waters under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and it clearly represented a military threat and provocation. So he had no lawful claim of self-defense that would justify a military attack. The United Nations Charter allows only the use of military force in self-defense after an armed attack or with Security Council approval. So his proposed action would have been illegal as well as unwise, but none of that seemed to enter into his calculations then, or now.

Before that, we had Trump’s executive order in August 2018 re-imposing a wide range of sanctions against Iran after pulling the US out of the seven-party nuclear deal for no good reason, a spiteful move that annoyed the European Union and caused all sorts of problems for other nations. And he was going to impose extra sanctions aimed mainly at Iran’s oil industry and foreign financial institutions.

“If the ayatollahs want to get out from under the squeeze,” warned US National Security Adviser John Bolton, “they should come and sit down. The pressure will not relent while the negotiations go on.” To which Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, responded: “If you stab someone with a knife and then you say you want talks, then the first thing you have to do is remove the knife.”

United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy described the sanctions as “unjust and harmful… The reimposition of sanctions against Iran after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, which had been unanimously adopted by the Security Council with the support of the US itself, lays bare the illegitimacy of this action.”

The other parties to the nuclear deal – Russia, China, Germany, France, the UK, and the EU – vowed to stick with it and continue trading with Iran, with some EU foreign ministers saying Iran was abiding by the agreement and delivering on its goal when Trump withdrew and they deeply regretted the new sanctions. Trump, in turn, called Iran “a murderous dictatorship that has continued to spread bloodshed, violence and chaos”. The irony of such a remark was, of course, completely lost on him.

I read on 9 January that the EU “will spare no efforts” to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive, though I doubt if Boris Johnson, passionate Zionist that he is, will be among them.

When it comes to aggression and dishonesty the US has form, and lots of it. Who can forget during the Iran-Iraq war the cruiser USS Vincennes, well inside Iran’s territorial waters, blowing Iran Air Flight 655 to smithereens and killing all 290 passengers and crew onboard? The excuse, which didn’t bear examination afterward, was that they mistook the Airbus A300 for an Iranian F-14 Tomcat manoeuvring to attack.

George H. W. Bush commented on a separate occasion: “I will never apologise for the United States – I don’t care what the facts are… I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.” Trump seems to have caught the same disease. And, from the outside, the White House itself seems home to the sort of “murderous dictatorship” he describes.

The need to continually demonise Iran

When I say the West’s hatred of Iran, I mean primarily the US-UK-Israel axis. Ben Wallace, UK Defence Secretary filling in for Boris Johnson who had absented himself, has told Parliament: “In recent times Iran has felt its intentions are best served through… the use of subversion as a foreign policy tool. It has also shown a total disregard for human rights.” This is amusing coming from the British government and especially a Conservative one which adores Israel, the world’s foremost disregarder of human rights and international law.

Britain and America would like everyone to believe that hostilities with Iran began with the 1979 Islamic revolution. But you have to go back to the early 1950s for the root cause in America’s case, while Iranians have had to endure a whole century of British exploitation and bad behaviour. And the axis wants to keep this important slice of history from becoming part of public discourse. Here’s why.

In 1901 William Knox D’Arcy obtained from the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar a 60-year oil concession to three-quarters of the country. The Persian government would receive 16 percent of the oil company’s annual profits, a rotten deal as the Persians would soon realise.

D’Arcy, with financial support from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil, formed a company and sent an exploration team. Drilling failed to find oil in commercial quantities and by 1908 D’Arcy was almost bankrupt and on the point of giving up when they finally struck it big. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was up and running and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan.

Just before the outbreak of World War I Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, wished to convert the British fleet from coal. To secure a reliable oil source the British government took a major shareholding in Anglo-Persian.

In the 1920s and 1930s the company profited hugely from paying the Persians a miserly 16 percent and refusing to renegotiate terms. An angry Persia eventually canceled the D’Arcy agreement and the matter ended up at the Court of International Justice in The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement but still didn’t amount to a square deal for the Persians.

In 1935 Persia became known internationally by its other name, Iran, and Anglo-Persian changed to Anglo-Iranian Oil. By 1950 Abadan was the biggest oil refinery in the world and the British government, with its 51 percent holding, had effectively colonised part of southern Iran.

Iran’s tiny share of the profits had long soured relations and so did the company’s treatment of its oil workers. Six thousand went on strike in 1946 and the dispute was violently put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951 while Aramco was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis, Anglo-Iranian declared £40 million profit after tax and handed Iran only £7 million.

Iran by now wanted economic and political independence and an end to poverty. Calls for nationalisation could not be ignored. In March 1951 the Majlis and Senate voted to nationalise Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran’s oil industry since 1913 under terms frankly unfavourable to the host country. Social reformer Dr Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister by a 79 to 12 majority and promptly carried out his government’s wishes, canceling Anglo-Iranian’s oil concession and expropriating its assets.

His explanation was perfectly reasonable…

Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries… have yielded no results this far. With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease and backwardness among our people. Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.

M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525

For this he would be removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for three years then put under house arrest until his death.

Britain was determined to bring about regime change, so it orchestrated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran’s sterling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

America was reluctant at first to join Britain’s destructive game but Churchill (prime minister at this time) let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into Russia’s arms at a time when Cold War anxiety was high. That was enough to bring America’s new president, Dwight Eisenhower, onboard and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down.

Chief of the CIA’s Near East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt Jr, played the lead in a nasty game of provocation, mayhem and deception. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi signed two decrees, one dismissing Mossadeq and the other nominating the CIA’s choice, General Fazlollah Zahedi, as prime minister. These decrees were written as dictated by the CIA.

In August 1953, when it was judged safe for him to do so, the Shah returned to take over. Mossadeq was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah’s military court. He remarked:

My greatest sin is that I nationalised Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire… I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.

His supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed. Zahedi’s new government reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion’s share – 40 percent going to Anglo-Iranian. The consortium agreed to split profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but refused to open its books to Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

The US massively funded the Shah’s government, including his army and his hated secret police force, SAVAK. Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954. Mossadeq died on 5 March 1967.

The CIA-engineered coup that toppled Mossadeq, reinstated the Shah and let the American oil companies in, was the final straw for the Iranians. The British-American conspiracy backfired spectacularly 25 years later with the Islamic revolution of 1978/9, the humiliating 444-day hostage crisis in the American embassy and a tragically botched rescue mission.

Smoldering resentment for at least 70 years

And all this happened before the Iran-Iraq war when the West, especially the US, helped Iraq develop its armed forces and chemical weapons arsenal which were used against Iran. The US, and eventually Britain, leaned strongly towards Saddam in that conflict and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King, writing in 2003, summed it up:

The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam’s army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.

And while Iranian casualties were at their highest as a result of US chemical and biological war crimes, what was Trump doing? He was busy acquiring the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Trump Castle, his Taj-Mahal casino, the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan – oh, and he was refitting his super-yacht Trump Princess. What does he know, understand or care about Iran and the Iranian people today?

On the British side our prime minister, Boris Johnson, was at Oxford carousing with fellow Etonians at the Bullingdon Club. What does he know or care?

The present Iranian regime, like many others, may not be entirely to the West’s liking but neither was Mossadeq’s fledgling democracy nearly 70 years ago. If Britain and America had played fair and allowed the Iranians to determine their own future instead of using economic terrorism to bring the country to its knees, Iran might have been “the only democracy in the Middle East” today.

So hush! Don’t even mention the M-word: MOSSADEQ.

Come Home, America: Stop Policing the Globe and Put an End to Wars-Without-End

“Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.”

“The reach of America’s military empire includes close to 800 bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

This is how a military empire occupies the globe.”

“As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

Source

“Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves…. together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning. From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.”—George S. McGovern, former Senator and presidential candidate

I agree wholeheartedly with George S. McGovern, a former Senator and presidential candidate who opposed the Vietnam War, about one thing: I’m sick of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

It’s time to bring our troops home.

Bring them home from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany, South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. Bring them home from Niger, Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

That’s not what’s going to happen, of course.

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

Don’t fall for the propaganda, though: America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

The reach of America’s military empire includes close to 800 bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

Already, American military service people are being deployed to far-flung places in the Middle East and elsewhere in anticipation of the war drums being sounded over Iran.

This Iran crisis, salivated over by the neocons since prior to the Iraq War and manufactured by war hawks who want to jumpstart the next world war, has been a long time coming.

Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton: they all have done their part to ensure that the military industrial complex can continue to get rich at taxpayer expense.

Take President Trump, for instance.

Despite numerous campaign promises to stop America’s “endless wars,” once elected, Trump has done a complete about-face, deploying greater numbers of troops to the Middle East, ramping up the war rhetoric, and padding the pockets of defense contractors. Indeed, Trump is even refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in the face of a request from the Iraqi government for us to leave.

Obama was no different: he also pledged—if elected—to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce America’s oversized, and overly costly, military footprint in the world. Of course, that didn’t happen.

Pity the Nation: War Spending Is Bankrupting America

Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and now Iran) aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

War spending is bankrupting America.

Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.

Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.

That needs to change.

The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. military drone strike will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.

The war hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also blowback.

James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.

At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:

The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

We failed to heed his warning.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there’s not much time left before we reach the zero hour.

It’s time to stop policing the globe, end these wars-without-end, and bring the troops home before it’s too late.

*

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © John W. Whitehead, Global Research, 2020

The Middle East and the Rest of the World Are United in Struggle

Source

theantimedia.com

Written by Middle East Eye

By Oscar Rickett

November 10, 2019

(MEE Op-Ed) — Across the Middle East, people are protesting. They are tired and angry. They want to see something change.

“All of them means all of them,” protesters chant in Lebanon, calling for the removal of the political and economic elite. Central Beirut, an area that had been taken over by luxury stores, has been reclaimed by the people.

In Algeria, the power brokers known as “le pouvoir” are being resisted, even after the removal of longtime autocrat Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Sudan’s revolution, which began in the northern city of Atbara, a cradle of labour activism, also continues, as the end of Omar al-Bashir’s three-decade rule was not enough. Protesters want to see the dismantling of a violent and ruthless elite, now spearheaded by the militia leader and accused war criminal Hemeti.

Brink of Collapse

In Iraq, as oil production hits record levels, citizens are out on the streets risking their lives, with more than 100 killed and 6,000 wounded as the army cracked down on demonstrations in early October.

The money from the oil goes nowhere near them, of course: according to the UN, seven million Iraqis live below the poverty line, and one-fifth of Iraqi youth are unemployed, in a country whose majority is under the age of 24. Protesters in Iraq are described as being mostly young and unemployed, calling for jobs, electricity and water.

Elsewhere, young people who have grown up in the shadow of the financial crisis of 2007-8 have also come to the fore, often with the same demands: better public services, employment, housing, and some semblance of dignity and democracy.

The similarities between these protests are striking, despite national variations. The conditions driving protests in the Middle East are the same not just throughout the region, but across the world, where people are rising up against decades of neoliberalism, from Chile to Haiti to France.

Their demands are universal – employment, housing, democracy, freedom from poverty – and are driven by a political and economic system that has brought this world to the brink of political and environmental collapse.

This is important because of how the Middle East is so often viewed in the western media. It is a place apart, a benighted territory riven by sectarian conflict, barely comprehensible to outsiders without the help of well-paid analysts sitting in offices in Washington and London.

A game of divide-and-conquer can be played, in which the universal interests of the global majority can be twisted by the powerful few into a bewildering set of local grievances, relayed by analysts as if they were talking about a group of primates deep in the jungle or a school of fish in the outer reaches of the ocean.

Neoliberal Consensus

This kind of reasoning has often been deployed in the name of getting the peoples of the Middle East to accept the neoliberal consensus of the past four decades.

“You don’t understand,” they are told. “The market will set you free, these IMF-backed austerity measures are for your own good, the arrival of this large company paying subsistence wages is actually a great honour to your community. What do you mean, you don’t love the West? You love football, don’t you? You want to leave the ruined place you come from to arrive in the glittering towers of Europe and the US, surely?”

Migrants seeking a better life are often propelled to do so by neoliberalism, by the collaboration of international and local elites, which keeps them far from anything that could be called a good life.

The seductive facade of today’s capitalism – the flashing images of wealth, sex and fulfillment that fill the media – adds to this, providing the carrot, where the destruction of local economies is the stick. Yet, when migrants leave for Europe or North America, they encounter barbed-wire fences, hostile politicians and a climate of racism and exclusion.

This facade might finally be crumbling.

In Chile, a slogan has begun to define the protests: “Neoliberalism was born in Chile and will die in Chile.” Just as in Iraq, neoliberalism came to Chileans at the barrel of a gun, arriving with the CIA-backed coup that removed Salvador Allende from power in 1973. “The miracle of Chile” was the term used by Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism, to describe what dictator Augusto Pinochet did to his country’s economy.

Stark Choices Ahead

The Middle East, particularly Iraq, knows this kind of story all too well. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq came with the expressed blessing of a raft of multinational companies. Iraq and its oil were there to be taken, and its people would be collateral. People are always collateral.

These global protests have the same root causes. Thus far, sectarianism is being resisted, as the people hold to their common set of grievances. In the West, in Britain and the US, crucial elections are on the horizon.

The choices people face are stark as politics becomes more polarised. “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads; either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism,” Polish Marxist Rosa Luxemburg wrote in 1916. The phrase “socialism or barbarism” has come back into use as a way to describe the choice we face, not just as citizens of one particular nation but as people across a world facing political and environmental collapse.

A great deal of time, money and effort will be spent fighting this, but as resistance grows across the Middle East, we should know that this is not just the region’s fight – it is the world’s fight.

US Needs To Occupy Syria Because Of Kurds Or Iran Or Chemical Weapons Or Oil Or Whatever

Source

medium.com

Caitlin Johnstone

Nov 2, 2019

President Trump reiterated to the press today that the United States is maintaining its military presence in Syria not to patrol the nation’s border with Turkey, but to control its oil fields.

“We’ve kept the oil,” Trump said. “We’ve stayed back and kept the oil. Other people can patrol the border of Syria, frankly, and Turkey, let them — they’ve been fighting for a thousand years, let them do the border, we don’t want to do that. We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re keeping the oil. I like oil. We’re keeping the oil.”

This open “kick their ass and take their gas” policy is nothing new for America’s reality TV president; he’s been saying it for years. It was recently addressed head-on by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who said during an interview that it’s nice to have a US president who is honest about America’s true motives in the Middle East for once.

“As for Trump, you might ask me a question and I give you an answer that might sound strange,” Assad said. “I say that he is the best American President, not because his policies are good, but because he is the most transparent president. All American presidents perpetrate all kinds of political atrocities and all crimes and yet still win the Nobel Prize and project themselves as defenders of human rights and noble and unique American values, or Western values in general. The reality is that they are a group of criminals who represent the interests of American lobbies, i.e. the large oil and arms companies, and others. Trump talks transparently, saying that what we want is oil. This is the reality of American policy, at least since WWII. We want to get rid of such and such a person or we want to offer a service in return for money. This is the reality of American policy. What more do we need than a transparent opponent?”

Some establishment media chose to deliberately misinterpret Assad’s scathing criticism of US foreign policy as praise for Donald Trump, with The Hill tweeting out “Syrian President Assad praises Trump: He is ‘the best’ because he’s ‘most transparent president’”, and The Jerusalem Post running the headline “SYRIAN LEADER BASHAR ASSAD: DONALD TRUMP IS THE ‘BEST U.S. PRESIDENT’ — The Syrian leader, who allegedly committed war crimes against his own people to suppress public demands and win a bloody civil war, seemed to approve of Trump’s honesty.”

Many US foreign policy critics have been rightly attacking this administration’s open resource grab; if Russia had forcefully invaded a sovereign nation and seized its oil fields without permission the American political/media class would be shrieking hysterically and working to manufacture support for World War Three within minutes. Yet that is what American exceptionalism leads the empire to do without a second thought.

Assad’s comments mirror what I wrote more than a week ago (so please note that I’m not an Assadist — he’s a Caitlinist), but it’s important to point out that Trump’s oil narrative is just the latest in a long list of excuses that the US government and its apologists have been making to justify the illegal occupation of Syria.

We were told that the US must intervene in Syria because the Syrian government was massacring its people. We were told that the US must intervene in Syria in order to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East. We were told that the US must intervene in Syria because Assad used chemical weapons. We were told that the US must occupy Syria to fight ISIS. We were told that the US must continue to occupy Syria to counter Iranian influence. We were told the US must continue to occupy Syria to protect the Kurds. Now the US must continue to occupy Syria because of oil.

These wildly different reasons the public has been given for America’s need to forcibly insert a military presence into Syria all have only one thing in common, and that’s America forcibly inserting a military presence into Syria. This is because they are not reasons, but excuses. The US forcibly inserted a military presence into Syria with the full intention of keeping it there, and then started diddling a bunch of completely different narratives in order to justify the thing it already wanted to do long before any of those excuses arose.

For eight years we’ve been spoonfed an assortment of radically different narratives explaining why the US needs to control Syria militarily, and it turns out that the US and its allies have been plotting to control Syria since long before then. This is because Syria occupies an extremely geostrategically valuable location that is in no way limited to its oil fields. In 2004 Assad launched his “Five Seas Vision”, a plan to use Syria’s supreme location to place itself at the center of a regional energy and transportation system and become an economic superpower. The nation was then plunged into chaos seven years later, but whoever manages to secure control over this location will be able to achieve the same lucrative energy and transportation control for themselves. The dispute over pipeline routes that many have highlighted is just one small example of this. There’s also the illegally occupied Golan Heights which the extremely shady Genie Energy corporation has a vested interest in, and which provides a third of Israel’s water supply, and which the US has decided to officially regard as Israeli property.

So it’s a geostrategically crucial region, and it happens to have no interest at all in allowing itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, allying itself instead with the unabsorbed nations of Russia and Iran. This has made it the epicenter of a giant global imperialist struggle the implications of which stretch far beyond its borders to the rest of the world.

This is the real reason why half a million Syrians have died in an imperialist proxy war, and why many more Syrians continue to suffer under US-led sanctions and the deprivation of their nation’s valuable natural resources. Not because of humanitarianism, not because of democracy, not because of chemical weapons, not because of ISIS, not because of Iran, not because of Kurds, and not even really just because of oil, but because there’s a globe-spanning oligarchic empire to which Syria has refused to submit. Everything else is empty narrative.

Whenever you see anyone arguing for keeping troops in Syria that aren’t there with the permission of the Syrian government, this is all they’re really supporting: a campaign to annex a strategically valuable location into the US-centralized empire. This is true regardless of whatever reason they are offering for that support. And notice how all the different reasons we’ve been inundated with all appeal to different political sectors: the oil and Iran narratives appeal to rank-and-file Republicans, the humanitarian arguments appeal to liberals, and the Kurds narrative appeals to many leftists and anarchists like Noam Chomsky. But the end result is always the same: keeping military force in a location that the empire has long sought to absorb.

By providing many different narratives as to why the military presence must continue, the propagandists get us all arguing over which narratives are the correct ones rather than whether or not there should be an illegal military occupation of a sovereign nation at all. This is just one of many examples of how the incredibly shrinking Overton window of acceptable debate is used to keep us arguing not over whether the empire should be doing evil things, but how and why it should do them.

Don’t fall for it. It is not legitimate for the US empire to occupy Syria for any reason. At all. “Because oil” is not a legitimate reason. “Because Kurds” is not a legitimate reason. “Because ISIS” is not a legitimate reason. “Because Iran” is not a legitimate reason. “Because Russia” is not a legitimate reason. “Because freedom and democracy” is not a legitimate reason. “Because chemical weapons” is not a legitimate reason. And those who are driving this illegal occupation know it, which is why they keep shifting to whatever’s the most convenient narrative in any given moment.

_______________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

The Saudi Arabia Drone Attacks Have Changed Global Warfare

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Patrick Cockburn via The Unz Review,

Mon, 09/23/2019

 

The devastating attack on Saudi oil facilities by drones and missiles not only transforms the balance of military power in the Middle East, but marks a change in the nature of warfare globally.

On the morning of 14 September, 18 drones and seven cruise missiles – all cheap and unsophisticated compared to modern military aircraft – disabled half of Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production and raised the world price of oil by 20 per cent.

This happened despite the Saudis spending $67.6bn (£54bn) on their defence budget last year, much of it on vastly expensive aircraft and air defence systems, which notably failed to stop the attack. The US defence budget stands at $750bn (£600.2bn), and its intelligence budget at $85bn (£68bn), but the US forces in the Gulf did not know what was happening until it was all over.

Excuses advanced for this failure include the drones flying too low to be detected and unfairly coming from a direction different from the one that might have been expected. Such explanations sound pathetic when set against the proud boasts of the arms manufacturers and military commanders about the effectiveness of their weapons systems.

Debate is ongoing about whether it was the Iranians or the Houthis who carried out the attack, the likely answer being a combination of the two, but perhaps with Iranorchestrating the operation and supplying the equipment. But over-focus on responsibility diverts attention from a much more important development: a middle ranking power like Iran, under sanctions and with limited resources and expertise, acting alone or through allies, has inflicted crippling damage on theoretically much better-armed Saudi Arabia which is supposedly defended by the US, the world’s greatest military super-power.

If the US and Saudi Arabia are particularly hesitant to retaliate against Iran it is because they know now, contrary to what they might have believed a year ago, that a counter-attack will not be a cost-free exercise. What happened before can happen again: not for nothing has Iran been called a “drone superpower”. Oil production facilities and the desalination plants providing much of the fresh water in Saudi Arabia are conveniently concentrated targets for drones and small missiles.

In other words, the military playing field will be a lot more level in future in a conflict between a country with a sophisticated air force and air defence system and one without. The trump card for the US, Nato powers and Israel has long been their overwhelming superiority in airpower over any likely enemy. Suddenly this calculus has been undermined because almost anybody can be a player on the cheap when it comes to airpower.

Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, succinctly sums up the importance of this change, writing that “the strikes on Saudi Arabia provide a clear strategic warning that the US era of air supremacy in the Gulf, and the near US monopoly on precision strike capability, is rapidly fading.” He explains that a new generation of drones, cruise missiles, and precision strike ballistic missiles are entering the Iranian inventories and have begun to spread to the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Similar turning points in military history have occurred when the deployment of an easily produced weapon suddenly checkmates the use of a more complicated one.

A good example of this was the attack on 11 November 1940, on five Italian battleships, moored at their base at Taranto by 20 slow moving but sturdy British Swordfish biplanes, armed with torpedoes and launched from an aircraft carrier. At the end of the day, three of the battleships had been sunk or badly damaged while only two of the British planes were missing. The enormity of the victory achieved at such minimal cost ended the era when battleships ruled the sea and replaced them with one in which aircraft carriers with torpedo/bomber were supreme. It was a lesson noted by the Japanese navy which attacked Pearl Harbour in similar fashion a year after Taranto.

The Saudis showed off the wreckage of the drones and missiles to assembled diplomats and journalists this week in a bid to convince them that the Iranians were behind the air raid. But the most significant feature of the broken drone and missile parts was that, in full working order, the weapons that had just rocked the world economy would not have cost a lot. By way of contrast, the US-made Patriot anti-aircraft missiles, the main air defence of Saudi Arabia that were so useless last Saturday, cost $3m (£2.4bn) apiece.

Cost and simplicity are important because they mean that Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah and almost any country can produce drones and missiles in numbers large enough to overwhelm any defences they are likely to meet.

Compare the cost of the drone which would be in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to the $122m (£97.6m) price of a single F-35 fighter, so expensive that it can only be purchased in limited numbers. As they take on board the meaning of what happened at Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities, governments around the world will be demanding that their air force chiefs explain why they need to spend so much money when cheap but effective alternatives are available. Going by past precedent, the air chiefs and arms manufacturers will fight to their last breath for grossly inflated budgets to purchase weapons of dubious utility in a real war.

The attack on Saudi Arabia reinforces a trend in warfare in which inexpensive easily acquired weapons come out on top. Consider the track record of the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), usually made out of easily available fertiliser, detonated by a command wire, and planted in or beside a road. These were used with devastating effect by the IRA in South Armagh, forcing the British Army off the roads and into helicopters.

IEDs were used in great numbers and with great effect against US-led coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Immense resources were deployed by the US military into finding a counter to this deadly device, which included spending no less than $40bn (£32bn) on 27,000 heavily armoured vehicles called MRAPs. A subsequent army study revealed that that the number of US servicemen killed and wounded in an attack on an MRAP was exactly the same as in the vehicles which they had replaced.

It is unthinkable that American, British and Saudi military chiefs will accept that they command expensive, technically advanced forces that are obsolete in practice. This means they are stuck with arms that suck up resources but are, in practical terms, out of date. The Japanese, soon after they had demonstrated at Pearl Harbour the vulnerability of battleships, commissioned the world’s largest battleship, the Yamato, which fired its guns only once and was sunk in 1945 by US torpedo aircraft and bombers operating from aircraft carriers.

Washington’s Iran policy is backstreet thuggery masquerading as statecraft

There is only so much hypocrisy the world can be expected to take when it comes to the extent to which Washington and its allies assert the right to operate on the basis of ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’

Source

http://www.rt.com

John Wight

John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal.

Published time: 19 Sep, 2019

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, November 20, 2018, Washington, DC. © Getty Images / Mark Wilson

The war drums beating in Washington, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv when it comes to Iran have not been this loud since the lead-up to the war in Iraq in 2003.

“An act of war,” Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, proclaimed upon arriving in Saudi Arabia on a ‘working visit,’ a visit that will be largely if not solely taken up with discussions over what form the response to the missile strike against key Saudi oil installations on September 14 should take.

Pompeo’s bombastic pronouncement followed the trend set by his boss in the immediate aftermath of the attack. In one of his by now customary sabre-rattling tweets that do much to bring the English language into disrepute, Trump announced:

“Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!”

Tehran has been implicated but denies any involvement or responsibility for the attack, while the Houthi rebels, engaged against the Saudis and their allies in a protracted conflict in Yemen, have claimed responsibility. Said Houthis, it should be pointed out, have carried out drone and missile strikes against strategic targets in the kingdom before, so it is conceivable that their claim to have been responsible for this attack carries with it the ring of truth.

ALSO ON RT.COMNew sales pitch? US makes the world’s ‘finest’ anti-air systems, but sometimes they just don’t work, Pompeo explains

Regardless of who was or wasn’t behind this missile and drone strike, against what is the largest oil processing facility in the world, it was an outstanding success militarily and, arguably, strategically.

It has exposed the weakness of the Saudis’ military defences, despite Riyadh spending huge amounts on weaponry, military equipment, and expertise from its US and UK allies in particular over the years, along with the vulnerability of the kingdom’s economic infrastructure.

More significantly, with the consequences of the attack reverberating beyond the region to produce a temporary spike in the price of crude on global markets, the attack shines an incredibly harsh light on the reckless policy the Trump administration has been pursuing when it comes to Iran.

With the economic noose that’s been placed by Washington around Iran’s neck and the dagger at its throat in the form of substantial US, British, and Israeli military assets deployed within striking distance of its territory, and with the Saudis adopting such an aggressive posture against the Islamic Republic, of course it does.

Yes, the Iranians have no doubt been supplying the Houthis with weaponry and no doubt also the expertise in how to use them in their conflict against the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. What of it? Have the Saudis not supplied opposition groups in Syria with weapons? Have the British and Americans not been supplying the Saudis with weaponry and military expertise in support of its four-year-long and counting war in Yemen? And have those weapons not been responsible for killing thousands of civilians in that benighted and forsaken land?

ALSO ON RT.COMSaudi air defenses like Patriot & Aegis don’t match their advertised properties, unfit for real combat – Russian Army (MAP)

There is only so much hypocrisy the world can be expected to take when it comes to the extent to which Washington and its allies assert the right to operate on the basis of ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’

Though Trump had recently begun to show signs of a return to some kind of sanity when it came to Iran, talking up the possibility of talking to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, he remains a prisoner of a neocon establishment in Washington and his own dysfunctional approach to foreign policy.

As with North Korea, as with Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and China (the list goes on), the notion that sanctions and tariffs can precede meaningful dialogue with a view to the normalisation of relations is not only absurd, it reduces statecraft to an exercise in backstreet thuggery.

Economic sanctions are a blunt instrument and a weapon of war in themselves. Indeed when it comes to Iran, to assert that they are ‘hurting’, as Trump so blithely put it not too long ago vis-à-vis the impact of US sanctions, this is to violate the bounds of understatement.

Since Trump drove a coach and horses through the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) in 2015, and for no other reason than his personal antipathy towards Obama, Iran’s oil exports have fallen by half. In the process, its currency has slumped and the price of basic foods have spiked, producing extreme hardship among a vast swathe of the population.

With the aforementioned military pressure Iran has come under added to the economic crisis which the country’s been plunged into, only the most rotten-minded could conceivably lay responsibility for the present uptick in regional tensions at Tehran’s door.

ALSO ON RT.COMTehran will commit to ‘all-out war’ if Iran is targeted by military strike, FM Zarif warns

Something’s got to give. Just as you can only apply so much pressure to a man’s throat before he kicks you in the shins, you can only asphyxiate a country of 80 million people so much before it strikes back. This is why I say that whether or not the Iranians were behind this attack, given all the circumstances, it wouldn’t be surprising if they were.

So, yes, the drumbeats of war are beating as loud as they ever have when it comes to a region that has become sadly all too used to the beat of those drums. However in this instance the Saudis and the Americans, and possibly Mr Netanyahu, know that escalation would be self-defeating in the extreme.

Iran is a hugely different proposition in 2019 than Iraq was in 2003. It possesses the ability and the will to do serious damage to anyone who would dare make the mistake of confusing the size of the dog in the fight with the size of the fight in the dog.

Whatever the outcome to this crisis, on its current course, there will be no winners, only losers.

Escobar: How The Houthis Overturned The Chessboard

“President Putin: As for assisting Saudi Arabia, it is also written in the Quran that violence of any kind is illegitimate except when protecting one’s people. In order to protect them and the country, we are ready to provide the necessary assistance to Saudi Arabia. All the political leaders of Saudi Arabia have to do is take a wise decision, as Iran did by buying the S-300 missile system, and as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did when he bought Russia’s latest S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft system. They would offer reliable protection for any Saudi infrastructure facilities.”

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

Thu, 09/19/2019

 

The Yemeni Shiite group’s spectacular attack on Abqaiq raises the distinct possibility of a push to drive the House of Saud from power

A Yemeni Shiite man holds his weapon and a flag with an Arabic inscription reading ‘Disgrace is far from us,’ as he takes part in a religious procession held by Houthi rebels to mark the first day of Ashura. Photo: Hani Al-Ansi/dpa

We are the Houthis and we’re coming to town. With the spectacular attack on Abqaiq, Yemen’s Houthis have overturned the geopolitical chessboard in Southwest Asia – going as far as introducing a whole new dimension: the distinct possibility of investing in a push to drive the House of Saud out of power.

Blowback is a bitch. Houthis – Zaidi Shiites from northern Yemen – and Wahhabis have been at each other’s throats for ages. This book is absolutely essential to understand the mind-boggling complexity of Houthi tribes; as a bonus, it places the turmoil in southern Arabian lands way beyond a mere Iran-Saudi proxy war.

Still, it’s always important to consider that Arab Shiites in the Eastern province – working in Saudi oil installations – have got to be natural allies of the Houthis fighting against Riyadh.

Houthi striking capability – from drone swarms to ballistic missile attacks – has been improving remarkably for the past year or so. It’s not by accident that the UAE saw which way the geopolitical and geoeconomic winds were blowing: Abu Dhabi withdrew from Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s vicious war against Yemen and now is engaged in what it describes as a  “peace-first” strategy.

Even before Abqaiq, the Houthis had already engineered quite a few attacks against Saudi oil installations as well as Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports. In early July, Yemen’s Operations Command Center staged an exhibition in full regalia in Sana’a featuring their whole range of ballistic and winged missiles and drones.

The Saudi Ministry of Defense displays drones and parts from missiles used in the refinery attack.

The situation has now reached a point where there’s plenty of chatter across the Persian Gulf about a spectacular scenario: the Houthis investing in a mad dash across the Arabian desert to capture Mecca and Medina in conjunction with a mass Shiite uprising in the Eastern oil belt. That’s not far-fetched anymore. Stranger things have happened in the Middle East. After all, the Saudis can’t even win a bar brawl – that’s why they rely on mercenaries.

Orientalism strikes again

The US intel refrain that the Houthis are incapable of such a sophisticated attack betrays the worst strands of orientalism and white man’s burden/superiority complex.

The only missile parts shown by the Saudis so far come from a Yemeni Quds 1 cruise missile. According to Brigadier General Yahya Saree, spokesman for the Sana’a-based Yemeni Armed Forces, “the Quds system proved its great ability to hit its targets and to bypass enemy interceptor systems.”

This satellite overview handout image from the US government shows damage to oil/gas infrastructure from weekend drone attacks at Abqaiq.

Houthi armed forces duly claimed responsibility for Abqaiq: “This operation is one of the largest operations carried out by our forces in the depth of Saudi Arabia, and came after an accurate intelligence operation and advance monitoring and cooperation of honorable and free men within the Kingdom.”

Notice the key concept: “cooperation” from inside Saudi Arabia – which could include the whole spectrum from Yemenis to that Eastern province Shiites.

Even more relevant is the fact that massive American hardware deployed in Saudi Arabia inside out and outside in – satellites, AWACS, Patriot missiles, drones, battleships, jet fighters – didn’t see a thing, or certainly not in time. The sighting of three “loitering” drones by a Kuwaiti bird hunter arguably heading towards Saudi Arabia is being invoked as “evidence”. Cue to the embarrassing picture of a drone swarm – wherever it came from – flying undisturbed for hours over Saudi territory.

UN officials openly admit that now everything that matters is within the 1,500 km range of the Houthis’ new UAV-X drone: oil fields in Saudi Arabia, a still-under-construction nuclear power plant in the Emirates and Dubai’s mega-airport.

My conversations with sources in Tehran over the past two years have ascertained that the Houthis’ new drones and missiles are essentially copies of Iranian designs assembled in Yemen itself with crucial help from Hezbollah engineers.

US intel insists that 17 drones and cruise missiles were launched in combination from southern Iran. In theory, Patriot radar would have picked that up and knocked the drones/missiles from the sky. So far, absolutely no record of this trajectory has been revealed. Military experts generally agree that the radar on the Patriot missile is good, but its success rate is “disputed” – to say the least. What’s important, once again, is that the Houthis do have advanced offensive missiles. And their pinpoint accuracy at Abqaiq was uncanny.

This satellite overview handout image shows damage to oil/gas infrastructure from weekend drone attacks at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia. Courtesy of Planet Labs Inc

For now, it appears that the winner of the US/UK-supported House of One Saudi war on the civilian Yemeni population, which started in March 2015 and generated a humanitarian crisis the UN regards as having been of biblical proportions, is certainly not the crown prince, widely known as MBS.

Listen to the general

Crude oil stabilization towers – several of them – at Abqaiq were specifically targeted, along with natural gas storage tanks. Persian Gulf energy sources have been telling me repairs and/or rebuilding could last months. Even Riyadh admitted as much.

Blindly blaming Iran, with no evidence, does not cut it. Tehran can count on swarms of top strategic thinkers. They do not need or want to blow up Southwest Asia, which is something they could do, by the way: Revolutionary Guards generals have already said many times on the record that they are ready for war.

Professor Mohammad Marandi from the University of Tehran, who has very close relations with the Foreign Ministry, is adamant: “It didn’t come from Iran. If it did, it would be very embarrassing for the Americans, showing they are unable to detect a large number of Iranian drones and missiles. That doesn’t make sense.”

Marandi additionally stresses, “Saudi air defenses are not equipped to defend the country from Yemen but from Iran. The Yemenis have been striking against the Saudis, they are getting better and better, developing drone and missile technology for four and a half years, and this was a very soft target.”

A soft – and unprotected – target: the US PAC-2 and PAC-3 systems in place are all oriented towards the east, in the direction of Iran. Neither Washington nor Riyadh knows for sure where the drone swarm/missiles really came from.

Readers should pay close attention to this groundbreaking interview with General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force. The interview, in Farsi (with English subtitles), was conducted by US-sanctioned Iranian intellectual Nader Talebzadeh and includes questions forwarded by my US analyst friends Phil Giraldi and Michael Maloof and myself.

Explaining Iranian self-sufficiency in its defense capabilities, Hajizadeh sounds like a very rational actor. The bottom line:

“Our view is that neither American politicians nor our officials want a war. If an incident like the one with the drone [the RQ-4N shot down by Iran in June] happens or a misunderstanding happens, and that develops into a larger war, that’s a different matter. Therefore we are always ready for a big war.”

In response to one of my questions, on what message the Revolutionary Guards want to convey, especially to the US, Hajizadeh does not mince his words: “In addition to the US bases in various regions like Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Emirates and Qatar, we have targeted all naval vessels up to a distance of 2,000 kilometers and we are constantly monitoring them. They think that if they go to a distance of 400 km, they are out of our firing range. Wherever they are, it only takes one spark, we hit their vessels, their airbases, their troops.”

Get your S-400s or else

On the energy front, Tehran has been playing a very precise game under pressure – selling loads of oil by turning off the transponders of their tankers as they leave Iran and transferring the oil at sea, tanker to tanker, at night, and relabeling their cargo as originating at other producers for a price. I have been checking this for weeks with my trusted Persian Gulf traders – and they all confirm it. Iran could go on doing it forever.

Of course, the Trump administration knows it. But the fact is they are looking the other way. To state it as concisely as possible: they are caught in a trap by the absolute folly of ditching the JCPOA, and they are looking for a face-saving way out. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned the administration in so many words: the US should return to the agreement it reneged on before it’s too late.

And now for the really hair-raising part.

The strike at Abqaiq shows that the entire Middle East production of over 18 million barrels of oil a day – including Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – can be easily knocked out. There is zero adequate defense against these drones and missiles.

Well, there’s always Russia.

Here’s what happened at the press conference after the Ankara summit this week on Syria, uniting Presidents Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan.

Question: Will Russia provide Saudi Arabia with any help or support in restoring its infrastructure?

President Putin: As for assisting Saudi Arabia, it is also written in the Quran that violence of any kind is illegitimate except when protecting one’s people. In order to protect them and the country, we are ready to provide the necessary assistance to Saudi Arabia. All the political leaders of Saudi Arabia have to do is take a wise decision, as Iran did by buying the S-300 missile system, and as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did when he bought Russia’s latest S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft system. They would offer reliable protection for any Saudi infrastructure facilities.

President Hassan Rouhani: So do they need to buy the S-300 or the S-400?

President Vladimir Putin: It is up to them to decide [laughs].

In The Transformation of War, Martin van Creveld actually predicted that the whole industrial-military-security complex would come crumbling down when it was exposed that most of its weapons are useless against fourth-generation asymmetrical opponents. There’s no question the whole Global South is watching – and will have gotten the message.

Hybrid war, reloaded

Now we are entering a whole new dimension in asymmetric hybrid war.

In the – horrendous – event that Washington would decide to attack Iran, egged on by the usual neocon suspects, the Pentagon could never hope to hit and disable all the Iranian and/or Yemeni drones. The US could expect, for sure, all-out war. And then no ships would sail through the Strait of Hormuz. We all know the consequences of that.

Which brings us to The Big Surprise. The real reason there would be no ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz is that there would be no oil in the Gulf left to pump. The oil fields, having been bombed, would be burning.

So we’re back to the realistic bottom line, which has been stressed by not only Moscow and Beijing but also Paris and Berlin: US President Donald Trump gambled big time, and he lost. Now he must find a face-saving way out. If the War Party allows it.

Uncle Sam Scapegoats Iran

Source

sputniknews.com

by Finian Cunningham

18.09.2019

© REUTERS / Morteza Nikoubazl

Following the devastating airstrikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, US Vice President Mike Pence flexed his tough-talking muscles, vowing that his country is “ready to defend our interests and allies… make no mistake about it.”

Don’t you think the assurance is a bit late? Saudi Arabia – a historic and key ally of Washington – had its entire oil production knocked out by 50 per cent last weekend when it came under aerial attack. Global markets were rattled over possible critical fuel shortages as the world’s biggest exporter of crude oil might not recover full production for weeks.

So, Pence’s stern words of being “ready to defend” certainly ring a bit hollow, if not rather farcical. If Washington was indeed on sentry duty for the Middle East, as it has appointed itself to do decades ago, why weren’t the airstrikes on Saudi Arabia’s vital oil industry intercepted to prevent the havoc wreaked?

We are not talking here about some remote oil field or installation. The infrastructure targeted for massive damage was at the very heart of Saudi’s oil industry. The Abqaiq refinery and processing plant is where up to 70 per cent of all Saudi crude is prepared for export. It is said to be the biggest crude oil processing plant in the world. And it is near to other vital refining and shipping facilities in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province adjacent to the Persian Gulf.

The Yemeni Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the air raids last weekend, which also targeted a major oil field at Khurais, located in Eastern Province, not far from the Abqaiq processing plant. The Houthis said the blitz was conducted with 10 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The distance covered from Yemen is nearly 1,000 kms. It is thought that the Yemeni rebels have developed drones capable of reaching up to 1,500 kms. What’s more, they have threatened that all key Saudi oil infrastructure is vulnerable to future attacks.

Potentially, a new wave of airstrikes from Yemen using more sophisticated drone models could bring the Saudi rulers to their knees from their oil economy being decimated.

What must be deeply troubling for the Saudis is that their lifeline oil economy seems to be defenceless – despite having spent hundreds of billions of dollars on US anti-missile systems. Months after Donald Trump took office in early 2017, recall how he boasted about the Saudis buying over $100 billion in Pentagon weaponry.

That’s why VP Mike Pence’s stirring words of “defending allies” sound ridiculous.

It also suggests that’s why US intelligence and military officials are hurriedly trying to blame Iran for carrying out the latest attacks. If the rag-tag Houthi rebels from war-torn Yemen can penetrate US-backed air defences to demolish Saudi oil infrastructure, then American anti-missile technology is more over-rated and much worse in practice than many had already suspected.

President Trump has been a little more circumspect about blaming Iran for the air assaults, but senior administration officials like Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper have come out forcefully claiming that Iran is responsible. Iran denies any involvement and says that the US is “in denial” about the fact that the Yemenis are capable and entitled to defend themselves in a more-than-four-year military operation launched on their country by the US-backed Saudi military coalition in March 2015.

US intelligence and military sources are briefing American media outlets that the airstrikes were carried out with drones and cruise missiles fired from southwest Iran. No evidence has been presented, as usual from these anonymous and faceless US spooks; the only “evidence” so far are satellite images of the damaged oil installations. Those images are far from conclusive. The attacks could have come from the southerly direction of Yemen.

But here’s the thing. If drones and cruises missiles were launched from  Iran, as the US is claiming, then their flight path would have come within close range of the American Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters base in Bahrain which is near to Saudi’s Eastern Province and its oil infrastructure.

The US Fifth Fleet is responsible for “securing” the entire Middle East and in particular the strategically important Persian Gulf waterway where a third of all globally shipped oil is daily transported. It is the world’s premier chokepoint for oil trade.

Is it really plausible that a swarm of drones and cruise missiles allegedly transiting from Iran across the Gulf within a few hundred kilometres of the US Fifth Fleet – with all its warships, radar, satellite and detection technology bristling – were not detected in flight heading for Saudi Arabia?

If Iranian drones and missiles were detected then we can be sure US officials would be blaring the information, categorically pinpointing the incriminating evidence. As it is, American officials and their intelligence sources are so far peddling vague accusations against Iran based on dubious satellite images.

That suggests that Iran’s denials are credible and that the Houthis’ version of events is closer to the truth. They hit Saudi Arabia’s “crown jewels” and the Saudis’ supposed protector, the US, could do nothing about it.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

What You’re Not Being Told About the Saudi Oil Attack

Source

TheMindUnleashed.com

DARIUS SHAHTAHMASEBI

SEP 16, 2019 

The media is again insisting that we rely on anonymous statements from military officials to justify war.

(TMU Op-Ed) — Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq refinery, the largest oil processing facility in the world, and the Khurais oil field were reportedly attacked by a barrage of cruise missiles and drone strikes on Saturday.

Not surprisingly, United States President Donald Trump warned that the U.S. is “locked and loaded” to respond to the attack, but insisted that he was still waiting to verify who was responsible. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo immediately rushed to blame Iran, even while Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack. A Saudi military spokesman said the initial investigation suggests “Iranian weapons” were used.

Dan Tsubouchi@Energy_Tidbits

Thx @the_Jeff_Jones f/ alerting to breaking news reported by @JavierBlas. US govt releases satellite pics showing direct hits on critical spheroids use to treat the crude. We think this is a mths fix, not days/weeks. Oil going up even higher. #OOTT https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1173335681508237314?s=09 …

Javier Blas

✔@JavierBlas

BREAKING: U.S. government releases satellite pictures showing the surgical strike against the Saudi oil facility of Abqaiq — direct hits on the critical spheroids used to treat the crude | #OOTT #SaudiArabia Here’s our latest update, with @nayrazz https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-15/saudis-race-to-restore-oil-output-after-crippling-aramco-attack?srnd=premium-europe …

22

2:17 PM – Sep 15, 2019

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On Sunday, the U.S. issued satellite images and cited intelligence as proof of Iran’s culpability. According to an unnamed U.S. official, Iran launched nearly a dozen cruise missiles and over 20 drones from its territory in order to carry out the attack.

However, some officials have contradicted this, stating instead that the attack likely came from Iran or Iraq.

Joyce Karam

✔@Joyce_Karam

BREAKING: US Officials tell Fox News (after ABC) that attack on Aramco #Saudi came from #Iran soil / territory.

If true, this is a whole different situation now. Raises stakes of response, culpability. Pompeo expected to release more evidence https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status/1173607215279857670 …

Lucas Tomlinson

✔@LucasFoxNews

Cruise missile and drone attack that hit two oil installations in Saudi Arabia came from Iranian soil: U.S. officials

250

7:44 AM – Sep 16, 2019

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Iraq categorically denied any involvement after an anonymous Iraqi intelligence official told Middle East Eye that the strikes were launched from Iraqi territory and were in retaliation for Saudi-funded Israeli drone strikes in August on Iranian-trained forces in Syria.

While Iran has denied the accusations, the country has threatened that it is ready for war if need be.

One senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander even told Tasnim that “everybody should know that all American bases and their aircraft carriers in a distance of up to 2000km around Iran are within the range of our missiles.”

Understandably, this recent attack has sent a shockwave through the global oil markets, cutting oil supplies by five percent as global oil prices surged more than ever before.

According to the Joint Organizations Data Initiative, as of this time last year, Saudi Arabian oil production averaged 10.7 million barrels a day, of which 7.43 million were exported.

We must ask ourselves how—while under the watchful eye of the world’s leading military superpower—was it possible for the world’s largest oil processing facility to be targeted so heavily and in such dramatic fashion?

As stated by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “protecting Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades” as “providing security for the oil-rich Persian Gulf region has been a U.S. priority since World War II.”

The Brookings Institution further argues that deterring Iran’s ability to encroach on Saudi oil fields is one of the main reasons for a continued American military presence in the region. To that end, the U.S. even provides Saudi terminals with sophisticated U.S.-made Hawk surface-to-air missiles.

According to an estimate by Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), the U.S. spends approximately $81 billion a year protecting oil supplies around the world. This calculation is allegedly on the conservative side, as it doesn’t include the full costs to “protect” oil fields in Iraq, for example.

This time last year, the U.S. president launched one of his infamous Twitter tirades in which he claimed the US was protecting countries in the Middle East all the while those same countries push for “higher and higher oil prices.” It is hard to imagine he could have meant anyone besides Saudi Arabia.

Bearing in mind that, not too long ago, the U.S. deployed 500 troops to the Kingdom for the first time since 2003 as a show of strength in Washington’s spat with Iran.

With so much support, even if the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were unable to deter or defend from such an attack, surely they would have at least have evidence of how it was perpetrated. And if that evidence does indeed exist, why was it not quickly presented in lieu of crying “Iran” (which is starting to sound a lot like crying “wolf”).

A handful of photos and anonymous statements are not going to cut it this time around.

Why is the U.S. government so sure that Iran was behind the attack and not the more likely culprit—the Houthi rebels who are currently locked in a brutal and deadly conflict with the Kingdom? After all, even the New York Times notes that Houthi drones have a range of nearly 1,000 miles, which give them the capability to strike Saudi territory.

In fact, the spokesman for the Houthi-allied Yemeni army, Brigadier General Yahya Saree recently told MintPress News, of a “new missile” and that vital targets within Saudi Arabia will be focused on.

MintPress reports that during a test, “Yemen’s Houthi-allied army launched a ballistic missile attack on a yet-unidentified military position in Saudi Arabia’s eastern Dammam province. The strike was the first time the Houthis or their allied forces stuck eastern Saudi Arabia, and the missile is reported to have traveled nearly 800 miles to reach its target. Dammam is a major oil export hub and houses several major companies including Saudi Aramco.”

According to Saree, the launching of the long-range ballistic missile was “a new and practical test of the Yemeni missile force.”

Notably, this attack appears to coincide with the inevitable departure of ruthless Iran-hawk John Bolton, and just three days before Israel’s election. If there was ever a time to ensure that the U.S. foreign policy establishment never takes off the table the threat of force against Iran, it would be now.

Sven Henrich

✔@NorthmanTrader

Iran: We didn’t do it.
Yemen’s Houthis: We did it
US: Iran did it.

1,077

6:11 AM – Sep 16, 2019

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This is not to say that Iran couldn’t have carried out the attack—it may very well have done so. But the evidence being pushing by U.S. mainstream media is lacking and, as stated previously, a handful of photos and anonymous claims are not sufficient.

After a maximum pressure campaign of crippling sanctions, constant threats of war and a handful of “mysterious” strikes targeting Iranian-backed forces in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, perhaps Iran really has had enough. Perhaps Iran has decided to take matters into its own hands and respond militarily against vital U.S. interests.

We cannot rule out the possibility, but until we know the truth it is best not to speculate, given how high the stakes are.

In the meantime, despite the presence of U.S. troops and intelligence on the ground, the media is again insisting that we must rely on anonymous statements from military officials to justify our militaristic conclusions.

Recent history tells us that this is probably not a good idea.

U.S. Prepares To Strike Iran As The Middle East Braces For World War 3 To Erupt

U.S. Prepares To Strike Iran As The Middle East Braces For World War 3 To Erupt

endoftheamericandream.com

by Michael Snyder

Sept 15, 2019

President Trump is using the phrase “locked and loaded” to describe our current stance toward Iran, and the big news networks appear to believe that some sort of U.S. military action could be imminent.  We just witnessed the worst attack on Saudi oil production facilities in history, and it would seem to be extremely unlikely that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia would allow this to pass with no response.  Houthi rebels in Yemen have publicly taken responsibility for the attacks, but as you will see below, U.S. officials have already completely rejected that explanation for a variety of reasons.  At this point, we are being told that the attacks probably originated either from Iranian-backed Shia rebels in southern Iraq or from Iran itself.  And if the U.S. strikes back by conducting airstrikes inside Iran, that could literally cause World War 3 to erupt.  We are so close to a major war breaking out, but most Americans are still not paying attention.

President Trump certainly sounds like he is ready to take military action.  On Sunday, he tweeted the following…

Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!

Is it just me, or does that make it sound like we will strike whoever the Saudis blame for the attack?

That is potentially very dangerous, because the Saudis seriously hate the Iranians, and there are many in the Saudi government that would like nothing more than for the U.S. military to bomb the living daylights out of Iran.

And as CNN has noted, the “locked and loaded” language that Trump just used is very similar to the “cocked & loaded” language that he used when we came within minutes of bombing Iran back in June…

Trump’s tweet, which appeared to raise the specter of a US military response, served to ratchet up tensions in a region already on edge after Saturday’s audacious attack on the Saudi oil field.

Trump used similar language in June when he announced he had called off an attack on Iran just as the US was “cocked & loaded” to strike because he decided it would cause too many deaths for a proportionate response to Tehran’s downing of a US drone.

So what would a U.S. attack on Iran look like?

Well, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham has suggested hitting Iran’s oil refineries…

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said the United States should consider an attack on Iran’s oil refineries in retaliation.

Senator Graham, a strong ally of President Trump, tweeted: “It is now time for U.S. to put on the table an attack on Iranian oil refineries if they continue their provocations or increase nuclear enrichment.”

President Trump would probably like that because it is “proportional”, and if the attack is conducted at night the loss of life would likely be minimal.

But of course if the Iranians responded by hitting U.S. targets in the region, that could potentially set off a sequence of events that would inevitably lead to World War 3.

So let us hope it does not come to that.

As I mentioned above, Houthi rebels in Yemen actually took responsibility for the attacks on Saturday, but U.S. officials are skeptical of that explanation for a number of reasons.  The following comes from CNN…

The official said 19 Saudi targets were struck in Saturday’s attack and argued that such an attack could not be carried out with 10 drones, which the Houthis claimed to have used.

“You can’t hit 19 targets with 10 drones like that,” the official said.

The official, drawing on commercial satellite imagery shared with CNN, also noted that “all the points of impact on Saudi facilities were on the northwest side of them, which is somewhat difficult to do from Yemen.”

Of course, drones don’t have to fly in a straight line, and it would have been entirely possible for someone to maneuver them in such a way that they would have approached the facilities from a certain direction.

U.S. officials are also telling us that instead of drones, cruise missiles may have actually been used instead…

The U.S. official, who asked not to be named, said there were 19 points of impact in the attack on Saudi facilities and that evidence showed the launch area was west-northwest of the targets – the direction of Iran – not south from Yemen.

The official added that Saudi officials had indicated they had seen signs that cruise missiles were used in the attack, which is inconsistent with the Iran-aligned Houthi group’s claim that it conducted the attack with 10 drones.

In the end, we may never know the exact truth about where these attacks originated or what precise weapons were used.

The Iranians have completely denied responsibility, but if they are attacked they insist that they are prepared for a “full-fledged” war, and they are warning that all U.S. targets within 2,000 kilometers “are within the range of our missiles”…

Amirali Hajizadeh, head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force, warned that US military bases were within range of Iranian missiles.

He told Tasnim news agency: ‘Everybody should know that all American bases and their aircraft carriers in a distance of up to 2,000km around Iran are within the range of our missiles.’

Yes, the Iranians have anti-ship missiles that are fully capable of sinking a U.S. aircraft carrier, and if they did that the U.S. public would never be satisfied until U.S. troops were occupying Tehran.

Of course it would take the full power of the entire U.S. military to conduct such a war, and the Iranians and their allies would hit use with literally everything that they have got.

As Lawrence Korb told Al Jazeera, it would be “a very, very violent conflict”…

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Lawrence Korb, former US Assistant Defense Secretary, said the last thing Trump wants is a conflict with Iran.

“If we would attack Iran, then we would have a very, very violent conflict that would spread throughout the whole Gulf,” he said.

I hardly ever agree with anything that is said on Al Jazeera, but in this case Lawrence Korb is precisely correct.

Such a war would draw in the entire Middle East, it would be the deadliest war the world has seen since World War 2, and it would set the stage for things that most Americans don’t want to think about.

So let’s hope that a peaceful way out of this crisis can be found.

Unfortunately, that appears to be less likely than ever.

Hopefully I am wrong, but military action appears to be imminent, and the situation in the Middle East is about to dramatically shift in a major way.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

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.

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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

Escobar: How Tehran Fits Into Russia-China Strategy

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

Tue, 08/13/2019

 

Complex doesn’t even begin to describe the positioning of Iran-Russia in the geopolitical chessboard. What’s clear in our current, volatile moment is that they’re partners, as I previously reported. Although not strategic partners, as in the Russia-China tie-up, Russia-China-Iran remain the crucial triad in the ongoing, multi-layered, long-term Eurasia integration process.

A few days after our Asia Times report, an article – based on “senior sources close to the Iranian regime” and crammed with fear-mongering, baseless accusations of corruption and outright ignorance about key military issues – claimed that Russia would turn the Iranian ports of Bandar Abbas and Chabahar into forward military bases complete with submarines, Spetsnaz special forces and Su-57 fighter jets, thus applying a “stranglehold” to the Persian Gulf.

For starters, “senior sources close to the Iranian regime” would never reveal such sensitive national-security details, much less to Anglo-American foreign media. In my own case, even though I have made several visits to Iran while consistently reporting on Iran for Asia Times, and even though authorities at myriad levels know where I’m coming from, I have not managed to get answers from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals to 16 detailed questions I sent nearly a month ago. According to my interlocutors, these are deemed “too sensitive” and, yes, a matter of national security.

Predictably, the report was fully debunked. One of my top Tehran sources, asked about its veracity, was blunt: “Absolutely not.” After all, Iran’s constitution decisively forbids foreign troops stationed on national soil. The Majlis – Iranian parliament – would never approve such a move barring an extreme case, as in the follow-up to a US military attack.

As for Russia-Iran military cooperation, the upcoming joint military exercises in the “northern part of the Indian Ocean,” including the Strait of Hormuz, are a first-ever such occasion, made possible only by a special agreement.

Analyst Gennady Nechaev is closer to reality when he notes that in the event of growing Russia-Iran cooperation, the possibility would be open for “permanent basing of the Russian Navy in one of the Iranian ports with the provision of an airfield nearby – the same type of arrangement as Tartus and Hmeimim on the Mediterranean coast of Syria.”  To get there, though, would be a long and winding road.

And that brings us to Chabahar, which poses an interesting question. Chabahar is a deep sea port, on the Gulf of Oman and the key plank in India’s mini-Silk Road vision. India invested a lot in Chabahar, to have it connected by highway to Afghanistan and Central Asia and in the future by rail to the Caucasus. All that so India may bypass Pakistan as far as trade routes are concerned.

Chabahar, though, may also become an important node of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative. India and China – as well as Russia – are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran, sooner or later, will also become a full SCO member. Only then the possibility “might” – and the emphasis is on “might” – open for the Russian or Chinese navy occasionally to dock at Chabahar, but still not to use it as a forward military base.

Got oil, will travel

On Iran, the Russia-China strategic partnership is working in parallel. China’s priority is energy supplies – and Beijing works the chessboard accordingly. The Chinese ambassador to the United Arab Emirates just issued a trial balloon, mentioning that Beijing might consider escorting oil tankers across the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. That could happen independently or – the dangling carrot – as part of Washington’s Operation Sentinel, which for the moment has managed to find only one “coalition of the willing” member: the UK.

What’s actually happening right now in the Persian Gulf is way more entertaining. As I confirmed with energy traders in Doha late last month, demand for oil right now is higher than in 2018. And in consequence, Iran continues to sell most of its oil.

A tanker leaves Iran with transponder off; the oil is transferred to another tanker on the high seas; and then it is relabeled.

According to a trader, “If you take two to three million barrels a day off the market by sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, plus the OPEC cutbacks, you would have to see a higher price.”

There is no higher price. Brent crude remains near a seven-month low, around US$60 a barrel. This means that Iran continues to sell, mostly to China. That trial balloon floated in the UAE might well be China camouflaging its continued purchase of Iranian oil.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has been proving again and again his diplomatic mastery, running rings around the Donald Trump administration. But all major decisions in Iran come from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. That also applies to Tehran’s position in relation to multi-level forms of support from the Russia-China strategic partnership.

What the past few months have made crystal clear is how Russia-China’s magnetic pull is attracting key Eurasia players Iran, Turkey and Pakistan. And make no mistake: As much as Tehran may be extremely proud of its political independence, it is reassuring to know that Iran is, and will continue to be, a definitive red line for Russia-China.

The End Of Anglo-American Hegemony

Source

hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com

Dean Henderson

Aug 12, 2019

(Excerpted from Chapter 24: Nephilim Crown 5G Apocalypse)

Not long ago, Chocolate Oligarchs and their fascist gendarmes seized Ukraine’s fertile wheat and barley fields, whilst bankster-funded Islamist rebels took Mosul & the adjacent Kirkuk oilfield – one of the world’s largest – for Exxon Mobil. BRICS nations saw imperial over-reach and, led by Putin, busied themselves preparing for the slow-motion unraveling of the Anglo-American financial empire.

The Rothschild/Rockefeller/banking/energy/arms/drugs oligopoly that has enslaved humankind and decimated planet earth for the last few centuries is coming apart at the seams.  The arrogance and stupidity of the self-proclaimed “illuminated ones”, who operate their matrix from the city of London, is being writ large for all to see.

Their Mideast gendarmes Israel & Saudi Arabia falter while Iran rises.

Awhile back, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) entered Bahrain to help the al-Khalifa petro-monarchy put down pro-democracy protests.  This intervention – condoned by Western powers – represented a last-ditch effort at salvaging the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – the chief neocolonial modus operandi which underwrites the London eurodollar money laundering scheme while propping up both the pound and the dollar.

But heads of monarchs will soon roll.  The people of the GCC nations remain restless, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.  It was no coincidence that the unstable House of Saud financed Syrian rebels, sent them to destabilize Iraq, then launched a ruthless bombing campaign in Yemen.

Things on the Saudi domestic front are a bit dicey for the embattled and divided royals.  It is important to know how we got here:

(Excerpted from Chapter 5: Persian Gulf Rent-a-Sheik: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)

The six GCC nations- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar and Oman- sit atop 42% of the world’s oil.  The single-family monarchies that control them were hand-picked by the British Empire.  They work in tandem with Israel to steal crude oil from the Arab people.  They, not China or Japan, are the biggest purchasers of US Treasuries.  Their interests lie not with their people, but with the City of London and Wall Street.

The bloodline elite of the six GCC nations are heavily invested in Western economies.  High volume crude oil production keeps this investment capital flowing to Wall Street and the City of London while allowing the GCC elites to live opulent lifestyles.  As Saudi Oil Minister Hisham Nazer put it, “We now have a mutual bond of self-interest and reciprocal security interests.”

As Western dependence on Third World resources has increased, it has become increasingly necessary for the international bankers and their corporations to include local elite cliques in their capital accumulation schemes, making a small group of local people extremely wealthy so that this group will cooperate in selling local resources cheaply to the West.

An example of this utilization of local elites as surrogates can be seen through the case of the richest man in the world.  He is Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah- Sultan of Brunei- a tiny oil enclave on the island of Borneo, where Royal Dutch/Shell holds a virtual monopoly over the oil industry and has paid the Sultan well to keep it that way.  The Sultan of Brunei is worth over $60 billion and lives in a 1,778-room palace.

These local elite, in turn, hand over their wealth to Western bankers for protection from devaluation and bank failure.  This robs their home country of much-needed capital and often precipitates devaluation and debt crises.  The US has itself become a debtor nation and owes its debts, in part, to these same Third World elites, who own trillions on deposit at large US banks, while their fellow countrymen live in abject poverty.  Egyptian elites, for example, hold $60 billion in deposits in foreign banks, while the average Egyptian earns $650/year.  In the case of the GCC, the amount of recycled petrodollars flowing back into Western investments is truly staggering.

The Saudis have over $600 billion invested abroad.  Citigroup owns 33% of the Saudi American Bank but is itself now controlled by members of the House of Saud.  In 1993 Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, owner of Saudi Commercial Bank, plunged $590 million into Citibank.  Bin Talal now owns 17.34% of Citigroup, while Crown Prince Abdullah owns a 5.4% share, making them the bank’s two largest shareholders.  Bin Talal is also the 2^nd largest shareholder in Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp, parent of both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

The Saudi Citigroup share purchases were facilitated by the Washington-based Carlyle Group, which is 20%-owned by the Mellon family that owned Gulf Oil and now owns a large chunk of Chevron Texaco.  Carlyle is led by former Reagan and Bush Defense Secretary and Reagan NSC Chairman Frank Carlucci.  George Bush Sr., James Baker III and former British Prime Minister John Major are senior advisers and board members at Carlyle.  Bush Sr. served as Carlyle investment advisor to the bin Laden family until November 2001.

In 1995 Prince bin Talal teamed up with Canadian developer Paul Reichmann, Loews chairman Larry Tisch and Lebanese financier Edmund J. Safra- a close friend of war-criminal Henry Kissinger- to buy London’s Canary Wharf complex for $1.04 billion.

UAE ruling Sheik Zayed runs the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.  Much of its money is handled by private investment and equity firms like Carlyle Group and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette- which is 18% owned by the Saudi Olayan Group.  Olayan also owns big chunks of JP Morgan Chase and CS First Boston.  The director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority serves as Carlyle Group’s Asian adviser.

Bahrain plays a role in this petrodollar recycling, serving as the key unregulated offshore banking center for both the GCC sheiks and their international mega-bank partners.  Bahrain is also home to the US Fifth Fleet and a large number of refineries, which process Saudi crude.

Lebanon had been the premier banking center of the Middle East in earlier days, but with Beirut reduced to rubble by Israeli shelling, merchant banking has moved to the duty-free port of Dubai in the UAE, now the biggest gold market on the planet.  Investment banking is centered in Kuwait.

But it is Bahrain which is home to the vast multi-billion dollar pool of money market funds derived from GCC/Four Horsemen petrodollar revenues.  Most banks in Bahrain are foreign-owned and all US mega-banks have operations there.  Many of Bahrain’s banks are owned by GCC elite and serve as a major conduit in the petrodollar recycling process.  The Kuwait Burgan Bank, for example, owns a 28% stake in one of Bahrain’s largest banks- the Middle Eastern Bank.

The most powerful firm in Bahrain is Investcorp, which took big stakes in Saks Fifth Avenue, BAT, Tiffany, Gucci, Color Tile, Carvel Ice Cream, Dellwood Foods, New York Department Store of Puerto Rico, Circle K and Chaumet.  Investcorp was co-founded in 1983 by Bahrain ruling family scion Sheik Khalifa bin Sulman al-Khalifa- who also owned a big chunk of the infamous BCCI.  A recent Investcorp prospectus lists the Bahrain Minister of Finance as an owner.

Investcorp’s chairman is Abdul-Rahman Al-Ateeqi, former Oil and Finance Minister of Kuwait.  Its Vice-President is Ahmed Ali Kanoo of the wealthy Saudi Kanoo family, which is worth an estimated $1.5 billion.  Former Saudi Oil Minister Sheik Yamani was one of Investcorp’s founding shareholders, along with seven members of the Saudi royal family.  Investcorp has its eight-story headquarters in Bahrain, along with a Park Avenue New York office and a Mayfair district office in London.

Sheik al-Khalifa’s partner in launching Investcorp was Nemir Kirdar, the bank’s president who was in charge of Chase Manhattan’s Persian Gulf operations.  Numerous Investcorp senior executives are Chase alumni as well.

Many Investcorp purchases turned out to be flops and there is a shady side to the bank.  French jeweler Chaumet executive Charles Lefevre said Investcorp fudged Chaumet numbers to entice shareholders while trying to pawn its shares off at a higher price to other Persian Gulf investors.  Another complaint alleged that Investcorp attempted to loot the Saudi European Bank in Paris.

Investcorp board member Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, a reclusive Saudi billionaire, invested heavily in George W. Bush’s Harken Energy.  So did Bahrain’s ruling Sheik al-Khalifa.  Bush and co-owner Dick Cheney morphed their Arbusto Energy into Harken when Bush friend James Bath provided them with $50,000 in seed money.

Bath owned Skyway Aircrafts and was under investigation by the DEA for working with GCC sheiks in flying $100 bills to the Cayman Islands.  Since Bath often borrowed money from Saudi Sheiks Khalid bin Mahfouz- BCCI’s largest shareholder- and Mohammed bin Laden, these wealthy Saudis likely provided the $50,000 in seed money to launch what became Harken Energy.

Bin Mahfouz and bin Laden helped Harken sign an exclusive offshore oil drilling agreement just prior to the Gulf War.  In January 1990 President Bush Sr. had approved preferential trade status for the Iraqi regime.  That very same month Harken Energy was awarded the biggest offshore oil concession ever in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Bahrain.

Other notable Harken investors included the Ft. Worth-based Bass brothers, the South African Rupert family, the Harvard Endowment Fund, and Rothschild lieutenant George Soros.  In 1989 the government of Bahrain abruptly cut off talks with Amoco concerning the same oil concession after Emir al-Khalifa decided to grant it instead to Harken Energy at the urging of Mobil’s Middle East operation’s chief Michael Ameen.  Financing for the project was arranged by Bush Jr. friend Jackson Stephens, the Arkansas owner of Worthen Bank who was instrumental in bringing BCCI to the US and who donated $100,000 to the Bush Sr. 1988 Presidential Campaign.

New York attorney Allen Quasha and his father William Quasha of Manila helped swing the Harken deal with Bahrain.  In 1961 Bill Quasha helped George Bush Sr. secure rights to drill the first oil well in Kuwait via Zapata Offshore Oil Company.  Later Quasha served as legal counsel to the CIA drug laundry Nugan Hand Bank in the Philippines.  His son Allen became the biggest stockholder in Harken.  The Quasha’s own 21% of a Swiss company controlled by the South African Rupert family, who were major backer’s of that country’s former apartheid regime.

Just one month before Iraq invaded Kuwait, George W. Bush sold 66% of his stake in Harken Energy at a 200% profit.  While stock analysts like Charlie Andrews of 13D Research were putting out “buy” recommendations on Harken, on June 22, 1990 Bush cashed in $840,000 in Harken stock, later saying he “sold into good news”.  Bush knew that Harken had violated the terms of a loan package and was now on the ropes financially.  Five weeks later Harken reported a $23 million loss and its stock price crashed.

Bush didn’t report his timely Harken Energy stock sale until March 1991.  This was illegal, but Bush claimed the SEC had misplaced the forms and was never prosecuted.  In 1993 Bush stepped down from Harken’s board.  With heavy financial backing from Enron, he became Governor of Texas.

Bush was defended during the Harken scam by Baker Botts lawyer Robert Jordan, who was paid back in 2000 with an appointment as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.  The forgiving SEC chief during the Harken debacle was Richard Breeden, one of Bush Sr.’s biggest political supporters.  SEC counsel was James Doty, another Bush supporter who helped George W. buy the Texas Rangers baseball team.

When George W. Bush merged Harken with Spectrum 7 Energy, he brought in Investcorp insider Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, who bought 17.6% of Harken through a Netherlands Antilles holding company.  Some say Baksch was a front man for Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz.  Baksch was a major investor at the Bahrain-based Investcorp, which was launched by former Chase Manhattan executives.  In 1988 he looted an Arab bank in London.

Bakhsh was also accused of looting the Al Saudi Banque of Paris when it collapsed in 1988 just ahead of the strikingly similar collapse of BCCI.  Bakhsh is a shareholder in First Commercial Financial Group, a Chicago-based commodity futures trading firm which was sanctioned by US regulators for check-kiting and fraud.  Just before the Gulf War broke out, Investcorp sold a 25.8% share to an Iraqi company, despite a Bahrain law prohibiting such transactions.

The Saudis and Kuwaitis are the clear leaders in GCC overseas investments.  The Kuwaiti Investment Authority has over $250 billion invested abroad and is the biggest foreign investor in Japan and Spain.  Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase handle Kuwaiti investments in the US, where the al-Sabah clan owns stock in each of the 70 largest firms listed on the New York Stock Exchange.  Their US holdings include 100% of Occidental Geothermal, 29.8% of Great Western Resources, 100% of the Atlanta Hilton Hotel, 45% of the Phoenician Hotel and 11% of Hogg Robinson.

In Germany they own 14% of Daimler-Chrysler, 25% of Hoechst (the Nazi IG Farben spin-off and the world’s 2nd largest pharmaceutical company), 20% of Metallgesellschaft and part of German retailer Asko.  In Italy they own 6.7% of Afil, the Agnelli family holding company which owns Fiat and several other endeavors.  In the UK Kuwait owns St. Martin’s Properties and 5.4% of Sime Darby.  In Malaysia their K-10 company owns the biggest newspaper- the New Straits Times Press.  In neighboring Singapore, the Kuwaitis own 10.6% of Singapore Petroleum, 37% of Dao Heng Holdings and 49% of the securities firm J. M. Sassoon.

Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), was technically nationalized in the early 1980’s, but remains close to its former parents- Chevron Texaco and BP Amoco- selling these two Horsemen oil at a discount.  KOC made wealthy the al-Sabah emirs and the al-Ghanim family, who acted as the company’s agent for decades.  By 1966 KOC bought a Danish subsidiary and became the first Middle Eastern oil company to retail gasoline in Europe.  KOC has been the most aggressive GCC firm in its overseas downstream investments.  In 1982 it bought hundreds of Q8 gas stations across Europe.  By 1987 it owned over 5,000 gasoline retailers in Europe and South Asia.  Just last week KOC was awarded a contract to build oil refineries in South Korea.

The Kuwaitis even bought into one of the Four Horsemen- BP Amoco.  As of 1988 they owned a 22% share.  They have since reduced their share to 9.85%, still a controlling interest.  They purchased the Naples, Italy refining operations of Mobil, own nearly 4% of ARCO (now part of BP Amoco), and 2.39% of Phillips Petroleum (now merged with Conoco).  In Spain the Kuwaitis operate the Torras Hostenchchemical firm.  In Japan they operate Arabian Oil.

All told GCC investments in Western banks and corporations total in the trillions.  The bulk of this is invested in long-term US and Japanese government bonds.  The GCC sheiks are crucial to floating the entire house of cards that is the global economy.  Their guaranteed purchases of US debt, which has largely been accrued through defense spending in the Persian Gulf region, keep the US dollar strong and prevent the international financial architecture from crumbling.  The emirs and their elite friends also bankroll CIA covert operations, while re-balancing their trade surpluses with the West through the purchase of US weaponry to protect their oil fiefdoms.

Events in Ukraine and the Middle East have exposed the desperate position of the Rockefeller/Rothschild energy oligopoly.  Putin has just begun playing his extremely good hand of cards.  The GCC puppets remain embattled and circling the wagons.  The end of the petroleum standard can only be staved off by permanent war.  Strange days indeed.

Dean Henderson is the author of five books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve, Stickin’ it to the Matrix & The Federal Reserve Cartel.  You can subscribe free to his weekly Left Hook column at www.hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com

China, Other Countries Receive Oil From 12 Iranian Ships in the Teeth of US Sanctions – Report

The arrogance of the USA is unbelievable. To equate US law with international law is beyond arrogance, it’s immoral. This is economic terrorism coated in ideological language that’s smells like BS.

Source

sputniknews.com

Lilia Dergacheva

Aug 5, 2019

© REUTERS / JON NAZCA

 

Since Beijing reiterated its commitment to the JCPOA accord in late July at a gathering of the signatories, it has emerged that Iran has been much more actively proceeding with oil deliveries than was previously believed, with tankers following sea routes not only to China, but – probably – to a number of Mediterranean countries as well.

China and a number of other states are receiving oil supplies from a greater number of Iranian tankers than was previously estimated, in defiance of the sanctions slapped on Iranian oil producers by the US, an investigative piece with respective gif-maps by the New York Times has suggested.

Having reviewed data from MarineTraffic and Refinitiv, two ship-tracking services, as well as satellite imagery from Planet Labs and analysis from shipping and energy experts, the edition has found that at least 12 Iranian tankers have loaded and shipped oil across the Indian Ocean to China, as well as all the way to the Eastern Mediterranean, possibly to Syria and Turkey, since 2 May, while countries that accept the cargo risk economic penalties at the hands of the US. At least six of those tankers were found to have delivered their cargo to ports in China – historically the top buyer of Iranian oil, which also happens to be in a severe ongoing trade war with Washington.

Meanwhile, only some of the aforementioned 12 tankers were previously known to have proceeded with Iranian oil deliveries, The NY Times specified.

“US sanctions have not stopped Iran from moving oil to the Mediterranean and Asia”, said Noam Raydan, an analyst at ClipperData, which tracks international crude shipments.

International law doesn’t in prohibit buying and hauling Iranian oil or related products, but those that have continued to do so since 8 May when Trump unilaterally pulled out from the JCPOA deal, are in Washington’s crosshairs.

The Trump administration’s oil sanctions, which mainly went into effect last November, are therefore unilateral, signifying a new low in Washington’s relations with the Islamic Republic. The administration initially granted eight governments permission to continue buying Iranian oil despite the sanctions, but withdrew those exemptions on 2 May 2019.

American officials have said that the sanctions are aimed at cutting off money to the Iranian government in order to prompt the country to make further concessions on its national nuclear and missile programmes, as well as transform its foreign and home policy.

In May, Tehran announced that it would partially suspend its obligations under the JCPOA (which stipulates that Iran guarantee the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme in exchange for the easing of economic limitations) giving the other agreement signatories 60 days to save the accord by facilitating oil exports and trade with Iran, which the US had vowed to bring to zero.

As the deadline expired, Iran said it would begin enriching uranium beyond the 3.67 percent level stipulated by the JCPOA and warned it would gradually give up its nuclear commitments, taking steps every 60 days. The Persian Gulf state has for now stepped up uranium enrichment to 4.5 percent, breaking the 3.67 percent limit allowed under the treaty, after accusing Germany, France, and the United Kingdom of insufficient effort to shield the country from US sanctions.

Last week, signatories to the JCPOA, including EU countries, China, and Russia, met in Vienna for an emergency gathering during which the Chinese delegation’s head reiterated Beijing’s commitment to the deal and denounced the US’ harsh policies vis-à-vis Iran.

Official: China, Iran can join hands to fight US pressures

“Gas is the most important future energy resource in the world, and Iran has the largest gas reserves in the world, and we are ready to export gas to China via Pakistan’s transmission line,” Jahangiri said.”

Source

http://www.presstv.com

Tue Jul 30, 2019

China has said it will continue oil imports from Iran despite US sanctions.

A senior Chinese official has called for Tehran and Beijing to join forces in confronting US pressures as he stressed that China’s resolve to develop relations with Iran was unwavering.

Iran has come under the most draconian sanctions after President Donald Trump withdraw the US from the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, while China is embroiled in a trade war with the United States.

Head of the Communist Party’s International Department Song Tao lashed out at the unilateral sanctions and “American bullying” as he met senior Iranian officials in Tehran to discuss the most pressing issues facing the two countries.

“China’s resolve to develop relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and implement agreements between the two countries will not change,” he said, adding the two countries can share their experiences to counter US pressure.

Beijing is Tehran’s largest oil customer, with total imports last year averaging 585,400 barrels per day (bpd).

China has pushed back against the US after the Trump administration ended waivers which allowed Iran’s eight biggest buyers to continue importing limited volumes.

The Asian powerhouse says its cooperation with Iran is legitimate under international law and should be “respected”.

Chinese energy groups have invested in Iran’s oil projects, some of which are facing challenges as a result of the US sanctions, Song said.

“I hope that through negotiation, we can find appropriate methods to resolve problems and speed up the implementation of projects,” the senior Chinese diplomat said.

Companies such as Sinopec and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) have invested billions of dollars in Iranian oil fields and recoup their money by sending oil from the fields to China.

One major project facing difficulties is China’s participation in phase 11 of South Pars.

Iran has rejected a request by CNPC to suspend operations in the project where the Chinese company has currently an 80-percent share of investment.

CNPC became the dominant investor in plans for expansion of South Pars, the world’s largest gas field, after France’s Total withdrew from the project under increasing pressure from the United States.

The state-owned Chinese company, however, has decided to continue investing in the North Azadegan and Masjid-i-Suleiman (MIS) oilfields.

PressTV-‘China steady on Iran oilfields but to ditch gas plan’

Reuters says China’s CNPC has decided to continue investing in two major Iranian oilfields but suspend investment in the South Pars natural gas project under US pressure.

Some of Chinese refineries are also configured to process Iranian grades which yield better margins than those supplied by other exporters such as Saudi Arabia, according to China’s refinery officials.

Last Tuesday, China strongly denounced US sanctions on energy company Zhuhai Zhenrong Co Ltd for allegedly violating unilateral American sanctions on Iran’s oil industry.

Zhuhai Zhenrong has strong links to Iran and accounts for more than 60% of China’s trade with the Islamic Republic, according to its website.

The company, which is already under US sanctions for supplying gasoline to Iran in 2012, has little overseas exposure.

Two and a half months after the White House banned the purchase of Iran’s oil, the nation’s crude is continuing to be sent to China where it’s being put into what’s known as “bonded storage”.

According to Bloomberg, tankers are offloading millions of barrels of Iranian oil into storage tanks at Chinese ports, creating a hoard of crude sitting on the doorstep of the world’s biggest buyer.

In his talks with Song on Monday, Iranian Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri called on China and other countries friendly with Iran to buy more Iranian oil.

“Even though we are aware that friendly countries such as China are facing some restrictions, we expect them to be more active in buying Iranian oil,” he said.

Head of the Communist Party’s International Department Song Tao (L) holds talks with Iran’s Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri (R) in Tehran, July 29, 2019. (Photo by Fars)   

Jahangiri said Iran is also ready to pipe its gas to China through Pakistan which is sitting on a project to complete a pipeline designed for receiving Iranian natural gas.

While Iran has completed its part of the pipeline with a total investment of over $2 billion, Pakistan has fallen short on taking delivery of gas, initially scheduled for 2014.

“Gas is the most important future energy resource in the world, and Iran has the largest gas reserves in the world, and we are ready to export gas to China via Pakistan’s transmission line,” Jahangiri said.

Addressing the Chinese diplomat’s call for sharing experiences to confront US sanctions, Jahangiri touched on Iran’s “economy of resistance” which has helped to ensure “economic and social stability despite US sanctions”.

“The US thinks it can bring our oil sales down to zero through putting pressure on the countries buying oil from Iran and lead to the collapse of the Iranian economy. But fortunately, a year after the American oil sanctions, Iran’s economic situation remains reasonably stable,” he said.

Jahangiri said, “The overall policies of the resistance economy seek to rely on domestic capacities, develop relations with neighboring and friendly countries such as China, reduce reliance on oil revenues and develop a knowledge-based, popular economy.”

He said a delegation from Iran’s ministry of economic affairs and finance and the central bank will travel to China next week.

“I hope there will be constructive negotiations on a financial exchange mechanism between the two countries.”