NATO/Israeli WWIII against Iran blipping on the radar again

[TonyGosling]

In a Tweet Taunting Iran, Trump Releases an Image Thought to Be Classified
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/world/middleeast/trump-iran-missile -explosion-satellite-image.html

By David E. Sanger and William J. Broad
Aug. 30, 2019

A mysterious explosion on Thursday at an Iranian space center prompted speculation that it was American sabotage, rather than an accident, that was responsible for the third successive failure of Tehran’s efforts to show it could loft satellites into orbit.

As pictures from commercial satellites of a rocket’s smoking remains began to circulate, President Trump denied Friday on Twitter that the United States was involved. It was an unusual message because the Iranian government had neither acknowledged the accident nor blamed the United States. His tweet ended with an apparent taunt: “I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened” in the fiery accident.

But Mr. Trump also included in his tweet a high-resolution image of the disaster, immediately raising questions about whether he had plucked a classified image from his morning intelligence briefing to troll the Iranians. The president seemed to resolve the question on Friday night on his way to Camp David when he told reporters, “We had a photo and I released it, which I have the absolute right to do.”

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Donald J. Trump
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The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.

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There is no denying that, even if it runs the risk of alerting adversaries to American abilities to spy from high over foreign territory. And there is precedent for doing so in more calculated scenarios: President John F. Kennedy declassified photographs of Soviet missile sites during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and President George W. Bush declassified pictures of Iraq in 2003 to support the faulty case that Saddam Hussein was producing nuclear and chemical weapons.

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It was unclear if Mr. Trump was using the explosion and the lurking suspicions among Iranians that the United States was again deep inside their nuclear and missile programs to force a negotiation or to undermine one.

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Mr. Trump’s comments came days after a Group of 7 summit at which France tried to organize talks between Mr. Trump and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran. Both Washington and Tehran seem to be maneuvering to restart some kind of contact, and perhaps reopen negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, the United States is ratcheting up sanctions and Iran is resuming nuclear activities it had suspended under a 2015 agreement with the Obama administration.

Commercial satellite photographs and the far more detailed image that Mr. Trump released showed devastating damage at the Imam Khomeini Space Center. The rocket itself appeared to have disintegrated. White House and intelligence officials declined to say whether the image Mr. Trump tweeted came from his morning intelligence briefing, but other officials conceded it bore all of the markings of a spy-satellite image.

American officials have often accused Iran of conducting the launches, under the guise of its space program, to simulate the technology involved in deploying a conventional or nuclear warhead — an effort American officials have vowed to stop. In February, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had accelerated a secret American program to sabotage both Iran’s missiles and its rockets.

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Two previous attempts at launching satellites — on Jan. 15 and on Feb. 5 — failed. More than two-thirds of Iran’s satellite launches have failed over the past 11 years, a remarkably high number compared with the 5 percent failure rate worldwide.

Mr. Trump’s denial and the satellite image he released seemed meant to maximize Iran’s embarrassment over the episode.

“The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran,” he tweeted. “I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.”

If the accident was linked to a covert action by the United States — one that Mr. Trump would have been required to authorize in a presidential “finding” — he and other American officials would be required by law to deny involvement.

The laws governing covert actions, which stretch back to the Truman administration, focus on obscuring who was responsible for the act, not covering up the action itself. Most American presidents have fulfilled that requirement by staying silent about such episodes, but Mr. Trump does not operate by ordinary rules — and may have decided that an outright denial was his best course.

Alternatively, the president may have been trying signal to the Iranians that the United States was not involved in order to keep the episode from derailing the odd dance underway between Tehran and Washington more than a year after Mr. Trump abandoned the nuclear deal. While in public, Iranian officials insist they would negotiate only if the United States re-enters the Obama-era agreement and lifts sanctions. In private, many Iranian elites now appear to be coalescing around a strategy of continued provocations, but also an openness to talks with Mr. Trump.

Many in Iran will suspect American involvement in the string of unexplained disasters striking the country’s space program. A decade ago, the United States and Israel were the prime players in a covert action, code-named “Olympic Games,” to sabotage Iran’s nuclear centrifuges using a hard-to-detect cyberattack at the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant. Changes in computer code being fed to the centrifuges caused them to speed up or slow down, and to spin out of control.

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In 2011, a huge explosion destroyed a major missile-testing site near Tehran, killing the military officer who oversaw the Iranian program. Initially, the Iranians described that as an accident, but they later linked it to an Israeli program to assassinate nuclear scientists. Israeli officials have since hinted they were involved.

That explosion destroyed buildings at a vast development site; the explosion on Thursday appeared more isolated, limited to the launchpad, which was shown smoldering in satellite photographs released by Planet Labs.

But it was Mr. Trump’s release of a satellite photograph that attracted the most discussion among intelligence officials. Several former officials noted that the upper left-hand corner, where the level of classification of the photograph would normally be denoted, was blacked out before Mr. Trump tweeted the image. That suggested a rushed effort by the United States to declassify it, presumably at Mr. Trump’s command. A glare on the photograph suggested someone may have used a cellphone to take a picture of the image as it was displayed on a tablet computer, which is how classified images are often shown to the president during security briefings.

“You can bet every adversary is going to school on what’s been exposed,” James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said in an email. “I can’t see what the point was, other than to make fun of the Iranians.”

Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the image posted by Mr. Trump looked “far better than any commercial imagery” that has been released about the launch. Revealing the abilities of American satellite surveillance, he argued, does not advance American interests.

“This tweet is an excellent example of Trump’s aimless, impulsive thinking about many national security issues,” Mr. Kimball said. “Why tweet that the United States was not involved when it may have been? Why, apparently sarcastically, wish them good luck in finding the cause for the accident?”

Commercial satellite images by Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies showed a thick plume of black smoke rising from the launching pad on Thursday, as well as what appeared to be the burned remains of the launching tower.

It was the third disaster to befall a rocket launching attempt this year at the Iranian space center, a desert complex east of Tehran named for the nation’s first supreme leader. The site specializes in rocket launchings meant to put satellites into orbit.

Tehran announced its January rocket failure but said nothing about the one in February that was picked up by American intelligence officials. It has also said nothing officially about Thursday’s blast. Like many closed societies, Iran tends to hide its failures and exaggerate its successes.

While Tehran says the launchings are for peaceful purposes, American officials say the advancement of orbital rocketry can aid the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles — the kind that might one day threaten the United States with nuclear strikes.

David Schmerler, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who closely examined the satellite imagery of Thursday’s blast, said there was no way to know if it was accidental or intentional.

“Something went wrong and it ignited the fuel,” he said. “It could be sabotage or an accident. There’s no way to tell.”

Mr. Schmerler added that the first images on Thursday seemed to imply the launching pad had suffered a catastrophic explosion associated with a failed launching. But later imagery and analysis, he said, suggested the billowing smoke and debris were the result of a fueling accident.

In an interview, Mr. Schmerler said the image in Mr. Trump’s tweet revealed many details that reinforced the idea of a fueling or final-preparations disaster. For instance, Mr. Schmerler said, the launching tower was clearly still in the middle of the launching pad rather than having been pulled back — the standard Iranian practice.

Correction: Aug. 30, 2019
An earlier version of this article misstated the corner in which the level of classification would normally be denoted in a photograph. It is the upper left-hand corner, not the upper right-hand corner.

Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

[TonyGosling]

Iran will challenge nuclear deal ‘every two months’ unless Europe takes action, ambassador warns Tehran's commitment to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty also at risk of being in ‘total jeopardy’ as it comes up for review next year
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-nuclear-deal-europe- uranium-tehran-uk-latest-a9193941.html

Iran will challenge nuclear deal ‘every two months’ unless Europe takes action, ambassador warns
Tehran's commitment to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty also at risk of being in ‘total jeopardy’ as it comes up for review next year

Kim Sengupta Diplomatic Editor 1 day ago

Iran‘s resuming of uranium enrichment will be followed by similar steps every two months unless European states do more to save the country’s nuclear deal with international powers, one of the Tehran’s senior diplomats has declared.

Hamid Baeidinejad, the ambassador to the UK, also warned that influential figures in Iran are advocating leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in response to perceived failure by European signatories to fulfil obligations under the treaty and crippling sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

The ambassador spoke amid rising tension with Tehran claiming that an International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) inspector stopped from entering a facility at Natanz was “tested positive for explosive nitrates” and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accusing Iran of positioning itself for a “rapid nuclear breakout.”

Tehran has accused Britain, France and Germany -- who have remained in the nuclear deal along with Russia and China after the US pulled out -- of failing to establish an adequate financial structure to enable companies to trade with Iran in face of American sanctions.

Iran, said Mr Baeidinejad, has been fulfilling its obligation under Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) since Washington reneged on it and brought in punitive sanctions, and was now taking form steps as a “wake-up call” to the other signatories.

The decision to inject uranium gas into centrifuges in the underground Fordaw facility was the fourth move Iran has made as part of this policy.

The Islamic Republic of Iran 40 years on

“We cannot continue to fulfil one-sidedly so we have taken these decisions. If the other does not take the warning seriously, maybe through the use of Instex we shall be in a very difficult situation, all of us. But we hope with these steps we are conveying a strong, real and serious message to implement the nuclear deal” Mr Baeidinejad said.

Instex is the payment channel set up by JCPOA signatories UK, Germany and France to help continue trade with Iran and circumvent US sanctions.

“We gave ample time to our partners and then we adopted this policy. In two months we will absolutely take the fifth step after analysing the situation. Like the other steps it will be very calculated and measured. So the ball is in their court, we hope to resolve the situation.”

“These steps will be every two months, this has been decided at the highest level. I understand the concern that after more of these steps we run out of initiatives and have steps which are not easily reversible and this will affect the implementation of the JCPOA, that is why we are asking our partners to fulfil their obligations and resolve this issue and protect the JCPOA.”

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Speaking of internal pressure within Iran to pull out of the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the ambassador said the treaty is at risk of being in “total jeopardy” as it comes up for review next year.

Israel, India and Pakistan are outside the NPT and North Korea is continuing on its path of acquiring a nuclear arsenal, he wanted to point out. “It is viewed in some circles, some personalities in Iran that we are not benefiting from membership of the NPT at the moment.

“That is not the policy of the government. President [Hassan] Rouhani and the government of Iran are trying their best to convince the people, all the people and important personalities that it would not be in the interest of Iran to withdraw from the NPT.”

Mr Baeidinejad acknowledged that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, has issued a fatwa, or religious order, against the country having nuclear weapons. “But unfortunately after problems with the JCPOA more and more people are listening to arguments to leave the NPT. We have renounced nuclear weapons, but the US is pressuring us and putting impediments on the path of us getting peaceful nuclear technology. So they don’t see any positives.”

Iran does not see that anything can be gained by dialogue with the US as long as the Trump administration continues with its current policies, said the ambassador.

“There is no interest in talking to the US. They have a hostile policy towards Iran, there is no sincerity in what they say, they are seeking the collapse of Iranian economy, of Iranian society.

“At one stage they said they want to have the same policy towards us as they have towards towards North Korea. But there have been no fruits from that at all. The US policy is one of incoherence.”

[TonyGosling]

#WWIII for Christmas 2019? #IsraelsUndeclaredWarOnIran Israel trying to provoke major Middle East war with illegal strikes on Syria near Damascus

Link

on #BannedInBritain Press.TV 💾 💾


Syria says intercepts missiles from Israel
2019-12-23
Syrian air defense forces have repelled an attack launched from "the occupied territories", according to Syrian state media.
https://urmedium.com/c/presstv/5022


#WWIII for Christmas 2019? #IsraelsUndeclaredWarOnIran Israel trying to provoke major Middle East war with illegal strikes on Syria near Damascus https://youtu.be/VkZLpcI6Pcc on #BannedInBritain Press.TV 💾 💾

[TonyGosling]

Israel Threatens Iran with ‘Own Vietnam in Syria’
Sunday, 15 December, 2019 - 10:00

https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/2036791/israel-threatens-iran- ‘own-vietnam-syria’

Missile fire is seen from Damascus, Syria May 10, 2018. (Reuters)
Tel Aviv, London – Asharq Al-Awsat
Israel has ramped up attacks on Iranian sites in eastern Syria while Tel Aviv vowed turning Syria into a Vietnam for Iran and to drain Tehran's forces there.

Israel's defense minister warned Iran against its continued presence in Syria, saying Israel will "work tirelessly" to prevent the establishment of a stable Iranian military presence in the war-torn country.

"It is no secret that Iran is trying to establish a ring of fire around our country, it is already based in Lebanon and is trying to establish in Syria, Gaza and more," Naftali Bennett said last week.

"We need to move from containment to attack."

"We say to Iran: Syria will become your Vietnam," Bennett added.

Israeli intelligence site Debka stated that Bennett's threats coincided with four attacks that targeted a military complex built by Iranian proxies within a week.

More so, five Iran proxy fighters were killed in overnight raids in eastern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, last Sunday.

The strikes late Saturday targeted "positions of Iranian forces and allied militias" on the edge of the town of Albukamal, the UK-based monitor said, as quoted by AFP.

“Five non-Syrian fighters were killed,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, without being able to provide their nationalities.

[TonyGosling]

reminder - - -
Lobbyist Says Israel Should Create A 'False Flag' To Start A War With Iran
Geoffrey Ingersoll and Michael B Kelley Sep 27, 2012, 2:43 AM
israelIsrael is conducting massive "snap-training" exercises.

The U.S. is doing unprecedented naval mine clearing evolutions.
https://www.businessinsider.com/top-researcher-suggests-israel-get-nas tier-with-iran-sink-sub-illicit-false-flag-2012-9

Iran is launching anti-ship missiles and submarines.

Now is the time that a small provocation could lead to a full-blown war.

And Patrick Clawson, Director of Research at Washington Institute Of Near East Policy (WINEP), has suggested that someone should fabricate that small provocation.

Speaking at the WINEP policy forum luncheon on "How to Build US-Israeli Coordination on Preventing an Iranian Nuclear Breakout," Clawson (ironically) said that "if, in fact, the Iranians aren't going to compromise, it would be best if someone else started the war."

Before that Clawson listed all the conflicts in which the U.S. didn't become involved until they were attacked, emphasizing that a false flag was needed each time for conflict to be initiated.


Here's more from Clawson:

One can combine other means of pressure with sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down, some day one of them might not come up, who would know why? We can do a variety of things if we wish to increase the pressure... We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier.

WINEP is a "key organization in the Israel lobby" that was founded in 1985 by leading members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to "provide a seemingly 'objective' research organization to provide consistently 'pro-Israel' analysis and commentary," according to Harvard professor of International Affairs Steven M. Walt (h/t Firedoglake).

Former AIPAC staffer MJ Rosenberg was reportedly in the room when WINEP was founded and described the organization as "an AIPAC controlled think-tank that would disseminate the AIPAC line but in a way that would disguise its connections."


Clawson didn't disguise much. Here's the video:



SEE ALSO: These Are The Tools The US Will Use To Counter Iranian Action In Hormuz >

[TonyGosling]

Declassified UK
REVEALED: How Boris Johnson and three of his ministers are being courted by a US institute pushing for war with Iran
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-01-13-revealed-how-boris- johnson-and-three-of-his-ministers-are-being-courted-by-a-us-institute -pushing-for-war-with-iran/

By Matt Kennard• 13 January 2020

US President Donald Trump, left, poses with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the Nato summit in London on 4 December 2019. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Facundo Arrizabalaga) Less
An influential US institute with close ties to the Trump administration and which supports regime change in Iran has gifted more than £70,000 to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and three of his closest allies in cabinet.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which was described as “the intellectual command post of the neoconservative campaign for regime change in Iraq”, previously helped create and fund an anti-Iranian lobby group in Washington DC and now works to confront what it calls the Iran “threat”.

Many US architects of the invasion of Iraq, who have also pushed for bombing Iran, are associated with the AEI, such as former national security adviser John Bolton, who joined the Trump administration directly from the AEI, and former vice-president Dick Cheney, who sits on the AEI’s board.

The revelations raise questions about the extent to which key British ministers, known to be on the right of the Conservative Party, have been cultivated by an organisation promoting regime change in Iran and whether this is influencing current UK government policy.

The AEI describes itself as promoting “American strength and global leadership” as well as “free enterprise”, and is also associated with policies of economic deregulation supported by key figures in Johnson’s cabinet.
Former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who opposed President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, details his opposition to the agreement at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, 8 September 2015. Cheney is on the board of the AEI. (Photo: EPA / Jim Lo Scalzo)

‘A very important institution’

In September 2018, Boris Johnson flew first class to Washington for a three-day visit to receive an award at the AEI’s annual dinner. The organisation gifted Johnson £16,846.09 to cover the trip, averaging more than £5,000 per day.

At the ceremony, Johnson told the audience: “Wild horses wouldn’t have kept me away,” adding, “you could have knocked me down with a feather when I got the news … I’m absolutely thrilled to be here at the American Enterprise Institute.”

The AEI event was Johnson’s first donor-funded overseas trip as an MP for more than a decade — since he travelled to Italy in 2007 for a book tour, according to the UK parliament’s register of interests.

Johnson added: “This is a very important institution. I followed the work of AEI scholars and of people associated with this body, for many, many years, and you have been incredibly influential and drivers for change, and for things I believe in.”

The day after President Donald Trump ordered a strike on Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Matthew Continetti, a resident fellow at the AEI, authored an op-ed, reprinted on the AEI website, which called the assassination a “stunning blow to international terrorism and a reassertion of American might”.

Johnson himself said nothing for two days after the strike on Soleimani on 3 January, but when he eventually made a statement, it was largely supportive of Trump’s action. “General Qasem Soleimani posed a threat to all our interests,” he said, adding, “we will not lament his death”. The US strike on Iran’s top general is widely thought to qualify as a “crime of aggression” under international law.

Johnson’s award from the AEI was presented two months after he resigned as UK foreign secretary, a position he held for two years under Theresa May’s premiership. As foreign secretary, Johnson had said: “I do not believe that regime change in Tehran is the objective that we should be seeking,” adding, “I cannot with any confidence say that would be a change for the better because it seems equally plausible to me to imagine that Qasem Soleimani …could put himself in a very good position to take over”. Four months after these comments, he flew to Washington to receive his award from the AEI.

The AEI is closely linked to the Trump administration. In October 2017, vice-president Mike Pence made a speech at the institute in which he called then-AEI president Arthur Brooks “a friend that sticks closer than a brother”. Pence praised the AEI’s “extraordinary work” before adding, to applause, “President Donald Trump wanted me to say hello to everyone at the American Enterprise Institute. The president sent me here today to say thank you for your strong support of our agenda.”

Pence also told the AEI: “President Trump has put Iran on notice,” and added: “I would submit to you that the work you do here at AEI is crucial to America’s future … I’m here today to assure you that President Trump and I share your commitment.”

Pence was not simply being rhetorical. Within his first 14 months in office, Trump poached six AEI staffers directly from the institute — including his national security adviser — to work in government. Many others in the administration have a historical link to the AEI. The White House website also includes many references to supportive articles by AEI analysts on controversial Trump decisions.

In January 2018, Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo — now secretary of state — also went to speak at the AEI. Later that year, the AEI welcomed the secretary of the army, Mark Esper, to speak at its headquarters. Nine months later, he was appointed defence secretary by Trump, a position he still holds.
US President Donald Trump during a meeting with senior White House advisers in the situation room of the White House, 7 January 2020, after Iranian missile attacks on US military facilities in Iraq in retaliation for Trump’s drone strike on Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. In the picture are vice-president Mike Pence (L-1), secretary of state Mike Pompeo (L-2), and secretary of defence Mark Esper (R-1), all of whom have spoken at the AEI since Trump was inaugurated. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Shealah Craighead)

Funding British ministers

Johnson is not the only minister in Britain’s new government to receive funding from the AEI.

The AEI holds a highly-secretive annual spring conference at the luxury Sea Island resort in Georgia, USA. It has been described as a “magnet for [Republican Party] leaders and members of the business world”, but no information is available on who attends or what is discussed, and every panel and discussion is off the record.

The second most powerful politician in the UK government, Sajid Javid, who is Johnson’s Chancellor, attended his first AEI conference in March 2011, within a year of becoming an MP. He subsequently attended six out of eight AEI annual conferences from 2011 to 2018. From June 2012 until today, Javid has made no overseas trips paid for by a third party except those funded by the AEI. In total, Javid has received £31,285.19 in gifts from the AEI.

Another regular at AEI conferences is Michael Gove, a close ally of the prime minister and now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a cabinet position in which Gove closely advises Johnson on policy implementation. Gove has attended every AEI conference from 2015 to 2019 except one and has been gifted £22,763.04 by the AEI over the past four years.

At the 2018 conference, Gove spoke alongside AEI resident scholar Gary Schmitt on a panel titled, “The New Empire Builders: China, Iran, Russia”. What was said at the panel is not known, but in 2018, Schmitt made a video titled “American retreat and the rise of Russia, China and Iran,” for the AEI website. In it, he calls on the US government to “reverse America’s retreat from its decades-long role as the world’s preeminent political and military power” by increasing military spending and projecting power more forcefully against Iran in the Middle East.

Another panel at the conference led by Schmitt, asked, “Is the US military ready to fight and win potential conflicts against revisionist states?” — including Iran. Alongside Gove, Javid also attended this conference, although it is not known if he was present at the panels discussing Iran.

The following year, 2019, Gove was joined in Georgia by another cabinet minister, Liz Truss, who is now Johnson’s Secretary of State for International Trade. Truss was gifted £8,200.54 by the AEI for her four-day visit, the first overseas trip she had made for five years, which was funded by a third party. Pence, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Pompeo all spoke alongside Gove and Truss at the 2019 event.

The content of the three British ministers’ speeches to the AEI, together with other details of meetings and itinerary, remains private. Neither does the AEI publicly disclose its funders, so the ultimate source of funding for the British ministers’ trips is unclear, raising further questions about accountability.

It is also not known which, if any, British cabinet members are scheduled to attend the AEI annual conference in Georgia this coming spring. Even the date of the meeting appears to be secret.

On top of the personal gifts, five Conservative government ministers — including the then foreign secretary Philip Hammond — delivered policy speeches at the AEI in Washington between 2014 and 2017. One of them, Nicky Morgan, who spoke in 2014 on “closing the skills gap”, is now culture secretary in Boris Johnson’s cabinet.
British chancellor (finance minister) Sajid Javid leaves Downing Street in London, 17 December 2019, after the first cabinet meeting of the new government. Javid attended six of the secret AEI annual conferences between 2011 and 2018 and has been gifted £31,285 by the institute. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Andy Rain)

Promoting war on Iran

Confronting Iran has been one of the AEI’s signature issues. In 2009 — at the beginning of the Obama administration, which many at the AEI feared would be too dovish — the institute created a “Critical Threats Project” which aimed to “inform and educate policymakers, the intelligence and military communities” about the threats facing the US. The project has two teams, one of which focuses exclusively on “threats posed by Iran”.

The AEI is staffed by many individuals supportive of military action against Iran.

Paul Wolfowitz, George W Bush’s deputy secretary of defence and a key driver of the invasion of Iraq, is a visiting scholar at the AEI, where he works on “foreign and defence policy”. He appeared on Fox News on 7 January 2020, with an AEI background, supporting the US strike on Soleimani. “You know, to get this guy with his number one henchmen on an empty road in the middle of the night when no civilians are going to be killed is a rare opportunity,” he said, adding: “This was the time to do something rapid and bold.”

On the AEI’s board sits Cheney, vice-president in the George W Bush administration, who in 2015 made a speech at the AEI on the folly of the Iran nuclear deal. He lamented that Obama had “effectively ruled out the option of force” and advised him on “maintaining a credible threat of military force”. The Atlantic noted that “Cheney all but proposes war” with Iran.

Bolton, often seen as the most belligerent pro-war figure in Washington, was a senior fellow at the AEI before becoming Trump’s national security advisor in 2018. Bolton, who has worked with the AEI from the 1970s, was eventually fired by Trump because even the president disagreed with Bolton’s overly-hawkish position on Iran.

The New York Times has described Bolton as the “favourite neoconservative of Iranian hackers” and he was apparently targeted in 2014 when hackers stole his identity. “I’m honoured they picked me,” he said. “They must have been looking for the most anti-Iranian regime person in Washington. I’m proud to win that award.” But the New York Times concluded that “Mr Bolton may have been the target, or he may have been collateral damage in a broader attack on the American Enterprise Institute.” The AEI would be an obvious target because of its position on war with Iran.

In 2015, while at the AEI, Bolton had written an op-ed in the New York Times, reprinted on the AEI website, titled: “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” The day after the strike on Soleimani, Bolton tweeted approval, stating: “Congratulations to all involved in eliminating Qasem Soleimani. Long in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran’s malign Quds Force activities worldwide. Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”
President Trump’s then-national security adviser John Bolton, who has called for bombing Iran as soon as possible, answers reporters’ questions at the White House in Washington DC, 3 October 2018. Bolton was poached by President Trump directly from the AEI. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Jim Lo Scalzo)

Creating the Iran Enterprise Institute

The AEI worked in the past with Iranian opposition activist Amir Abbas Fakhravar, the head of an independent student movement opposed to the Iranian government, who was a political prisoner in Iran until he absconded while on prison leave and escaped the country in 2006.

A May 2006 diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks, from the US embassy in the United Arab Emirates, notes that Fakhravar was a “please protect” source, suggesting that he was an informer for the US government. It also states that Fakhravar “came to Dubai where he met with Richard Perle and received a US visa to speak about Iran, at the invitation of the American Enterprise Institute”.

Perle was a key figure in the Reagan and Bush administrations and a proponent of the invasion of Iraq and regime change in Iran, and was then a resident fellow at the AEI. Perle also soon arranged a “private lunch” for Fakhravar at the AEI, attended by Pentagon and state department officials.

Soon after his arrival in the US, in July 2006, Fakhravar testified to the Congress alongside Michael Ledeen, then “Freedom Scholar” at the AEI, on the subject of “Iran’s nuclear impasse”. During his testimony, Fakhravar called for “hard” sanctions on the Iranian government, adding: “A change of regime … will help stability in the region and the world.” The AEI’s Ledeen added: “The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with us for 27 years, and we have yet to respond … The first step is to abandon the self-deception that we will be able to arrive at a negotiated settlement. It cannot be done.”

Fakhravar soon became president of the newly-founded Iran Enterprise Institute (IEI), “which takes its name and some of its financial support from the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute”, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The IEI was created at a three-day meeting in Washington in October 2006. Among those present were Fakhravar, the AEI’s Ledeen and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah, Iran’s US-backed dictator who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution. The AEI was said to be providing the “inspiration and moral support” for establishing the IEI, which is now defunct.

Fakhravar has remained in the US ever since, also founding the Iranian Freedom Institute, of which he remains president, and becoming the “poster boy” for regime change in Iran in Washington. In 2018, Fakhravar appeared alongside Bolton on Fox News saying: “The people in Iran … love President Trump” and thanking Bolton — who advocates for the US bombing Iran as soon as possible — being “right all the time when it comes to Iran”.

Fakhravar has also developed links with the ruling Conservative Party in the UK. In October 2019, he travelled to London where he was hosted by another pro-war think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, at the House of Lords. He was invited by Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski, a strong supporter of the regime in Saudi Arabia, while the event was chaired by Conservative MP and British Navy veteran, Andrew Bowie.

Fakhravar told the meeting that European governments “should stop talking to the regime” and again proposed “hard sanctions” on Iran, saying any profit made through business with the country was “blood money from the young Iranians”.

The Henry Jackson Society is linked to the AEI, with many associates of the US group on its list of international patrons, including AEI visiting scholar, Richard Perle, and former resident scholar, Joshua Muravchik, as well as Bill Kristol, the son of the writer after which Boris Johnson’s award is named.
Iranian dissident and regime change activist, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, poses at a shooting range in August 2019. Fakhravar escaped Iran and obtained a visa to the US through the American Enterprise Institute, before setting up the Iran Enterprise Institute. (Photo: Facebook)

The godfather

The Irving Kristol Award presented to Boris Johnson — named after the “godfather of the neoconservative movement” — is the “highest honour conferred” by the AEI and has been given to various pro-war figures.

One is the late journalist and writer Charles Krauthammer who called Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran a “catastrophe” and the worst agreement since Munich in 1938, when European countries allowed Nazi Germany to expand its borders.

Another recipient of the award, in 2015, is Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a decision which may have been a rebuke to Obama’s Iran policy at the time. Netanyahu was at the time a major opponent of Obama’s attempt to pursue dialogue with Iran, and recently gave effusive support for Trump’s drone strike on Soleimani.

The year after Johnson received the award, it was given to Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the UN. Haley is also effusive about Trump’s strike on Soleimani, saying he has shown “great decisiveness, great resolve, and I think that this was a long time coming”.

Before his death in 2009, Irving Kristol summarised his view of how US foreign policy should be practised. “What’s the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role?” he asked.

Johnson is one of only two Britons to have been given the award.

Liz Truss, told Declassified: “The American Enterprise Institute is a well respected, independent think tank that hosts regular symposiums to debate policy and ideas. Politicians from across the political spectrum attend to provide insight, listen to ideas and inform debate.”

Johnson, Javid, Gove and the American Enterprise Institute, all declined to comment for this article. DM

Matt Kennard is the head of investigations at Declassified UK, a new investigative journalism platform analysing UK foreign, military and intelligence policies. He tweets at @DCKennard.

If you attended the AEI annual conference at the same time as any of these British ministers and heard their speeches, contact us securely at tips@declassifieduk.org (public key fingerprint: e9e4a7dbae938c3d4557dc996df1e8a25cacf23d)

[TonyGosling]

Israel, America and Britain: Building a Pretext to Wage War on Iran, Setting the Scene for a Broader War?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-america-and-britain-building-a-pr etext-to-wage-war-on-iran-setting-the-scene-for-a-broader-war/5680621

By Dr. David Halpin Global Research, June 14, 2019
Region: Europe, Middle East & North Africa
Theme: Law and Justice, Media Disinformation, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: IRAN: THE NEXT WAR?

[print]

At 11pm BST 13th of June 2019, the British Broadcasting Corporation, or more correctly, the British State Broadcaster, pumped this out on an ultra short bulletin, usual for this time of night.

(Sometimes it is difficult to rest the mind for sleep after frequent strokes of black propaganda from the BBC.)

The messages. That the US held Iran responsible for the attacks early in the morning of Thursday the 13th of June 2019 for the attacks on two ships in the Gulf of Oman, south of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Foreign Office of GB, that is currently without a government, had agreed that Iran was responsible.

What is the likely progress in this path towards a possible WW3 and what ‘lies upon lies’ will propel it?

Is the materiel at the ready?

The goading are the sanctions, an act of war by the US, and involving many nations using the strongest, illegal methods.

Firstly, the Jewish State, its name recently confirmed by a racist statute, has been urging its proxies the US and the UK to attack Iran with its 90 million people but in the shape of its ‘mullahs’, since 2009 or earlier.

This de facto state has six Dolphin class submarines(1). These were, ironically, built by a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp. About half the costs were met by Germany, in guilt or in place of reparations demanded of former East Germany by Israel. Some have chambers for the egress of scuba divers and for mini-subs, (echoes of the Dieppe raids).

At least two Dolphins, so mis-named, will be lurking in the Persian Gulf now. The ‘attacks’ on four tankers in the Gulf of Oman a month ago, though patchily reported, could have been by limpet mine. Whatever, Iran was in the frame constructed by the CIAs, the MI6s and the CNNs etc.

I recall the alleged enlargement of the torpedo tubes to allow firing of nuclear tipped cruise missiles. This supports the basis for such as fear.(2) I quote –
The U.S. Department of Terrorism

The Dolphins are quiet diesel-electric attack submarines that evolved from Germany’s famous and ubiquitous U209 Class. They can fire torpedoes and missiles from their 533mm torpedo tubes, perform underwater surveillance, and even launch combat swimmers via a wet and dry compartment.

The navy’s submarines also conducted 54 special operations in 2013, a similarly sharp increase from previous years. The operations included deployments to the Lebanese coast and deployments lasting several weeks that took the submarines thousands of kilometers from Israel.”

These 54 ‘special operations’ would have been co-ordinated by the State’s Depth Corps(3).

The Jerusalem Post(4)

Israeli Dolphin-class submarines carried out a July 5 2013 attack on an arms depot in the Syrian port city of Latakia, according to a report in the British Sunday Times, which contradicted a previous CNN report that the attack was the work of the Israel Air Force.

The alleged Israeli naval strike was closely coordinated with the United States and targeted a contingent of 50 Russian-made Yakhont P-800 anti-ship missiles that had arrived earlier in the year for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, the Times cited Middle East intelligence sources as stating.

CNN has set the scene(5), Nic Robertson the sort-of-straight guy, and ex-US navy ‘admiral’ John Kirby(6) the poison.

So how would a spark for a potential Armageddon (from Megiddo in the north of Palestine) happen now?

The pretext. An order from the Israeli Depth Corps, originating in an agreed order from the High Commands of the US,UK and Israel is given to a Dolphin commander close to the Iranian coast to fire a nuclear tipped cruise missile, range over 1000 sea miles, into the Negev. ‘Iran has fired one of its long range missiles. It was presumed to be off target and aimed for Tel Aviv. It might have been an Enhanced Radiation Weapon = Neutron Shell. Although the blast is less, an explosion was heard by a party of German visitors by the DEAD sea.’

The USS Abraham Lincoln and its support fleet, including submarines has been ordered to retaliate in defence but in an ‘ordered’ way.

Charter of the United Nations!

“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations…Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

David Halpin is a retired orthopaedic and trauma surgeon in his 80th year. He gets some peace from this Satanism in the woods he planted 30 years ago. He and Sue his wife, with many supporters, launched the Voyage of the Dove and the Dolphin 1-02-2003 to Gaza (7) – video – 20 minutes. This voyage was in common humanity with a people on the Cross and to shout against the looming Supreme War Crime, the bombardment and destruction of Iraq and many, many thousands of its innocent humans. ‘No mother and child should be in the least harmed anywhere in our still beautiful world’ – the author.

Notes

https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/germany-may-sell-2-more-dolphin-s ubs-to-israel-for-117b-01528/
http://web.archive.org/web/20140715085245/http://www.spiegel.de/intern ational/world/israel-deploys-nuclear-weapons-on-german-built-submarine s-a-836784.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_Corps
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-Israeli-submarine-strike-hit- Syrian-arms-depot-319756
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY_zg4nNnew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirby_(admiral)
https://dhalpin.infoaction.org.uk/videos/16-palestine/64-eyes-open-gaz a

https://media.urmedium.com/video/2020/05/20/637255418307343182video.mp 4

https://media.urmedium.com/video/2020/05/21/637256350694712113video.mp 4

[TonyGosling]

Pike war plan: Social Distancing on the High Seas! US warns Iran to stay 100m away from its warships

Link


Pike war plan: Social Distancing on the High Seas! US warns Iran to stay 100m away from its warships
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5U3baEuid4

Letter 'written by US Confederate officer 150 years ago predicted first two World Wars and said the third would be between Islamic leaders and the West'... but is it just a hoax?

Mystery surrounds authenticity of bizarre letter predicting three world wars
It was purportedly penned by Freemason Confederate soldier Albert Pike
If it was written in 1871, it has accurately described the first two wars
It says the third global war will be 'between Islamic leaders and the West'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...

Eyeing Iran, US warns to stay 100 metres away from its warships
Warning follows a threat by Trump who recently told the Navy to fire on any Iranian ships that harass US vessels.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/0...

Iran warns US against disrupting fuel shipments to Venezuela
https://urmedium.com/c/presstv/17074

In an alert that appeared aimed squarely at Iran, the United States Navy issued a warning on Tuesday to mariners in the Gulf to stay 100 metres (109 yards) away from US warships or risk being "interpreted as a threat and subject to lawful defensive measures".

[TonyGosling]

Things were good under Obama - the JCPOA for example

TRUMP on Iran: “We gave them $150 billion and $1.8 billion and we got nothing. ... Look at what they did to John Kerry and to President Obama. Look what happened, where they’re bringing planeloads of cash, planeloads, big planes, 757s, Boeing 757s coming in loaded up with cash. What kind of a deal is that?” — news conference with Macron.

THE FACTS: It’s the kind of deal that did not actually take place.

When Iran signed the multinational deal to restrain its nuclear development in return for being freed from sanctions, it regained access to its own assets, which had been frozen abroad. There was no $150 billion gift from the U.S. treasury or other countries. Iran was allowed to get its money back.

The $1.8 billion refers to a separate matter, also misstated by the president going back to before the 2016 election.

A payout of roughly that amount did come from the U.S. treasury. It was to pay an old IOU.

In the 1970s, Iran paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured. After the nuclear deal, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the matter, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal along with about $1.3 billion in interest.

The $400 million was paid in cash and flown to Tehran on a cargo plane. The arrangement provided for the interest to be paid later.

In Trump’s telling, one cargo plane with $400 million that was owed to Iran has become “big planes, 757s, Boeing 757s,” loaded with a $1.8 billion giveaway.

https://apnews.com/f53aeebcb0f64b76a2e2a54b2b002dad

[TonyGosling]

Mysterious explosions keep happening in Iran. Israel is likely behind it.
Experts say the suspected sabotage is part of Israel’s long-term efforts to delay any and all of Iran’s nuclear development.

By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com Jul 17, 2020, 8:20am EDT
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/17/21325985/iran-israel-explosion-natanz-nu clear-missile

First responders gather at the scene of an explosion at the Sina At’har health center in the north of Iran’s capital Tehran on June 30, 2020. Amir Kholousi/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images
For weeks, Iran has faced a deadly wave of explosions and fires at sensitive military and civilian sites, including one incident that caused immense damage to an important nuclear facility. No one officially knows why it’s happening or who is responsible — but many believe Israel, with the Trump administration’s tacit or even direct support, is behind it all.

On June 26, a massive explosion rocked the Khojir missile-production complex, a location considered vital to Iran’s missile capabilities. Four days later, another blast — this time at a medical clinic north of the capital, Tehran — killed 19 people.

On July 2, an explosion and fire occurred at the underground Natanz nuclear facility, a key component to the country’s uranium-enrichment efforts. What actually transpired is unclear, but a Middle Eastern official — believed to be the head of Israeli intelligence, Yossi Cohen — told the New York Times last week that Israel had detonated a bomb. Analysts differ on the extent of the damage, but assessments say centrifuge production may have been delayed a few months or even a few years as a result of the explosion and fire.


And this week, fires broke out in an aluminum plant in Lamerd and a seaport in Bushehr, engulfing at least seven wooden ships in the process.

It’s possible all of this is a coincidence. With a reeling economy and a devastating coronavirus outbreak, perhaps the Islamic Republic has merely struggled to maintain sensitive facilities that require constant upkeep. Accidents do happen.


But current and former US and Israeli officials as well as experts I spoke to are pretty certain Israel is responsible for the incidents at the military and nuclear sites (but not the clinic or the port or plant), with or without Washington’s explicit approval.

“There is a pattern of escalation and a context that would suggest a motive on the Israeli side to target the Iranians,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, the director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation.

Their reasoning is straightforward: Since President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Iran has inched closer to obtaining a nuclear weapon, though the country fiercely denies it is seeking one. Now that Iran is in a weakened position due in large part to the coronavirus pandemic, Israel and the US can target the country’s nuclear and military programs without fear of a massive retaliation.

Such a move would send an unmistakable signal to Tehran. “The message is: ‘You can’t control your country. We can hit you whenever we want, wherever we want,’” said Eric Brewer, who worked on Iran issues as a member of Trump’s National Security Council.

The direct consequences of that signal, though, are unclear. Some suspect Tehran may activate its proxies in Iraq to attack Americans or launch a cyberattack against Israel. It’s also possible Iran will look the other way, as the lack of a known attacker both leaves the regime devoid of a clear target and provides it the political space not to retaliate.

But no one believes these moves will actually convince Iran to back down and suspend all nuclear activity. If anything, the country might start sprinting toward the bomb.

“Covert operations will only undermine long-term nonproliferation efforts,” Mahsa Rouhi, an expert on Iran’s nuclear program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote Wednesday in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Hardline voices in Tehran will become more motivated to rapidly advance Iran’s nuclear program.”

Which means if Israel (maybe with the US) truly is behind these events in Iran, it’s taking quite the gamble.

Why it’s possible Israel was behind several of the recent explosions in Iran
Israel has long targeted nuclear programs in the Middle East in secret, open, and openly secret ways.

In 1981, Israeli jets bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. And in 2007, it struck a reactor in Syria that could have produced nuclear fuel. But Israel has saved its most audacious counter-nuclear efforts for Iran.

In the early 2000s, Israeli spy chiefs hatched a plan to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, a campaign Jerusalem has never formally acknowledged. In 2012, a top official at Natanz — Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan — was killed in a mysterious explosion. His death followed two other suspected killings over the previous two years.

But that wasn’t all: In 2009, Israel joined the US in using a cyber weapon, known as Stuxnet, to destroy about 1,000 of Iran’s 6,000 centrifuges.

Why would Israel resort to such bold methods? Simply put, officials in Jerusalem worry Iran could more credibly threaten Israel’s existence if it had a nuclear weapon. There’s real justification for that concern: Just last year, for example, a top Iranian general told local reporters, “Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map.”

When it became clear two of the recent explosions in Iran happened at a missile site (Khojir) and a key uranium enrichment facility (Natanz), all eyes turned to Israel as the likely culprit.

“Israel as well as the US have a clear interest in stopping, or at least disrupting, Iran’s weapons production capability, and in particular nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles,” retired Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Raphael Ofek, who served in Israeli military intelligence and in the prime minister’s office, told me.

The damage at Khojir doesn’t seem that extensive, but Natanz took quite a blow.


Nuclear experts at the Institute for Science and International Security on July 8 assessed that the facility had sustained “significant, extensive, and likely irreparable, damage to its main assembly hall section” which “was critical to the mass production of advanced centrifuges.” (Research and development of those centrifuges was permitted under the terms of the Iran nuclear deal, experts told me.)

“The building’s replacement would be expected to take at least a year, if not longer,” the nuclear analysts concluded.


And per Ofek, the explosion “won’t dramatically disrupt Iran’s advanced centrifuges program,” but “it may delay the deployment of the latest models of these machines for a year or two.”

Such assessments are important, former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro told me. Israeli officials believe that if those advanced centrifuges were ever installed and operated at full capacity, it “might allow Iran to break out not with just one bomb, but with an arsenal” of nuclear weapons, he said. Delaying that possibility, then, is certainly a clear and vital Israeli goal.

It’s therefore plausible that Israel was involved in the explosions at the missile and nuclear facilities — though there is no official confirmation that’s the case — and that the US may have given some kind of thumbs-up to such efforts. Tehran, importantly, surely suspects Jerusalem.

“Regardless of whether these are part of a Western sabotage effort ... Iran is going to believe that they are,” Brewer, who now works on nuclear issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me. “Given that these are hitting all across Iran at military and civilian locations, that is going to cause Iran’s threat perceptions to spike.”

But those perceptions depend greatly on the kind of campaign Iran thinks Israel might be waging.

“War between the wars”
It’s worth keeping in mind that Israel and Iran have been engaged in a shadow war for decades, yet no major fight has erupted in years.

In 2006, Israel and Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, battled in a month-long war during which the militant group fired more than 4,000 rockets into Israel and Israeli forces fired around 7,000 bombs and missiles into Lebanon.

About 160 Israeli troops and civilians died, according to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and about 1,100 Lebanese — most of them civilians — perished, per Human Rights Watch, a US-headquartered advocacy organization. HRW also reports about 4,400 Lebanese were injured, and around 1 million people were displaced.


Supporters of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah watch a video screening of a speech by the group’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, to mark the 11th anniversary of the end of the 2006 war with Israel, in the village of Khiam in southern Lebanon on August 13, 2017. Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images
After that battle, Israel became more wary of Iran placing weaponry near its territory. It’s why Israeli warplanes have consistently bombed locations in Syria in recent years, for example, both to destroy weapons shipments and deter further movement of Iranian proxies and officials there.

Israeli officials see the persistent thwarting of Iranian intentions, especially after the 2006 conflict, as the “war between the wars.”


As Shapiro, the former American ambassador to Israel, explained it to me, the concept “reflects the Israeli philosophical approach to buy time and maybe indefinitely push off future wars — and if they occur, to make them as short as possible.” Following this strategy allows Israel to increase its own capabilities, gather intelligence, and gain a greater military advantage against Iran over time.

Degrading Iran’s nuclear and missile program via covert means fits within this framework. Jerusalem is able to keep Tehran from gaining power at minimal expense and without much public fuss, thereby lowering Iran’s confidence it could defeat Israel in a war, should one break out.

That plan seems to be working for the moment. “At end of the war in 2006, if you had told most Israeli officials that there wouldn’t be another war on that border [with Lebanon] after 14 years, they wouldn’t have believed you,” Shapiro said.

The question now is if Iran views the possible Israeli actions through that lens, or as something more sinister.

Iran likely won’t respond forcefully — for now
Since Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal two years ago, the US and Iran have been engaged in tit-for-tat escalations.

They’re based on a fundamental disagreement: Washington and Jerusalem want Tehran to give up its nuclear program entirely, as well as to curb its other activities such as missile development and support for violent groups in the region; Iran sees those activities as critical to its survival and as an important pillar of its power and reach, however, and wants sanctions lifted without having to give up those activities.

That disagreement has manifested violently. Iran and its proxies bombed oil tankers and Saudi oil fields, and downed an unmanned American surveillance drone and killed US troops stationed in Iraq — all while it loosened restrictions on its nuclear development.

The US responded by killing Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary forces, in January. Undeterred, Iran continued its offensive actions, using a cyberweapon to attack Israel’s water supply in May, a strike that potentially could have sickened hundreds of people.

Officials in Iran might therefore see the Khojir and Natanz explosions as part of that fight, thereby compelling them to respond in a bigger way in the tit-for-tat. However, most experts believe Iran will see the incidents in the context of its long-running nuclear feud with Israel.

If that’s the case, it would be good news. What Israel may have done “is a slight escalation, but it’s not really that surprising and not really uncharacteristic of what you’ve seen in the recent history,” Ilan Goldenberg, the Defense Department’s Iran team chief from 2009 to 2012, told me. “All these activities are being done in a way that makes it hard for Iran to retaliate, and gives them space to not retaliate.”

Indeed, the Iranian regime is faltering under sustained economic pressure from the United States, one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, and political protests. It may not have the time or desire to engage in a massive fight with Israel right now.

Between the deniability of Israel and America’s involvement, and the fact that the possible attacks fit into a longstanding pattern, Tehran may not feel compelled to respond immediately and in a dramatically forceful way.

That’s not to say Iran will stand by idly forever. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Abbas Mousavi vowed this week that “if a regime or a government is involved in the Natanz incident, Iran will react decisively.”

And if Israel and the US continue to hit Iran while it’s down, it may have no choice but to get back up, including potentially launching more cyberattacks or even pushing to develop a nuclear weapon before Israel can do anything about it. Any of those moves would be very provocative — and perhaps make an already dangerous situation much worse.

“The Iranians don’t want this to spiral,” the RAND Corporation’s Kaye told me, “but the longer this persists, the harder it will be for Iran to pretend this isn’t happening.”

“It’s a humiliation at a certain point,” she said.

[TonyGosling]

Translated from Turkish

THE GAME
Last minute: MOSSAD official was killed! Tehran's alleged assassination retaliation
https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/dunya/son-dakika-mossad-yetkilisi-olduruld u-tahranin-suikast-misillemesi-iddiasi-41681030


Dünyahurriyet.com.tr / Photo: Twitter News Login: 06.12.2020 - 02:18 | Last Updated: 06.12.2020 - 12:16
Last minute: MOSSAD official was killed! Tehran's alleged assassination retaliation
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Last minute: MOSSAD official was killed! Tehran's alleged assassination retaliation
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According to the breaking news, Fahmi Hinavi, a MOSSAD official, was killed in an armed attack in Tel Aviv, the capital of Israel. The attack is allegedly a retaliation for the killing of Muhsin Fahrizade, known as Iran's 'Nuclear Father', by the Tehran administration.
According to the news in the Iranian media, Fahmi Hinavi, who was stated to be the Israeli secret service MOSSAD official in Tel Aviv last Thursday evening, was killed as a result of an armed attack. It was reported that 15 shots were fired by the attackers while they were waiting at the red light with Hinavi's vehicle.

While the attack was claimed to be Tehran's retaliation for the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Muhsin Fahrizade, no official statement was made by the Tel Aviv administration regarding the attack. The Israeli media also ignored the armed attack.

MUHSİN FAHRİZADE ... WAS ONE OF IRAN'S MOST POWERFUL FIGURES

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Muhsin Fahrizade was in charge of the "Amad" (Hope) project, the secret program that Iran allegedly established in 1989 to develop nuclear bombs.

Although this program was officially terminated in 2003, Fahrizade was one of the key figures in the continuation of the national nuclear program.

He was also instrumental in the signing of the nuclear agreement Iran signed with the West and Russia in 2015 and the US President Donald Trump later withdrew.



For this reason, it was at the top of the black list of those who were skeptical of Iran's nuclear program. It was also on the sanctions list of the USA and the UN.

Israeli sources have leaked that Fahrizade was assassinated in 2018. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu also targeted Fahrizade in 2018 and said "Don't forget this name." And Fahrizade was attacked at a time when full power change in the US was expected.

HARD RESPONSE FROM HAMANEY AFTER THE ASSOCIATION: THE VIOLATES

Following the assassination of Fahrizade on November 27, the Iranian administration said the perpetrators would be punished. In his written message regarding the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Fahrizade, Khamenei described the murderers of Fahrizade as "hired killers and tyrants" and said, "The authorities should follow the murder. The perpetrators and instigators must be punished."

RUHANİ'S DECLARATION OF REVENGE

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said that Israel was behind the assassination and said, “The enemies of Iran know well that the Iranian nation and its officials are brave and determined not to leave this murder unanswered. The relevant authorities will respond to this crime at an appropriate time. "Our people are wise and wise enough not to fall into the trap of the Zionist regime."

[TonyGosling]

More Suggestions for Dealing with Israel
Recusal and banning dual nationality good places to start
PHILIP GIRALDI • MARCH 2, 2021 • 1,800 WORDS • 249 COMMENTS •
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/more-suggestions-for-dealing-with-israel/

My article last week that made some suggestions about what ordinary Americans can do to put pressure on Israel and on the lopsided bilateral relationship with Washington that has done so much damage to the United States proved to be quite popular. It also resulted in some comments by readers who saw other issues that might be considered pressure points that could be exploited to bring about change or at least to mitigate some of the damage.

Two areas that were mentioned a number of times were the possibility of recusing the most strident Israeli partisans from some discussions on Middle East policy and also refusing to issue security clearances to American government employees and politicians who are “dual national” citizens, which raises the issue of dual loyalty. Recusal is defined as removing oneself from participation to avoid a conflict of interest due to lack of impartiality while refusing to issue clearances would completely block dual national Israeli and other foreign citizens from having high level positions in the U.S. government.

Some would argue that recusal is an excessive punishment that will limit debate on a key foreign policy issue. It will also inevitably be perceived by the usual suspects as anti-Semitic since the only ones who would be excluded would be some Zionists, but they miss the point, which is that the current system does not in any way permit the review of a range of points of view on the Middle East since it is monopolized by Jews and friends of Israel. And there is a precedent. Not so long ago the U.S. State Department had an informal policy that discouraged the selection of Jewish ambassadors for Israel. The intent was to prevent any conflicts of interest and also to protect the ambassadors from inappropriate pressure. There also existed a cadre of so-called Arabists who dealt with issues in the Middle East alongside Jewish officers in the State Department. In the 1950s and 1960s a concerted effort was made by Jewish organizations and Congress to weed out the Arabists and currently nearly all the working level handling of policy formulation for that region is being done by Jews.

One might assume reasonably that the concentration of decision making in the hands of a partisan group, whether Arabists or Zionists, would inevitably not be in the U.S. national interest, and so it has proven if one looks at the shambles in the arc from Afghanistan over to Lebanon.

The following description of how the process actually works comes from Ben Rhodes, who is himself half-Jewish, and it describes the decision making on the Middle East during the administration of President Barack Obama where Rhodes served as Deputy National Security Advisor. During his time in office he observed how same 10 to 20 individuals who invariably took the position of the Israeli government were in on discussions of Middle East policy but if anyone in the White House paid attention to Arab-American or peace groups, they could “get in trouble.”

Rhodes observed that “You meet more with outside, organized constituency groups on Israel than any other foreign policy issue. I’d actually go as far to say that… as a senior White House official working on national security… the number of people you meet from the organized pro Israel community equals all the other meetings that you might do with kind of diaspora or constituency groups on all the other issues. It’s that degree of dwarfing. I’m pretty confident that’s consistent across [presidential] administrations…

“You just have this incredibly organized pro-Israel community that is very accustomed to having access in the White House, in Congress, at the State Department. It’s taken for granted, as given, that that’s the way things are going to be done… I remember looking around the situation room on a meeting on the Israel Palestine issue and every single one of us in the meeting was Jewish or of Jewish origin like me…”

The United States has many interests in the Near East, but if every move is seen through the optic of Israel the inevitable results will not be beneficial to Americans. So, if recusal, either voluntary or forced, is employed to obtain a better mix of opinion on policy options it can only beneficial. And it will also ipso facto loosen the overweening influence that successive Israeli governments have exercised over U.S. presidents and Congress.

Preventing individuals holding two passports from obtaining sensitive government jobs would also be a highly desirable step but it will be hard to execute in practice as the Israeli government does not make available lists of American citizens who have also taken up Israeli citizenship. Holding two passports was, in fact, illegal in the United States up until 1964. New citizens were required to turn in old passports and swear loyalty to the United States. Retention of former citizenship could be punished by the loss of the American citizenship.

Numerous online lists of dual Israeli-Americans in government circulate on the internet, but it is clear from the content that most of the compilations are speculative. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer describes himself as the “shomer” or protector of Israel in the Senate and appears on such lists. So too does former Congressman Tom Lantos, described as holocaust survivor and very active in his support of Israel. And then there is former Senator Frank Lautenberg was often described as the “Senator from Israel” and Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania who tried to cover up the Jewish source of the enriched uranium that Israel stole to construct its nuclear weapon.

Protecting Israel sometimes includes bending the rules. Lautenberg, for example, was responsible for the “Lautenberg amendment” of 1990 which brought many thousands of Russian Jews into the United States as refugees, even though they were not in any danger and were therefore ineligible for that status. As refugees, they received significant taxpayer provided housing, subsistence and educational benefits.

One might also include Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff and mayor of Chicago, who reportedly served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army, and Doug Feith, who caused so much mischief from his perch at the Pentagon in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Feith had a law office in Jerusalem, suggesting that he might have obtained Israeli citizenship. Obama Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro chose to live in Israel after his term in office ended and wound up working for an Israeli national security think tank. He quite likely obtained Israeli citizenship and never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as required by law. Both he and Emanuel are reportedly being considered by President Biden for major ambassadorial assignments.

But in reality, few in Congress and in the federal government bureaucracy are likely to have actual Israeli citizenship even if they regularly exhibit what amounts to “dual loyalty” sympathy for the Jewish state. Nevertheless, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East.

That said, there was one individual dual national who truly stood out when it came to serving Israeli interests from inside the United States government. She might be worthy of the nickname “Queen of Sanctions” because she was the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI), who handed the punishment out and had her hand on the throttle to crank the pain up. She is our own, unfortunately, and also Israel’s own Sigal Pearl Mandelker, and it is wonderful to be able to say that she finally resigned in late 2019!

Mandelker was born in Israel and largely educated in the United States. She is predictably a lawyer. She has never stated how many citizenships she holds while repeated inquiries as to whether she retains her Israeli citizenship have been ignored by the Treasury Department. It is not clear how she managed to obtain a security clearance given her evident affinity to a foreign country. The position that she held until October 2019 was created in 2004 by George W. Bush and is something of a “no Gentiles need apply” fiefdom. Its officials travel regularly on the taxpayer’s dime to Israel for consultations and also collaborate with pro-Israel organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Mandelker’s predecessor was Adam Szubin and he was preceded by David Cohen and, before that, by the office’s founder Stuart Levey, who is currently Group Legal Manager and Group Managing Director for global bank HSBC. Since its creation, OFTI has not surprisingly focused on what might be described as Israel’s enemies, most notably among them being Iran.

During her time in office, Mandelker, who predictably claims to be the child of “holocaust survivors,” was clear about her role, citing her personal and business relationship with “our great partner, Israel.” Referring to her office’s imposed sanctions on Iran, she has said that “Bad actors need money to do bad things. That is why we have this massive sanctions regime … Every time we apply that pressure, that crunch on them, we deny them the ability to get that kind of revenue, we make the world a safer place.”

So the answer is pretty clearly that there are Israelis and/or dual nationals working for the federal government and possibly also ensconced in the Congress. Refusing them clearances so they would not wind up in policy making jobs would be a good step forward, particularly if it is combined with recusal from policy planning for obvious partisan representatives of organizations dedicated to protecting Israel.

As a final observation, one might only suggest that three additional bastions of “Israel-first” think that need to be assailed to permit any rational discussion of an appropriate U.S. role in the Middle East. They are the deeply flawed accepted holocaust narrative, which is used to grant Israelis and Jews special exemption due to their status as perpetual victims; the cynical use of the label anti-Semitism to silence critics; and the still undisclosed role of Israel in 9/11, which has never been adequately addressed. For more information, I would refer the reader to Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry, Ron Unz’s American Pravda piece on Mossad Assassinations and Justin Raimondo’s book on 9/11 The Terror Enigma. They are all major areas of inquiry on which some new information has developed and are worthy of separate articles in the future.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

[TonyGosling]

Iran and the Shah: What Really Happened
by James Perloff May 12, 2009
https://thenewamerican.com/iran-and-the-shah-what-really-happened/

Iran and the Shah: What Really Happened
In September 2007, US News & World Report stated: “Amid deepening frustration with Iran, calls for shifting Bush administration policy toward military strikes or other stronger actions are intensifying.” And in June 2008, President-to-be Barack Obama declared: “The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.”

However, suppose a progressive, pro-Western regime ruled Iran, representing no threat? War discussions would be unnecessary. Yet many forget that, until 30 years ago, exactly such a regime led Iran, until it was toppled with the help of the same U.S. foreign policy establishment recently beating war drums.

Meet the Shah

From 1941 until 1979, Iran was ruled by a constitutional monarchy under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s Shah (king).



Although Iran, also called Persia, was the world’s oldest empire, dating back 2,500 years, by 1900 it was floundering. Bandits dominated the land; literacy was one percent; and women, under archaic Islamic dictates, had no rights.

The Shah changed all this. Primarily by using oil-generated wealth, he modernized the nation. He built rural roads, postal services, libraries, and electrical installations. He constructed dams to irrigate Iran’s arid land, making the country 90-percent self-sufficient in food production. He established colleges and universities, and at his own expense, set up an educational foundation to train students for Iran’s future.

To encourage independent cultivation, the Shah donated 500,000 Crown acres to 25,000 farmers. In 1978, his last full year in power, the average Iranian earned $2,540, compared to $160 25 years earlier. Iran had full employment, requiring foreign workers. The national currency was stable for 15 years, inspiring French economist André Piettre to call Iran a country of “growth without inflation.” Although Iran was the world’s second largest oil exporter, the Shah planned construction of 18 nuclear power plants. He built an Olympic sports complex and applied to host the 1988 Olympics (an honor eventually assigned Seoul), an achievement unthinkable for other Middle East nations.

Long regarded as a U.S. ally, the Shah was pro-Western and anti-communist, and he was aware that he posed the main barrier to Soviet ambitions in the Middle East. As distinguished foreign-affairs analyst Hilaire du Berrier noted: “He determined to make Iran … capable of blocking a Russian advance until the West should realize to what extent her own interests were threatened and come to his aid…. It necessitated an army of 250,000 men.” The Shah’s air force ranked among the world’s five best. A voice for stability within the Middle East itself, he favored peace with Israel and supplied the beleaguered state with oil.

On the home front, the Shah protected minorities and permitted non-Muslims to practice their faiths. “All faith,” he wrote, “imposes respect upon the beholder.” The Shah also brought Iran into the 20th century by granting women equal rights. This was not to accommodate feminism, but to end archaic brutalization.

Yet, at the height of Iran’s prosperity, the Shah suddenly became the target of an ignoble campaign led by U.S. and British foreign policy makers. Bolstered by slander in the Western press, these forces, along with Soviet-inspired communist insurgents, and mullahs opposing the Shah’s progressiveness, combined to face him with overwhelming opposition. In three years he went from vibrant monarch to exile (on January 16, 1979), and ultimately death, while Iran fell to Ayatollah Khomeini’s terror.

Houchang Nahavandi, one of the Shah’s ministers and closest advisers, reveals in his book The Last Shah of Iran: “We now know that the idea of deposing the Shah was broached continually, from the mid-seventies on, in the National Security Council in Washington, by Henry Kissinger, whom the Shah thought of as a firm friend.”

Kissinger virtually epitomized the American establishment: before acting as Secretary of State under Republicans Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, he had been chief foreign-affairs adviser to Nelson Rockefeller, whom he called “the single most influential person in my life.” Jimmy Carter defeated Ford in the 1976 presidential election, but the switch to a Democratic administration did not change the new foreign policy tilt against the Shah. Every presidential administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s has been dominated by members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most visible manifestation of the establishment that dictates U.S. foreign policy along internationalist lines. The Carter administration was no exception.

Nahavandi writes:

The alternation of parties does not change the diplomatic orientation of the United States that much. The process of toppling the Shah had been envisaged and initiated in 1974, under a certain Republican administration…. Numerous, published documents and studies bear witness to the fact, even if it was not until the beginning of the Carter administration that the decision was made to take concerted action by evoking problems related to human rights.

The Shah’s destruction required assembling a team of diplomatic “hit men.” Du Berrier commented:

When the situation was deemed ripe, U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan — the man reputed to have toppled the pro-American government of General Phoumi Nosavan in Laos — was sent to urge the Shah to get out. In December Mr. George Ball, an instant “authority on Iran,” was sent as a follow-up with the same message.

Sullivan (CFR), a career diplomat with no Middle East experience, became our ambassador to Iran in 1977. The Shah recalled:

Whenever I met Sullivan and asked him to confirm these official statements [of American support], he promised he would. But a day or two later he would return, gravely shake his head, and say that he had received “no instructions” and therefore could not comment…. His answer was always the same: I have received no instructions…. This rote answer had been given me since early September [1978] and I would continue to hear it until the day I left the country.

The other key player du Berrier named, George Ball, was a quintessential establishment man: CFR member, Bilderberger, and banker with Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. The Shah commented: “What was I to make, for example, of the Administration’s sudden decision to call former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the White House as an advisor on Iran? I knew that Ball was no friend.”

Writes Nahavandi:

George Ball — that guru of American diplomacy and prominento of certain think-tanks and pressure groups — once paid a long visit to Teheran, where, interestingly, the National Broadcasting Authority placed an office at his disposal. Once installed there, he played host to all the best-known dissidents and gave them encouragement. After he returned to Washington, he made public statements, hostile and insulting to the Sovereign.

Joining the smear was U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, whose role Nahavandi recalled in a 1981 interview:

But we must not forget the venom with which Teddy Kennedy ranted against the Shah, nor that on December 7, 1977, the Kennedy family financed a so-called committee for the defense of liberties and rights of man in Teheran, which was nothing but a headquarters for revolution.

Suddenly, the Shah noted, the U.S. media found him “a despot, an oppressor, a tyrant.” Kennedy denounced him for running “one of the most violent regimes in the history of mankind.”

At the center of the “human rights” complaints was the Shah’s security force, SAVAK. Comparable in its mission to America’s FBI, SAVAK was engaged in a deadly struggle against terrorism, most of which was fueled by the bordering USSR, which linked to Iran’s internal communist party, the Tudeh. SAVAK, which had only 4,000 employees in 1978, saved many lives by averting several bombing attempts. Its prisons were open for Red Cross inspections, and though unsuccessful attempts were made on the Shah’s life, he always pardoned the would-be assassins. Nevertheless, a massive campaign was deployed against him. Within Iran, Islamic fundamentalists, who resented the Shah’s progressive pro-Western views, combined with Soviet-sponsored communists to overthrow the Shah. This tandem was “odd” because communism is committed to destroying all religion, which Marx called “the opiate of the masses.” The Shah understood that “Islamic Marxism” was an oxymoron, commenting: “Of course the two concepts are irreconcilable — unless those who profess Islam do not understand their own religion or pervert it for their own political ends.”

For Western TV cameras, protestors in Teheran carried empty coffins, or coffins seized from genuine funerals, proclaiming these were “victims of SAVAK.” This deception — later admitted by the revolutionaries — was necessary because they had no actual martyrs to parade. Another tactic: demonstrators splashed themselves with mercurochrome, claiming SAVAK had bloodied them.

The Western media cooperated. When Carter visited Iran at the end of 1977, the press reported that his departure to Teheran International Airport had been through empty streets, because the city was “all locked up and emptied of people, by order of the SAVAK.” What the media didn’t mention: Carter chose to depart at 6 a.m., when the streets were naturally empty.

An equally vicious campaign occurred when the Shah and his wife, Empress Farah, came for a state visit to America in November 1977. While touring Williamsburg, Virginia, about 500 Iranian students showed up, enthusiastically applauding. However, about 50 protestors waved hammer-and-sickle red flags. These unlikely Iranians were masked, unable to speak Persian, and some were blonde. The U.S. media focused exclusively on the protesters. Wrote the Shah: “Imagine my amazement the next day when I saw the press had reversed the numbers and wrote that the fifty Shah supporters were lost in a hostile crowd.”

On November 16, the Shah and Empress were due to visit Carter. Several thousand Iranian patriots surrounded the White House bearing a huge banner saying “Welcome Shah.” However, as Nahavandi reports:

The police kept them as far away as possible, but allowed a small number of opponents [again, masked] to approach the railings … close to where the Sovereign’s helicopter was going to land for the official welcome. At the exact moment, when courtesies were being exchanged on the White House lawn, these people produced sticks and bicycle chains and set upon the others…. Thus, the whole world was allowed to see riotous scenes, on television, as an accompaniment to the arrival of the Imperial Couple.

Terror at Home

Two major events propelled the revolution in Iran. On the afternoon of August 19, 1978, a deliberate fire gutted the Rex Cinema in Abadan, killing 477 people, including many children with their mothers. Blocked exits prevented escape. The police learned that the fire was caused by Ruhollah Khomeini supporters, who fled to Iraq, where the ayatollah was in exile. But the international press blamed the fire on the Shah and his “dreaded SAVAK.” Furthermore, the mass murder had been timed to coincide with the Shah’s planned celebration of his mother’s birthday; it could thus be reported that the royal family danced while Iran wept. Communist-inspired rioting swept Iran.

Foreigners, including Palestinians, appeared in the crowds. Although the media depicted demonstrations as “spontaneous uprisings,” professional revolutionaries organized them. Some Iranian students were caught up in it. Here the Shah’s generosity backfired. As du Berrier pointed out:

In his desperate need of men capable of handling the sophisticated equipment he was bringing in, the Shah had sent over a hundred thousand students abroad…. Those educated in France and America return indoctrinated by leftist professors and eager to serve as links between comrades abroad and the Communist Party at home.

When the demonstrations turned violent, the government reluctantly invoked martial law. The second dark day was September 8. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Teheran were ordered to disperse by an army unit. Gunmen — many on rooftops — fired on the soldiers. The Shah’s army fired back. The rooftop snipers then sprayed the crowd. When the tragedy was over, 121 demonstrators and 70 soldiers and police lay dead. Autopsies revealed that most in the crowd had been killed by ammo non-regulation for the army. Nevertheless, the Western press claimed the Shah had massacred his own people.

The Shah, extremely grieved by this incident, and wanting no further bloodshed, gave orders tightly restricting the military. This proved a mistake. Until now, the sight of his elite troops had quieted mobs. The new restraints emboldened revolutionaries, who brazenly insulted soldiers, knowing they could fire only as a last resort.

Khomeini and the Media Cabal

Meanwhile, internationalist forces rallied around a new figure they had chosen to lead Iran: Ruhollah Khomeini. A minor cleric of Indian extraction, Khomeini had denounced the Shah’s reforms during the 1960s — especially women’s rights and land reform for Muslim clerics, many of whom were large landholders. Because his incendiary remarks had contributed to violence and rioting then, he was exiled, living mostly in Iraq, where Iranians largely forgot him until 1978.

A shadowy past followed Khomeini. The 1960s rioting linked to him was financed, in part, by Eastern Bloc intelligence services. He was in the circle of the cleric Kachani Sayed Abolghassem, who had ties to East German intelligence. Furthermore, in 1960, Colonel Michael Goliniewski, second-in-command of Soviet counter-intelligence in Poland, defected to the West. His debriefings exposed so many communist agents that he was honored by a resolution of the U.S. House of Representatives. One report, declassified in 2000, revealed, “Ayatollah Khomeini was one of Moscow’s five sources of intelligence at the heart of the Shiite hierarchy.”

Nevertheless, as French journalist Dominique Lorenz reported, the Americans, “having picked Khomeini to overthrow the Shah, had to get him out of Iraq, clothe him with respectability and set him up in Paris, a succession of events, which could not have occurred, if the leadership in France had been against it.”

In 1978, Khomeini, in Iraq since 1965, was permitted to reside at Neauphle-le-Château in France. Two French police squads, along with Algerians and Palestinians, protected him. Nahavandi notes:

Around the small villa occupied by Khomeini, the agents of many of the world’s secret services were gathered as thickly as the autumn leaves. The CIA, the MI6, the KGB and the SDECE were all there. The CIA had even rented the house next door. According to most of the published witness-statements, the East Germans were in charge of most of the radio-transmissions; and, on at least one occasion, eight thousand cassettes of the Ayatollah’s speeches were sent, directly to Teheran, by diplomatic bag.

Foreign-affairs analyst du Berrier reported:

French services quickly verified that Libya, Iraq and Russia were providing money. Young Iranians, members of the Tudeh (communist) Party, made up Khomeini’s secretariat in France. Working in cooperation with the French Communist Party they provided couriers to pass his orders and tapes into Iran. Their sympathizers in Britain turned the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) into a propaganda organ.

Journalists descended in droves on Neauphle-le-Château; Khomeini gave 132 interviews in 112 days, receiving easy questions as their media organs became his sounding board. Nahavandi affirms that, within Iran “the Voice of America, the Voice of Israel and, especially, the BBC virtually became the voice of the revolution, moving from criticism, to overt incitement of revolt, and from biased reporting, to outright disinformation.”

Khomeini’s inflammatory speeches were broadcast; revolutionary songs aired on Iranian radio. One journalist, however, stunned Khomeini by bucking the trend: intelligence expert Pierre de Villemarest, hero of the French Resistance in World War II, anti-communist, and critic of the CFR. Interviewing Khomeini, de Villemarest asked:

How are you going to solve the economic crisis into which you have plunged the country through your agitation of these past few weeks?… And aren’t you afraid that when the present regime is destroyed you will be outpaced by a party as tightly-knit and well organized as the [communist] Tudeh?

Khomeini didn’t reply. The interpreter stood, saying, “The Ayatollah is tired.” De Villemarest registered his concern with the French Ministry of the Interior, but reported, “They told me to occupy myself with something else.”

Ending the Shah’s Rule

Iran’s situation deteriorated. As Western media spurred revolutionaries, riots and strikes paralyzed Iran. The Shah wrote:

At about this time, a new CIA chief was stationed in Teheran. He had been transferred to Iran from a post in Tokyo with no previous experience in Iranian affairs. Why did the U.S. install a man totally ignorant of my country in the midst of such a crisis? I was astonished by the insignificance of the reports he gave me. At one point we spoke of liberalization and I saw a smile spread across his face.

The Carter administration’s continuous demand upon the Shah: liberalize. On October 26, 1978, he freed 1,500 prisoners, but increased rioting followed. The Shah commented that “the more I liberalized, the worse the situation in Iran became. Every initiative I took was seen as proof of my own weakness and that of my government.” Revolutionaries equated liberalization with appeasement. “My greatest mistake,” the Shah recalled, “was in listening to the Americans on matters concerning the internal affairs of my kingdom.”

Iran’s last hope: its well-trained military could still restore order. The Carter administration realized this. Du Berrier noted: “Air Force General Robert Huyser, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe, was sent to pressure Iran’s generals into giving in without a fight.” “Huyser directly threatened the military with a break in diplomatic relations and a cutoff of arms if they moved to support their monarch.”

“It was therefore necessary,” the Shah wrote, “to neutralize the Iranian army. It was clearly for this reason that General Huyser had come to Teheran.”

Huyser only paid the Shah a cursory visit, but had three meetings with Iran’s revolutionary leaders — one lasting 10 hours. Huyser, of course, had no authority to interfere with a foreign nation’s sovereign affairs.

Prior to execution later by Khomeini, General Amir Hossein Rabbi, commander-in-chief of the Iranian Air Force, stated: “General Huyser threw the Shah out of the country like a dead mouse.”

U.S. officials pressed the Shah to leave Iran. He reflected:

You cannot imagine the pressure the Americans were putting on me, and in the end it became an order…. How could I stay when the Americans had sent a general, Huyser, to force me out? How could I stand alone against Henry Precht [the State Department Director for Iran] and the entire State Department?

He finally accepted exile, clinging to the belief that America was still Iran’s ally, and that leaving would avert greater bloodshed. These hopes proved illusions.

A factor in the Shah’s decision to depart was that — unknown to most people — he had cancer. U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan (CFR) assured the Shah that, if he exited Iran, America would welcome him. Despite the pleadings of myriad Iranians to stay, he reluctantly left. However, shortly after reaching Cairo, the U.S. ambassador to Egypt effectively informed him that “the government of the United States regrets that it cannot welcome the Shah to American territory.”

The betrayed ruler now became “a man without a country.”

Iran’s Chaotic Descent

On February 1, 1979, with U.S. officials joining the welcoming committee, Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in Iran amid media fanfare. Although counter-demonstrations, some numbering up to 300,000 people, erupted in Iran, the Western press barely mentioned them.

Khomeini had taken power, not by a constitutional process, but violent revolution that ultimately claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Numerous of his opponents were executed, usually without due process, and often after brutal torture. Teheran’s police officers — loyal to the Shah — were slaughtered. At least 1,200 Imperial Army officers, who had been instructed by General Huyser not to resist the revolution, were put to death. Before dying, many exclaimed, “God save the King!” “On February 17,” reported du Berrier, “General Huyser faced the first photos of the murdered leaders whose hands he had tied and read the descriptions of their mutilations.” At the year’s end, the military emasculated and no longer a threat, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. More Iranians were killed during Khomeini’s first month in power than in the Shah’s 37-year reign. Yet Carter, Ted Kennedy, and the Western media, who had brayed so long about the Shah’s alleged “human rights” violations, said nothing. Mass executions and torture elicited no protests. Seeing his country thus destroyed, the exiled Shah raged to an adviser: “Where are the defenders of human rights and democracy now?” Later, the Shah wrote that there was

not a word of protest from American human rights advocates who had been so vocal in denouncing my “tyrannical” regime! It was a sad commentary, I reflected, that the United States, and indeed most Western countries, had adopted a double standard for international morality: anything Marxist, no matter how bloody and base, is acceptable.

Exile

The Shah’s personal tragedy wasn’t over. He stayed briefly in Egypt and Morocco, but did not wish to impose risks on his hosts from Muslim extremists. Eventually he welcomed Mexican President Lopes Portillo’s hospitality.

However, in Mexico the Shah received an invitation from CFR Chairman David Rockefeller, who used influence to secure permission for the Shah to come to America for medical treatment. Rockefeller sent a trendy Park Avenue MD to examine the Shah, who agreed — against his better judgment — to abandon his personal physicians and fly to New York for treatment. In October 1979, he was received at the Rockefeller-founded Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital for cancer treatment. Here the Shah experienced a fateful delay in spleen surgery that some believe accelerated his death.

The Shah’s admission to the United States had another outcome. Partly in retribution, on November 4, 1979, Iranians took 52 hostages from the U.S. embassy in Teheran. (According to Nahavandi, Soviet special services assisted them.) This embarrassed Jimmy Carter, who had done so much to destroy the Shah and support Khomeini. The seizure made the Shah a pawn.

While in New York, Mexico inexplicably reversed its welcome, informing the Shah that his return would contravene Mexico’s “vital interests.” One can only guess at the hidden hands possibly influencing this decision.

Carter faced a dilemma. Iran wanted the Shah’s return — for a degrading execution — in exchange for the American hostages. However, a direct trade might humiliate the United States.

Therefore, Panama was selected as intermediary. Following treatment in New York, the Shah was informed he could no longer remain in America, but Panama would welcome him. In Panama, however, the Shah and Empress were under virtual house arrest; it was apparent that it would only be a matter of time before the Shah would be sent to Iran in exchange for the hostages. A special cage was erected in Teheran. Khomeini’s followers envisioned parading him in the streets before final torture and bloody execution.

However, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president and the Shah’s friend, discerned the scheme, and sent a jet to Panama, which escorted the Shah and Empress safely to Egypt.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi died on July 27, 1980. His last words: “I wait upon Fate, never ceasing to pray for Iran, and for my people. I think only of their suffering.” In Cairo, a grand funeral honored him. Three million Egyptians followed the procession.

Anwar Sadat who, like the Shah, advocated a peaceful Middle East, and defied the American establishment by saving the Shah from infamous death, did not survive much longer himself. The following year, Muslim extremists assassinated him under circumstances remaining controversial.

The Issues

Why did the American establishment, defying logic and morality, betray our ally the Shah? Only the perpetrators can answer the question, but a few possibilities should be considered.

Iran ranks second in the world in oil and natural-gas reserves. Energy is critical to world domination, and major oil companies, such as Exxon and British Petroleum, have long exerted behind-the-scenes influence on national policies.

The major oil companies had for years dictated Iranian oil commerce, but the Shah explained:

In 1973 we succeeded in putting a stop, irrevocably, to sixty years of foreign exploitation of Iranian oil-resources…. In 1974, Iran at last took over the management of the entire oil-industry, including the refineries at Abadan and so on…. I am quite convinced that it was from this moment that some very powerful, international interests identified, within Iran, the collusive elements, which they could use to encompass my downfall.

Does this explain the sudden attitude change toward Iran expressed by Henry Kissinger, beginning in the mid-seventies? Kissinger’s links to the Rockefellers, whose fortune derived primarily from oil, bolsters the Shah’s view on the situation. However, other factors should be considered.

Although the Shah maintained a neutral stance toward Israel, during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he allowed critical supplies to reach Egypt, enabling it to achieve a balance of success, and earning Sadat’s undying gratitude, but wrath from influential Zionists. Did this impact the West’s attitude change in the mid-seventies?

We should not overlook that the Shah opposed the powerful opium trade, now flourishing in the Middle East.

Finally, the Shah was a nationalist who brought his country to the brink of greatness and encouraged Middle East peace. These qualities are anathema to those seeking global governance, for strong nations resist membership in world bodies, and war has long been a destabilizing catalyst essential to what globalists call “the new world order.”

What is the solution to modern Iran? Before listening to war drums, let us remember:

It was the CFR clique — the same establishment entrenched in the Bush and Obama administrations — that ousted the Shah, resulting in today’s Iran. That establishment also chanted for the six-year-old Iraq War over alleged weapons of mass destruction never found. Therefore, instead of contemplating war with Iran, a nation four times Iraq’s size, let us demand that America shed its CFR hierarchy and their interventionist policy that has wrought decades of misery, and adopt a policy of avoiding foreign entanglements, and of minding our own business in international affairs.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Iranians couldn’t buy gas. Israelis found their intimate dating details posted online. The Iran-Israel shadow war is now hitting ordinary citizens.
Tel Aviv, Israel. The personal data of about 1.5 million Israelis were exposed in two recent hacks attributed to Iran.
By Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman Nov. 27, 2021
Millions of ordinary people in Iran and Israel recently found themselves caught in the crossfire of a cyberwar between their countries. In Tehran, a dentist drove around for hours in search of gasoline, waiting in long lines at four gas stations only to come away empty.
In Tel Aviv, a well-known broadcaster panicked as the intimate details of his sex life, and those of hundreds of thousands of others stolen from an L.G.B.T.Q. dating site, were uploaded on social media.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/middleeast/iran-israel-cyber- hack.html

[TonyGosling]

On the 40th Anniversary Of The Israeli Plan To Attack Iran
Posted on May 25, 2022 by horse237
https://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2022/05/25/on-the-40th-anniversary-of-t he-israeli-plan-to-attack-iran/

Later this month the US will join in an Israeli mock attack on Iran by offering mid-air refuelling to Israeli jets. This is nonsense. Israel has been claiming since 1988 that Iran is months away from developing nuclear weapons. There is no such program. Iran has a nuclear power plant but has neither nuclear weapons nor a program to make them.

If Israel were ever to attack Iran, the response of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah would devastate Israel. It would be akin to Israeli self-immolation. And the US military would become engaged in a hot war they could not win without nuclear weapons.

My mother used to say, “England is always willing to fight to the last American.” We could truthfully revise that for the modern era by saying “Israel is willing to fight to the last American.”

40 years ago, Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist with ties to the Mossad, first announced the plan to attack Iran. US General Wesley Clark told us that the 2001 Neocon version of the plan was for the US to attack 7 Muslim nations in 5 years. The nations in order were: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off with Iran.

Of course it should be noted that Israel did 911. They used uninterrupted automatic pilot to guide the planes that hit the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. Bear with me but younger people were either toddlers or born after 911 so many of them do not know that Tower 7 collapsed in 6.5 seconds and was never hit by a plane. Tower 7 was taken down by a controlled demolition. The only persons with access to plant demolition devices were Lucky Larry Silverstein and his business partner, Frank Lowy. The latter was an Israeli army officer and both men were close friends of Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister. The explosives were laid in the Towers while Silverstein and Lowy supposedly had crews laying in cables for Internet. The BBC announced the collapse of Tower 7 a full 24 minutes before it did fall down. The BBC said they were told by the then Rothschild owned Reuters.

Lucky Larry collected $4.55 billion on a $14 million anti-terrorism insurance policy. His wife had made an appointment for him to see the doctor on 9-11. No information on why Lowy did not get to work on 9-11. Lucky Larry had 2 adult children who worked at the Trade Center. Both were “late to work” on 9-11.

On September 10, 2001 Donald Rumsfeld announced that neither he nor his Comptroller of the Pentagon rabbi Dov Zakheim could find $2.3 trillion that had gone missing from the DOD. On 9-11 most of the civilian and military auditors who had been assigned to find the missing money were killed by whatever it was that struck the Pentagon that morning. If the Swamp Creatures of DC want us to believe them, they could release to the public the photos taken of the interior of the Pentagon after the attack that day. They dare not because even the dimmest bulb would question the lies we have been told.

The Most Interesting Man In The World - one billion dollars of gold and silver at 2001 prices went missing from the comex vault at WTC Tower 4 the night before 911 explain to me how osama bin laden did that from a hospital bed in afghanistan.

Dr Mark Skidmore has proven that tens of trillions of dollars have been stolen from from the DOD and HUD. He believes that DC Swamp Creatures allowed Wall Street to sell trillions of dollars in US Treasury bonds and stick the proceeds into their deep pockets. Then they allow the taxpayers to pay off the principle and the interest of the bonds.

Currently, the Swamp Creatures are hoping that monkeypox will allow them to scare the public into letting the DC criminals to steal the 2022 elections.

The Swamp Creatures work for the men and women above them.

David Rothkopf, the former Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, said in 2006 in his book Superclass that the world is ruled by 30 Families and their 6,000 Minions. Their near term goal is to get control of the public before the starvation and that pesky hyperinflation drives working people to revolt.

Clearly, the Rothschilds are one of those 30 families.

Currently, their Minions are using fake PCR tests to kill chickens. Bill Gates gave $20 million to the man who crossed Bird flu with Spanish flu, made it more contagious and enabled it to get from the beak into the lungs. Bill Gates is also heavily invested in African Swine flu.

The idea is to make food so unaffordable that working people will demand rationing. It will at first be an app on your cell phone. They will combine that with digital currencies to control your movements and your ability to get paid for work you had done. Under their scheme, if you say something they don’t like, they can freeze your bank account and make it illegal for you to get paid. When we get to the Great Reset, if you are allowed to live that long and they win, then you will have a chip in your brain.

The US has attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya to protect both Israel and the Dollar. Libya has become a wasteland. The US was kicked out of Afghanistan. Syria is still standing. Hezbollah defeated the Israeli military in 2006. Israeli has been practicing to attack Lebanon ever since to no avail. As far back as 1919 the Israeli Zionists demanded that His Majesty’s Jewish Government include Lebanon in Palestine. They wanted the Litani river and 21 other Lebanese rivers even 103 years ago. In 2006 Israeli dreamed of sending Israeli tanks to the Litani but they were massacred. Hezbollah had mastered the use of anti-tank missiles and the art of digging of underground tunnels to avoid Israeli air power.

500,000 Somalis have died in the Somali Civil War since 1991. Trump pulled out troops but Biden has recently sent some back. As for the Sudan it was in Civil War until 2011 when the South Sudan became independent. The US took over an old French post near Djibouti called Camp Lemonnier. It guards the approach to the Suez Canal.

The last part of Oded Yinon’s pipe dream was to get the US to attack Iran. That is insanity squared.

Iran has Mach 14 missiles. The best the US has is Mach 5.

The US currently has 18 ships including the air craft carrier Nimitz in the Persian Gulf. All of those can easily be sunk.

Any stoppage of oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf would send oil to $500 a barrel which would cripple the economies of NATO countries and most other countries as well. American voters would despise anyone who gave them $15 dollar a gallon gasoline.

The US has 18 bases in Iraq. All of those could be hit by missiles with fuel air explosives.

A fuel air explosive is exploded in 2 stages. The first explosion sends fuel out in all directions. The second explosion 25 milliseconds later ignites the fuel which burns up the oxygen killing all humans in the area of say a circle with a one Km radius. Pro-Iranian militias could attack the survivors taking American hostages.

The Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear installations would have to take a known path at a known angle of attack. Iran has multiple layers of advanced air defenses. The Iranians could send up drones to fire fuel air explosives at the approaching Israeli jets.

The US and Israel both know that there are no nuclear weapons being built in Iran.

Iran is in the process of attaining full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which would oblige Russia and China to defend it militarily.

America is losing its proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine. The Chinese at the most recent BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) conference said they want to greatly expand membership. There are lots of emerging nations like Indonesia who would benefit greatly from Debt Cancellation.

Sergey Glazyev is Minister in charge of the Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). His plan is for all nations to refuse to pay any debt denominated in pounds, dollars, euros and yen. They would establish international currencies backed by commodities, gold or oil. Russia has all three.

One of the nations China invited to join BRICS was Israel so they could cancel their debts in euros, pounds and dollars.

So I guess allowing the Friends of Israel to get us into wars we never needed, to sacrifice our military personnel and to loot our Treasury of tens of trillions of dollars was not sufficient to get Israel to care about us.

I mentioned that Israel did 911.https://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2021/09/10/911-truths/

I mentioned the plan to refuse to pay all debts owed in dollars, pounds, euros and yen. Economic Bloodbath Headed Our Way.https://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2022/05/05/economic-bloodbath-heade d-our-way/

I mentioned monkeypox which the European Centers for Disease Control said came from one of those US biolabs in the Ukraine. Indians in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia developed an herbal cure for smallpox. It is cheap and available on the Internet though some nations do not have health freedom. Read more here:Canadian Indians Cured Smallpox. What About Monkeypox?https://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2022/05/21/canadian-indians-c ured-smallpox-what-about-monkeypox/

I mentioned David Rothkopf wrote the book Superclass in which he said that the world was run by 30 Families and their 6,000 Minions. That was the opening line from: The Boss Wants You Dead:https://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2020/06/08/the-boss-wants-you-dead  /
I go on to explain that the 30 Families and the 6,000 Minions stole so much money that they either have to kill you or make good on the pension money they stole.

The following is the video of Wesley Clark mentioning the Neocon 2001 plan to take down 7 Muslim nations in 5 years. When he flirted with running for President, he revealed that he was of Jewish descent.