Tag: Iran
North Korea has delivered infantry rockets and missiles to Russian private military company, the Wagner Group, to support the war in Ukraine.
Hartcher can’t see the difference between Democracies, Protest and what people want,
Just who this message is meant for is uncertain. The economic gains of democracy are probably not all that high on the priority list for Iranian demonstrators, or for the Chinese who are increasingly demanding change. Democracy for these courageous people is about freedom and for the chance to live without fear of arbitrary arrest. It’s certainly not about electing one group or party to organise a capitalist economy that will deliver better economic returns to a minority.
Source: China and Iran protestors fighting for real democracy, not capitalist capture
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky lambasted Israel on Monday, saying that the latter’s refusal to provide Ukraine with anti-missile defenses and its neutrality on the war had permitted Iran and Russia to deepen their ties, with benefits for Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.
Source: Zelensky Lambastes Israel for not Helping Ukraine, Warns of Russian Aid to Iran’s Nuclear Program
Likewise, more that 3/4s of Republican evangelicans want to declare the United States a “Christian” state, essentially repealing the First Amendment with its Establishment Cause. They want to control people’s bodies in the U.S., even if they have to do it undemocratically, just as the ayatollahs have the same goal in Iran. Iran has the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent. America’s Red States have the Guardianship of the Pastor and Priest. In neither case are we autonomous adults. We are wards of the state, reduced to being juveniles in custody.
Because of evangelical Republican rule of some US states, we already have elements of the Christian Republic of America, to mirror the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal offered Europe a way to diversify natural gas supplies, but instead Europeans were left at Russia’s mercy.
Source: This Winter, Freezing Europeans Can Blame Trump’s Neocon Foreign Policy
Russia and Iran are both suffering from maximum pressure sanctions by the US, which is attempting to crash their economies and currencies and prevent their oil and gas exports. The two cannot be sanctioned more than they already are, so defying the US to team up makes good economic sense.
We may be seeing the limits of American economic power– trying to take on both Russia and Iran at the same time, plus threatening China, may be classical imperial overstretch.
Source: Russia announces Bn. Investment in Iran Oil & Gas, as Khamenei Supports Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
It seems to me that the only difference between Australians and Iranians in this regard is that Australia is part of the white Anglophone diaspora. It is also part of the Five Eyes intelligence program, which groups the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia (hmm, I wonder what they have in common)? Race is so central to US politics that it even comes into nuclear policy!
New extreme-right Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett came out on Sunday to argue that the election of an extreme-right Iranian cleric (Ebrahim Raisi) as president of that country should cause the Biden administration to back off reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Bennett called Raisi the “hangman of Tehran” and said, “of all the people that (Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei could have chosen, he chose the hangman of Tehran, the man infamous among Iranians and across the world for leading the death committees that executed thousands of innocent Iranian citizens throughout the years.”
A member of an Iranian investigation team has told a local news outlet that Tel Aviv was most likely behind the attack on a Europe-bound Iranian container ship in the Mediterranean Sea earlier this week. “Considering the geographical location and the way the ship was targeted, one of the strong possibilities is that this terrorist operation was carried out by the Zionist regime (Israel),” an unnamed investigator told the Nournews agency. Several containers on the deck of the Shahr-e Kord vessel were hit with high-explosive objects. The damage they suffered indicates that the Iranian ship could have been targeted by an aerial vehicle, the expert pointed out. The attack on a commercial vessel travelling through the Mediterranean to Europe took place on Wednesday. There were no casualties, and the crew swiftly extinguished the small fire in the hull it caused.
Israel most likely responsible for blast on Iranian container ship in Mediterranean – media — RT World News
Trump Appears to Have Outsourced His Iran Policy to Israel
Trump’s Support for Israel’s Killing of Iranian Scientist Could Lead to War | The Smirking Chimp
Iran, Russia and electoral interference. It is all part of the delicious mess that any observer of US politics has come to expect. Were the US body politic capable of being examined on the clinician’s couch, historical fears, psychic disturbances, and a range of unsettling syndromes would be identified. The issue of electoral interference would certainly be at the fore; it would also be fitting that a state so indifferent to the electoral sovereignty of others would now find itself constantly fearing large return servings.
Trusted Demonologies: US Electoral Interference, the Proud Boys and Iran – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Israel’ grand plan was always to keep the Middle East religiously divided their biggest danger a secular and united pan Arabic military union Libya, Syria Iraq made it urgent to get rid of Qaddafi, Assad and Saddam.
Peace hasn’t arrived in the Middle East only a light shone on what was always the goal keep Shia and Sunni divided with Israel and the US on the side of Israel Sunni States and Oil. ISIS is not their enemy anymore. Fuck the Kurds.
The Iraqi government says that Soleimani came to Baghdad on a commercial flight with a diplomatic passport to engage in behind the scenes talks Saudi Arabia that the Iraqi government was mediating. There is no evidence that he was, as Trump alleged, coming to kill Americans, and the Pentagon has refused to make that charge. The furious Iraqi parliament voted to constrain the prime minister to find a way to move US troops out of Iraq in the aftermath, since Trump whacked Soleimani on Iraqi soil without bothering to tell that government. The prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, has complied, arranging for the US gradually to leave. This month 2,000 of the some 5,000 US troops in Iraq will depart.
Lindsey Graham: Soleimani hit “Over the Top”– As all Tru
mp’s Iran Goals Foiled
Trump walks Alone: Former US Allies Britain, France, Germany join Russia and China in Forcefully Rejecting Trump Iran Sanctions
Trump walks Alone: Former US Allies Britain, France, Germany join Russia and China in Forcefully Rejecting Trump Iran Sanctions
This entire act of gross miscalculation did its fair share of harm, though not in the sense understood by Pompeo and his officials. It spoke to a clumsy unilateralism masquerading as credible support; to great power obstinacy misguided in attaining a goal. It was not the UN Security Council that had failed, but the US that had failed it, an effort that many at the UN are reading as directed at torching the remnants of the Iran nuclear deal. The assessment of the US effort by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was sharp and relevant. “You got the Dominican Republic on board (how much did that cost the US taxpayer?) Not a single other nation voted with you! The shining city on the hill has been reduced to a glow, like the embers of a dying fire.”
Trump’s donor and election war aganst Iran (ODT)
The point is that the U.S. and the Israelis are intent on going to war against enemy number one Iran and are packaging their actions in such away as to suggest that they are really behaving in a moderate fashion. They are assuming that Iran will retaliate, but in such a way as to avoid intensifying the conflict. In reality, taking action to destroy a nation’s economy is an act of war just as much as is staging attacks using bombs carried by spies or using missiles fired from planes. There is already a war going on, but the smokescreen provided by the coronavirus spread and BLM means that no one seems to want more on their plate and there is great reluctance to call it for what it is.
Couple Trump’s Kim Jong-un Style mine’s bigger than your’s threat with the clowns that lie on his behalf and you have Dr Strangelove being played out before your very eyes. HE’S YOUR PRESIDENT AMERICA. (ODT)
Bad press.
Reuters reports that the death toll in Iran from Covid-19 has risen to 1,284, and infections to 18,407. The country’s ministry of health spokesman, Kianush Jahanpur, is quoted as saying that another person dies there every 10 minutes now and every hour sees 50 people infected.
Researchers at Sharif University of Technology have modeled likely deaths and say Iran could be stricken with as many as 3.5 million dead.
Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo just announced that the US would actually tighten its economic and financial blockade on Iran. Iranians are already saying that US Treasury Department restrictions on bank transfers have made it impossible for them to buy needed medicines, tests and medical supplies. The US does not prevent medicine from going to Iran, it just makes it impossible for Iranians to afford them or for the international banking system to handle the money exchanges necessary to buy them.
via Trump Spared Iran from Bombing, but his Sanctions Fed Pandemic in which 1 dies every 10 Minutes
During recent increased US-Iran confrontation, so many people viewed the Selective Service website to find out about the draft that the website crashed. People were right to be concerned about a return of the draft.
Trump launched a reckless criminal act of state terror designed to provoke a war. Iran de-escalated the situation as of Wednesday — refusing to engage in a retaliatory cycle of violent escalation while demonstrating their military capability. Trump responded with a rambling, lifeless, incoherent slurred speech that promised to ratchet up economic sanctions without threatening further violence.
Pete Buttigieg@PeteButtigiegInnocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat. My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of all 176 souls lost aboard this flight.
The consequence of Trump’s recklessness
A total of 176 people were killed when a Ukrainian passenger plane came down soon after taking off from Tehran in the hours after the missile strike.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has revealed intelligence that suggests it was shot out of the sky by Iran. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the Australians have the same intelligence.
“The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile,” Mr Trudeau said. “This may well have been unintentional.”
Iran was on a war footing in the hours after launching its ballistic missiles and would have been prepared for an American response from the air.
All indications point to a tragic mistake.
It won’t take long for critics to point the finger of blame at Mr Trump himself.
Even before Mr Trudeau’s press conference, Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, who served for the US military in Afghanistan, implied the President should carry responsibility.
“Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat” he tweeted.
Trump is a know-nothing President simply following plans laid down since the 80s after the 6 day war. No country in the Middle East was allowed to establish an Army let alone a number of Arabic and Muslim States and so the demise of Libya, Iraq Syria and Iran were laid out years ago by Israel and the US acting as it’s proxy their reward oil and global dominance. The greatest threat to that plan today is Renewable and clean energy. (ODT)
And there is no end in sight with Donald Trump now tweeting furiously that if the Iranian government seeks to retaliate for Soleimani the U.S. will strike 52 targets inside Iran, including cultural sites, a war crime. Congress will do nothing to stop the carnage because it is just as completely controlled by the Israel Lobby as is the White House.
The blood of the Americans, Iranians and Iraqis who will die in the next few weeks is clearly on Donald Trump’s hands as this war was never inevitable and serves no U.S. national interest. It will surely turn out to be a debacle, as well as devastating for all parties involved. And it might well, on top of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, be the long-awaited beginning of the end of America’s imperial ambitions. Trump has had three years to learn the lesson gleaned from Iraq and Afghanistan. He obviously used that time to learn nothing.
via Killing Inside Iraq to Punish Iran, by Philip Giraldi – The Unz Review
A personal comment in response to the Trump regime’s assassination of redoubtable Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, a national hero now martyred by US imperial rage.
He represented Iranian resilience and resistance against US state-terrorism, its endless wars of aggression, its rage for global control by brute force — responsible for countless millions of deaths, vast destruction, and human misery globally.
The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists. Never beautiful, it was world’s apart from today’s permanent US state of war on humanity at home and abroad.
via Stupid Is As Stupid Does Defines the Trump Regime’s Foreign Policy – Stephen Lendman
The United States, like Israel, has become a pariah that shreds, violates or absents itself from international law. We launch preemptive wars, which under international law is defined as a “crime of aggression,” based on fabricated evidence. We, as citizens, must hold our government accountable for these crimes.
via War With Iran
With the release by JustSecurity.org of unredacted emails on the Ukraine scandal showing that Trump personally (and illegally) withheld congressionally mandated military aid to an ally, the Republican defense of the president is collapsing. Some GOP senators such as Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski seem to be weakening on calling witnesses and subpoenaing records for the Senate trial, and the Democrats only need four Republican senators to ensure a proper proceeding, which would certainly put Trump’s presidency in peril.
It is extremely suspicious that Trump has abruptly begun trafficking in the sanguinary merchandise of all-out war just at this moment when his throne is on the brink of toppling.
The Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is one of the world players who pushed Trump to breach the 2015 treaty with Iran. Trump then slapped the severest economic sanctions on Iran ever imposed on any country in the absence of war. Trump went around the world menacing other countries into ceasing to buy Iranian petroleum and threatening billions in fines against any company anywhere in the world that invested in or traded with Iran.
Instead, Netanyahu and Trump have pushed Iran straight into the arms of China which is investing $400 billion in the country and which is now taking most of Iran’s oil exports. China seems intent on integrating Iran into its economy even more robustly than it had proposed with Pakistan.
via Israeli PM Netanyahu’s Himalayan Miscalculation on Iran: Bringing China into the Mideast
The Banner is wrong it should be Morrison confirms America is to send Australian Troops Planes and Warships to Iran (ODT)
via Scott Morrison confirms Australia to join US protection of oil tankers in Straits of Hormuz
In Australia’s Interest to Know(ODT)
via Five Lies on Iran We Need to Refute to Stop Another Illegal War
Trump tore up the deal with Iran and is now insisting they did it (ODT)
‘How dare Iran break the nuclear deal we tore up a year ago?’ – Lee Camp — RT USA News
Conservatives take us to Wars the ALP takes us out of them. SOS Save OUR SONS (ODT)
Australia must think through its interests and principles with the U.S. before taking part in an attack in Iran, writes former executive chairman of UNSCOM, the UN Special Commission to disarm Iraq, Richard Butler.
Australia is likely to be drawn into U.S. hostilities with Iran
Here’s a word of advice to Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Unless he wants to risk a smudge on his reputation of the sort that accompanies John Howard to this day: don’t get involved in conflict with Iran beyond limited naval engagement in a Gulf peace-keeping role.
via Acting on Iran has painful shades of joining the US in Iraq
For years, Israel maintained close political, economic, and security relations with the Shah of Iran. Newly-declassified documents reveal that Israeli leaders were well aware of his murderous suppression of political opponents.
via The unwritten history of Israel’s alliance with the Shah’s dictatorship | +972 Magazine
Trump administration appear intent on war against Iran. This week on Intercepted: As the U.S. accuses Iran of attacking civilian ships while offering scant evidence, grave historical parallels are emerging with the Gulf of Tonkin incidents in 1964 that were manipulated to justify Lyndon Johnson’s dramatic escalation of the war in Vietnam. California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna is preparing legislation aimed at stopping an attack on Iran, and he says he would not put it past national security adviser John Bolton to manipulate evidence. Journalist Negar Mortazavi of The Independent analyzes what war with Iran would look like and exposes the State Department’s funding of propaganda operations against Iran. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman talks about the parallels with the build up to the Iraq invasion of 2003 and shares stories from her early life as a journalist.
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The Trump-Fox feedback loop could cause a war with Iran
blog June 17, 2019 4:57 PM EDT
- Fox both serves as Trump’s personal propaganda outlet and shapes his worldview. The president regularly watches hours of Fox coverage and often tweets about segments that catch his eye. He has stocked his administration with former Fox personalities, the network’s most prominent figures serve as his outside advisers, and guests openly appeal to him during their on-air appearances. Fox segments have an immense influence over this White House, with the president acting based on what he sees on the network on everything from political strategy to pardons.
- It remains unclear how the conflict between the U.S. and Iran will play out. But with the stakes this high, it’s unnerving that the president is wallowing in Fox’s spin.
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Trump tweeted about this Fox News segment that encouraged a US military strike on Iran
video June 17, 2019 1:00 PM EDT
olddogthoughts 