Iran missile attack shattered US’ self-proclaimed empire: IRGC spokesman

The bad Iranians don’t seem to be much terrified of the Big Bad Flatulent Orange man. Also, other nations seem to be distancing themselves from the US. Many are dropping the US dollar as the universal trade currency in favor of other currencies, and Duterte, Philipines, dropped the military alliance with the US this week. The US is losing the respect of most nations on the planet.

This is from Iran.

Source

http://www.presstv.com

Monday, 10 February 2020 

This picture taken on January 13, 2020 shows US soldiers clearing rubble at Ain al-Assad military air base in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. (Photo by AFP)

The spokesman for the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the retaliatory missile attack on an Iraqi military base housing US forces after assassination of Iran’s top anti-terror general by terrorist US forces shattered the self-proclaimed empire of the United States.

Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif made the remarks while addressing a ceremony held in the central Iranian city of Damghan to mark the 40th day after the assassination of the former commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani on the direct order of US President Donald Trump.

On January 8, the IRGC fired volleys of ballistic missiles at Ain al-Assad military base in the western Iraqi province of Anbar in response to the January 3 assassination by US terrorists of General Soleimani, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and a group of their companions in Baghdad.

IRGC targets US airbases in Iraq in response to assassination of General Soleimani

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has targeted US airbases in Iraq.

Both commanders enjoyed deep reverence among Muslim nations for their endeavors in eliminating the US-sponsored Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.

Soon after the assassination, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said Washington was to face a “harsh revenge.”

“The important point about the missile attack on Ain al-Assad was shattering the false grandeur and prestige of Americans, which humiliated them in the eyes of the world’s military forces. For 70 years, nobody had dared attack American bases, but this slap in the face by the IRGC brought down the self-proclaimed political, economic and military empire of the United States…,” the Iranian military spokesman said.

At the White House, Trump adamantly denied the Iranian missiles left any casualties. But Tehran said the US military conducted at least nine sorties after the operation, taking the wounded to Jordan and the Israeli occupied territories, while Chinook helicopters transferred the injured to a US hospital in Baghdad.

Out of despair and under pressure from Congress, the Trump administration has gradually announced casualties from the Iranian attack, most recently claiming that 64 US troops have been diagnosed with “traumatic brain injuries.”

Pointing to contradictory US reports about the casualties after the attack, Sharif said, “The first slap was of great significance, of course they (the American officials) will speak of the human casualties and the equipment damaged in the strikes during campaigning for the upcoming US presidential election. Thirteen heavy rockets hit various points at the American base. Of course, our priority was in no way to kill US soldiers, but what’s for sure is that the casualty figure is higher than what they have announced so far.”

IRGC: ‘Brain injury’ is US vague term for missile fatalities

The IRGC says Washington’s alleged numbers regarding “brain injuries” in troops represent US troop deaths.

The Iranian military spokesman stressed, “With the martyrdom of Soleimani, the enemies thought they would be victorious, while they should know they have taken a big gamble and that the ultimate loser of this bet will be undoubtedly the Americans.”

“All people across the world witnessed the million-strong population that flocked to the streets in Iraq — a huge crowd that Iraq had never seen in a rally after [slain dictator] Saddam [Hussein]. This million-strong population turned out to endorse an Iraqi bill on the expulsion of US forces from the country. The Americans are done in the region, they are well aware of this fact but brazen it out,” he added.

Iraqi lawmakers unanimously approved a bill that calls for the withdrawal of all US-led foreign troops from the Arab country in the wake of the US assassination of the two top commanders.

Hollywood has been more heavily censored since 2001, films bashing US army and CIA can’t go public – Oliver Stone to RT

Source

http://www.rt.com

30 Jan, 2020

Oliver Stone (L) and Rafael Correa (R) © RT

The American film industry changed beyond recognition after the milestone year of 2001, director Oliver Stone told RT, with producers using financial restraints to censor movies challenging the US military or the CIA.

“Maybe in the 1980s, when I did ‘Platoon’, ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ and ‘Heaven & Earth’, I could do that, because it was a slightly more relaxed system,” said the award-winning filmmaker, mentioning his famed movies while making his case during former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s show on RT Spanish.

When the Iron Curtain fell and the Cold War ended, things didn’t change for the better, Stone believes. “My film career has suffered, because sometimes I’ve said things that American producers hate to hear,” he revealed, adding that those sponsoring film productions sometimes resort to “economic censorship.”

Hollywood has changed since 2001. It has become more censored. The military, the CIA, the depictions of these organizations has been very favorable.

“You can take the budgets down… let’s say you want to make a film criticizing the American military, taking an Iraq war story or a horror story that recently happened in Iraq… You do those kinds of stories, it’s not going to happen,” he explained.

Stone, who scored a number of Academy, BAFTA and Golden Globe awards, has been widely criticized for his anti-war dramas and, most recently, for a series of films questioning the widespread Western narrative on the Ukrainian turmoil, as well as exclusive interviews with Vladimir Putin.

“Now, censorship isn’t something that exclusively affects the American film industry,” Stone lamented, “I can read the American media but they all say the same things … And you don’t hear from Iran and China, you don’t hear from [North] Korea, you don’t hear from Venezuela, you don’t get their point of view.”

ALSO ON RT.COMFrom Bond to ‘Top Gun’: How PC Hollywood will mess with your fave franchises in 2020

The CIA realized – after World War II, basically – they [went into] the business, the news business, they put their people, their agents at newspapers, at magazines and television.

‘It’s all right-wings fighting with right-wings’

The famed film director sounded pessimistic when asked if there is hope for change – or, at least, if the system allows for that change. He said that both parties – be it Democrats or Republicans – act by the same playbook when dealing with issues of war and peace.

“There is no party in the United States, no democratic voice except third parties that are small, that would say ‘Why are we fighting wars?’” Stone exclaimed, adding, “it’s all right-wings fighting with right-wings.” Democrats are no better than Republicans, he says: “Hillary Clinton and her group, and Joe Biden, are just as pro-war as any Republican Dick Cheney.”

Stone thinks Donald Trump who has done “horrible things” by pulling out of the Paris climate accords and the hard-earned 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But, argued Stone, at least Trump was asking why the US needs to fight the Russians, which alarmed the mainstream so much that the media was attacking him from day one.

Stone lamented that politics is transiting from the art of the possible to the art of raising money.

“So much money is spent in politics, it’s impossible for my vote to make any difference… Candidates in America now have to raise billions of dollars to be considered serious,” Stone said.

Empires fall. Let’s pray that this empire, these evil things… because we are the evil empire. What Reagan said about Russia is true about us.

Operation InfeKtion: How Russia Created Fake News and Perfected the Art of War (47 min)

The New York Times

Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the culmination of Moscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. “Operation InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB spies who conceived this virus and the American truth squads who tried — and are still trying — to fight it. Countries from Pakistan to Brazil are now debating reality, and in Vladimir Putin’s greatest triumph, Americans are using Russia’s playbook against one another without the faintest clue.

 

Pompeo: We had no evidence of a Soleimani attack, Trump made it all up

Source

veteranstoday.com

By VT Editors

January 10, 2020

RT/Moscow: US President Donald Trump earlier claimed that Washington had eliminated the top Iranian military commander to halt Tehran’s plans to blow up the US Embassy in Baghdad.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on a national broadcast that the United States possessed no information about the date and place of an alleged attack planned by assassinated General Qasem Soleimani.

“WE DON’T KNOW PRECISELY WHEN – AND WE DON’T KNOW PRECISELY WHERE. BUT IT WAS REAL … THERE WAS A REAL OPPORTUNITY HERE AND THERE WAS A REAL NECESSITY HERE. WE MADE THE RIGHT DECISION. THE PRESIDENT MADE THE RIGHT CALL”, POMPEO TOLD FOX NEWS.

On 3 January, IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a targeted US drone attack on the Baghdad International Airport. Washington said that Soleimani was planning to attack US personnel and that by eliminating him “a lot of lives were saved”.

The US earlier designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force a terrorist organisation.

Iran retaliated for the murder of its top commander with a missile attack that targeted the US military in Iraq. The attack was dubbed Operation Martyr Soleimani and hit the Ayn al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq and American facilities in Erbil. No US personnel were injured in the attack President Trump said in his Wednesday address to the nation…or so the US claims.

Soleimani was a highly respected figure in Iranian politics and was praised for combating a wide range of terrorist groups in the region, including Daesh*. He was also given credit for being an “architect” of the entire Iranian security structure.

 

Secret intelligence and ‘highly likelys’: How media created narrative around Tehran jet crash to blame Iran, Russia and Trump

Source

http://www.rt.com/op-ed

Nebojsa Malic

Jan 10, 2020

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT.

Whatever caused Flight 752 to crash just after takeoff from Tehran, the 176 people who died were quickly drafted as elements in a propaganda narrative targeting both Iran, Russia and US President Donald Trump.

The Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) Boeing 737 took off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran on Wednesday morning. It was bound for Kiev, amid rising tensions over the Iranian missile strikes against US targets inside Iraq. The nine crew members and 167 passengers on board, including 15 children, may have complained that the flight was running almost an hour late. Within seven minutes, they would all be dead.

Dan Cohen

✔@dancohen3000

The text of the article totally contradicts the headline and contains nothing about western intelligence agencies claiming there was a technical malfunction. What is going on with Reuters’ coverage? https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1215183928350445568 …

Reuters

✔@Reuters

Five security sources told Reuters the initial assessment of Western intelligence agencies is that the Ukrainian airliner that crashed in Iran suffered a technical malfunction and was not brought down by a missile https://reut.rs/2FuMDTG 

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4:14 PM – Jan 9, 2020

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Initial reports spoke of “technical problems” as the cause. By Thursday morning, however, the narrative was shifting: US officials were “confident that Iran shot down a Ukrainian jetliner,” CBS reported citing anonymous sources.

AP qualified the speculation as “highly likely,” a weasel phrase made notorious by the official UK narrative of the 2018 Salisbury “novichok poisonings.”

Rania Khalek

✔@RaniaKhalek

This could have been anything: A malfunction, an accident, an intentional downing (the US has done it to an Iranian airliner before!)

What I do know is that after all the lies intelligence officials have told us about the Middle East, it’s idiotic to take them at their word. https://twitter.com/cbsthismorning/status/1215313078918746113 …

CBS This Morning

✔@CBSThisMorning

#BREAKING: @CBSNews has learned U.S. officials are confident that Iran shot down a Ukrainian jetliner in the hours after the Iranian missile attack on U.S. targets.

176 people were killed, including at least 63 Canadians.

1,571

9:23 AM – Jan 9, 2020

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By the time the New York Times got to it, though, the qualifications have disappeared: “An Iranian missile accidentally brought down a Ukrainian jetliner over Iran this week, killing everyone aboard, American and allied officials said on Thursday…”

Then it was Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s turn. He told reporters that “intelligence from multiple sources… indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.” 

ALSO ON RT.COMTrump confirms more sanctions against Iran, says Tehran plane crash may have been ‘mistake’It was textbook “citogenesis” at work, the manufacturing of a narrative through circular reporting and reliance on published assertions as proof.

Yet just the day before, Reuters had been reporting something completely different, citing an anonymous “Canadian security source.”

“The initial assessment of Western intelligence agencies is that the plane was not brought down by a missile. There is no evidence to suggest that,” said the source, adding that a “technical malfunction” was the likely culprit. Iranian civil aviation authorities likewise said that no missile debris was found at the crash site, and that rumors of a missile were “illogical” and “scientifically impossible.”

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Psychological warfare’: Iran dares Canada & others to show ‘intelligence’ they used to accuse Tehran of downing Ukrainian jet

Instead of being skeptical of anonymously sourced claims by intelligence agencies – which have a stellar record of being wrong on major issues, from the Douma “chemical attack” and Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” to the whole sordid ‘Russiagate’ mess – mainstream media outlets in the West happily ran with the “Iran shoots down airliner” angle. Some went even farther, adding that a “Russian missile” was involved.

Bryan MacDonald

✔@27khv

Notable how some US/UK media correspondents are making a point of referencing that the Iranian missile was “Russian-made.” It’s not important to the story (no more than Israeli weapons are often US made, for instance). But it helps associate the tragedy with Russia, in some way

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2:29 PM – Jan 9, 2020

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Soon enough, the “verification” wizards at Bellingcat were involved in parsing “open source evidence” of course. Photos and videos of missile parts and alleged strikes quickly made rounds online, amplified by mainstream outlets, to cement the Narrative that was already becoming weaponized.

Ben Norton

✔@BenjaminNorton

Yesterday, Reuters/NYT reported Western intelligence agencies said the Ukrainian airliner in Iran was NOT brought down by missile

They admitted “there is no evidence” for this conspiracy

Now they’re saying the opposite. Don’t believe their war propagandahttps://web.archive.org/save/https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01/08/world/middleeast/08reuters-iran-crash-canada-intelligence.html …

Western Intelligence Agencies See No Signs Ukraine Airliner Was Shot Down: Canadian Source

The initial assessment of Western intelligence agencies is that a Ukrainian airliner which crashed in Iran on Wednesday was not brought down by a missile, said a Canadian security source.

web.archive.org

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10:39 AM – Jan 9, 2020

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Even as they took the claim about an Iranian missile at face value, Democrats were quick to blame Trump for the deaths on board Flight 752, and explain how the passengers and crew were somehow caught in a “crossfire” – though the crash happened hundreds of miles away and hours after the Iranian missile strikes.

Tom Elliott@tomselliott

.@RepSpeier blames Trump for Iran shooting down a passenger jet: “This is yet another example of collateral damage from the actions that have been taken in a provocative way by the president of the United States.”

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Republicans, on the other hand, used the Narrative as proof that the “regime in Tehran” was monstrous, justifying Trump’s decision to launch a drone assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani last week. Gone was their skepticism towards intelligence agencies that had been caught red-handed abusing procedures to spy on the Trump campaign and cook up ‘Russiagate.’

At this point, with the media narrative established, and policy decisions based on it no doubt to follow, it won’t matter what the actual investigation on the ground finds. The truth about the Iraqi WMDs or Douma “chemical attack” didn’t bring back the deaths the lies about them had caused. It won’t bring back those 176 unfortunate souls who perished horribly at dawn on Wednesday – only to find themselves posthumously conscripted as fighters in a propaganda war.

ALSO ON RT.COMThe more we find out about Tehran plane crash, the more questions we have. Here are the main ones

Corbett Report: Did Soleimani Kill 600 Americans? (12 min)

Everyone has heard by now that Soleimani was responsible for 600 American deaths . . . but where does this oddly specific number come from? Today on “Questions For Corbett,” James finds the answer at the bottom of a barrel of neocon lies.

 

America the Repugnant. Assassinating Foreign Leaders Is an Act of War

“Donald Trump should be aware that there is considerable downside to the tiger than he has let out of its cage. What will he do if “enemies” all over the world decide to copy the Trump example and kill American diplomats, soldiers and tourists because they oppose U.S. policies. And what about if they up the ante a little bit and kill senior Ambassadors, Congressmen, and even succeed in killing a presidential cabinet member or two. Trump in his foolishness has invited reciprocity and has even granted those who do the killing a certain immunity if they are claiming that they are doing it to stop something worse, i.e. war.”

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Philip Giraldi

January 9, 2020

Funeral of Qasem Soleimani

Once upon a time there was a Constitution of the United States. In Article II, Section 2 it stipulated that only the U.S. Congress has the power to declare war, which means the American president has to go to the legislative body and make a case for going to war against an enemy or enemies. If there is a vote in favor of war, the president is empowered as commander-in-chief to direct the available resources against the enemy.

There is also something called international law. Under international law there are situations in which a head of state or head of government can use military force defensively or even preemptively if there is a substantial threat that is imminent. But normally, a country has to go through a procedure similar to that in the U.S. Constitution, which means making a case that the war is justified before declaring war. The Nuremberg Tribunals ruled that starting a war of aggression is the ultimate crime.

The president has already declared that he needs no approval from Congress or from anyone else to initiate further military operations against Iran in the Middle East, even if the action taken is “disproportionate.” Meanwhile he, the State Department and the Pentagon are all stating, without presenting any evidence at all to the public, that Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani was planning attacks that would kill “hundreds of Americans” as a casus belli justifying his assassination. The White House is also asserting that the killing was done to “stop a war,” which makes no sense even coming from the addled tweet-conditioned brain of Donald J. Trump. And if one still harbors suspicions that Trump might actually be of sound mind, it is possible to listen to him on the day after the assassination while speaking to a gathering of his supporters at an evangelical church in Florida. He told the cheering crowd that “God is on our side” and that Soleimani “…was planning a very major attack, and we got him.” The audience went wild in approval, chanting “four more years.”

Such chest-beating moments of pretend strong leadership coming from president bone spurs as well as similar justifications for an assassination that will be surfacing over the next few days simply do not pass the smell test. Take the window dressing away from the Pentagon and media propaganda and all one has left is that the United States illegally and openly killed a senior official from a country with which it is not at war and did so without the consent of the third country where the assassination took place with which the U.S. is also not at war. The assassination was not in reality based on any imminent threat and is therefore illegal under international law and is undeniably an unconstitutional act of war directed against both Iran and Iraq.

What is particularly bizarre about Trump-think on this issue is that the assassination was carried out right in the open in a country with which the United States has had of late a friendly relationship and which allows American soldiers to be based on its soil. Judging from the crowds of protesters gathered in Baghdad to protest the killing, that somewhat comfortable arrangement is about to end. And it will also end American involvement in neighboring Syria, which will be unsustainable without a presence in Iraq. That is the only good news to come out of the assassination.

To be sure nations at war will try and sometimes succeed to assassinate enemy leaders, and the intelligence services of various countries also have been known to kill foreign politicians who are considered to be threatening. America’s best friend Israel leads the world in that statistic. But spy agencies work their mischief on a basis of plausible denial, which means that the countries that carry out assassinations make every effort to obscure their role and permit deniability.

The difference in what the White House has done now is that another page has been turned in the process of the United States going completely rogue. It all started when George W. Bush warned that “you’re either with us or against us.” Barack Obama subsequently labored over his Tuesday morning kill lists, which included American citizens, and the Trump White House has now expanded that license, asserting that it can act with complete impunity and out in the open to kill anyone at any time anywhere without due process or any actual demonstrated cause or accountability.

Donald Trump should be aware that there is considerable downside to the tiger than he has let out of its cage. What will he do if “enemies” all over the world decide to copy the Trump example and kill American diplomats, soldiers and tourists because they oppose U.S. policies. And what about if they up the ante a little bit and kill senior Ambassadors, Congressmen, and even succeed in killing a presidential cabinet member or two. Trump in his foolishness has invited reciprocity and has even granted those who do the killing a certain immunity if they are claiming that they are doing it to stop something worse, i.e. war.

Finally, if the target of the assassination had been anyone but an Iranian, Israel’s enemy, one can count on there being hell to pay with Congress and the media over Trump’s having gone completely off the rails. Assassinating a foreign leader as a new United States government policy has to be an impeachable offense. Forget about obstruction of justice and collusion with foreigners: assassination is the real deal and if it does not constitute a high crime, it is hard for one to imagine what does. By all means let’s impeach Trump based on what he has actually done, not on speculation over what he might have connived at.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly justified the U.S. “extreme pressure” directed against Tehran, demanding that Islamic Republic take steps to become a “normal country.” The real question should be, “When will the United States of America become normal?”