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Officials say Nord Stream 2 is ‘an existential threat’ to Ukraine

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is to get a vote this week on a bill to sanction Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The pipeline is a key way for Russia to ship energy to Western Europe, notably Germany.

Ukrainian officials are heavily lobbying US senators to vote for the sanctions, claiming the pipeline amounts to “an existential threat” to Ukrainian interests. Ukrainians added that supporting them necessarily means opposing the pipeline.

Historically, Russia exported gas to Europe through Ukraine. They believed they needed a direct line because Ukraine has a large unpaid gas debt, and Russian companies expressed concern that shipping that way would encourage Ukrainian companies to try to siphon off some of that gas.

German officials support the pipeline and are warning the US against getting involved. Chancellor Scholz called the pipeline a “private sector project,” and said targeting it would not be suitable as a way to go after Russia.

Report: Russia Moving to Curtail Israeli Airstrikes on Syria

July 27, 2021

Report: Russia Moving to Curtail Israeli Airstrikes on Syria

Russia looking to upgrade Syria’s air defense systems

With several Israeli airstrikes against Syria seemingly every week, it has come to feel like the new normal. There are rarely serious engagements in Syria’s own war anymore, but airstrikes are consistent, and generally without Israel wanting to comment.

It’s a tired problem for the region, and Syria’s close ally, Russia, appears to have had enough, and intends to take actions to limit ongoing Israeli raids. This is going to be done largely by way of upgrading Syria’s missile defenses.

Russia has sold Syria some substantial missile defense systems over the years, with S-300s a big part of the arsenal. Israel is awash in advanced US weapons, the types of which the Russian defensive weapons are meant to counter.

While Israel doesn’t comment on what it is attacking or why most of the time, they do sometimes get angry when their missiles are intercepted, and tend to couple any of their attacks with a secondary attack on the missile defense systems.

Mixed into all these concerns is Israel’s common use of Lebanese airspace, without permission, to attack Syria. This often puts the Israeli warplanes close to Russian bases in Syria, which Russia has warned Israel about a few times.

We don’t always get confirmations on behind-the-scenes talk, but Israel has at times made reference to “understandings” they had with Russia, and Russia is now talking about their own sense that the US isn’t going to object if they stop Israeli attacks on Syria.

That might be surprising, as Israel would probably be unhappy at any limitations of their wars, and would expect the US to go along with them in complaining about that.

Top Pentagon Generals Warn Enemies Not to Attack

April 11, 2020

Top Pentagon Generals Warn Enemies Not to Attack

Instead of focusing on peace-making, military tries to hype readiness

With a growing number of reports showing the Pentagon absolutely getting pounded by coronavirus, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley issued a statement warning that US readiness remains intact, and that no nation should test the US.

At a time when coronavirus is creating all sorts of opportunities for cooperation and peace-making, the US military is going in the opposite direction, growling like a wounded beast at a time when it is struggling with the virus.

Obviously a reaction to reports of thousands of US military coronavirus cases, with hundreds on the USS Theodore Roosevelt alone, Milley’s insistence that the US remains ready rings hollow, as a desperate response to ships and bases which are clearly partially or wholly out of action because of the virus.

With the US having such a large military, it isn’t to say that the US is particularly vulnerable right now. Still, offensive capabilities simply must be taxed by 3,366 Defense Department infections. The USS Theodore Roosevelt is in an extended dock because almost 10% of the crew is infected.

Underscoring this reality, the Pentagon has been moving to dial back information sharing on the outbreak within the military, trying to avoid letting potential enemies know which sites are most vulnerable and hit hardest by the virus.

Pentagon to Present Trump, Aides With a ‘Range’ of Iran Military Options

September 22, 2019

Pentagon to Present Trump, Aides With a ‘Range’ of Iran Military Options

Gen. Dunford says US response is a ‘political judgment’

Though President Trump has downplayed the idea of war with Iran over the past couple of days, the actual decision is to be made at a high-profile meeting, either Thursday or Friday depending according to reports.

Trump will be joined by a number of national security officials and other aides, and will be presented with a wide array of options by the Pentagon. Options are said to range from full-scale war to a simple cyberattack.

Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was very clear about the Pentagon not pushing any specific agenda on this matter, saying the response would be purely a “political judgement.”

Among Trump’s officials, Pompeo is seen as the one pushing hardest for a military response. He’s been in Saudi Arabia meeting with officials there, and probably will come back all the more hawkish.

This response, whatever it will be, will be nominally over Iran attacking Saudi oil refineries with drones. The Iranians denied having done so, and Yemen’s Houthis said it was them, not the Iranians.

Either way, Saudi oil output is virtually back to pre-attack levels as it is, not even a week later, which gives the appearance this whole thing was being hugely overplayed earlier in the week.

Trump has already announced that there will be sanctions against Iran, and those sanctions are set to be announced Friday as well. The timing of the two together could further reduce the pressure to take more extreme measures militarily.

US Joins Secret Talks Between Israel and UAE Targeting Iran

August 18, 2019

US Joins Secret Talks Between Israel and UAE Targeting Iran

UAE trying to balance regional interests with keeping US happy

Secret talks have been ongoing between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, focused on sharing intelligence against Iran and possibly military cooperation. The talks have progressed to the point that the US is now joining the talks too.

Israel and the UAE have some security ties, but don’t have public relations. That they’re discussing Iran reflects Israel’s long-standing hostility toward Iran, and the UAE’s close proximity to Iran.

While some are presenting the US joining of the talks as proof they are making progress, a lot isn’t understood about what’s going on, and particularly unclear is what the UAE is trying to work out.

The UAE seems to be trying to balance multiple interests, as they’ve tried to talk to Iran about maritime security in recent days, and seem not to be looking to pick fights with them. That’s in stark contrast to Israel, for whom picking fights with Iran is the centerpiece of decades of foreign policy.

It’s clear that the UAE has an interest in keeping the US happy, and that probably requires keeping Israel at lease sort of placated in this regard. So while they aren’t trying to start anything against Iran they’re trying to walk the tightrope of balancing both sides to keep everyone satisfied.

Iraqi Parliament Poised to Evict US Troops

May 18, 2019

Iraqi Parliament Poised to Evict US Troops

Talk of US attacking Iran has many Iraqi officials keen to get rid of them.

Iraq has spent the better share of the last 16 years under US military occupation. Despite this, time and again US-Iraqi relations have come to be defined by US hostility toward neighboring Iran, and Iraq’s desire to not get mixed up in that.

So while Iraq’s parliament was already bristling under Pentagon talk of staying in Iraq, and Trump saying that the US was staying in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran,” the recent escalation of US rhetoric about a war against Iran has sparked action within parliament.

On Saturday, Iraq will be voting on a bill that would aim to expel all foreign troops from Iraqi soil, and singles out US troops in particular as needing to leave. The bill is endorsed by Iraq’s top two Shi’ite blocs, and is expected to pass fairly easily.

What happens then is the real question. Iraq’s parliament is already being spun as “pro-Iran factions,” and it’s been a long time since US officials, Pentagon or otherwise, gave any indication that they thought staying in Iraq was up to the Iraqi government.

So while the Iraqi Prime Minister is warning the US that they can’t use Iraq to launch a war on Iran, the US is browbeating Iraq over its government-aligned Shi’ite militias, and doing everything they can to try to portray that Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government as effectively in league with the Iranians, and subsequently a threat to US interests. No matter what happens, it seems certain US-Iraqi ties will suffer for it.

Saudi Arabia Is the World’s Top Arms Buyer

March 11, 2019

Saudi Arabia Is the World’s Top Arms Buyer

Saudis increased purchases 192% over five years Jason Ditz Posted on March 10, 2019Categories NewsTags Saudi Arabia

Most reports on international arms sales focus on the biggest sellers. That inevitably means the United States, the largest exporter by far in the growing market. You can’t have sales without buyers, however, and that side of the equation centers heavily on the Middle East.

Middle Eastern countries now buy more than a third of all global arms. The biggest customer not just in the Middle East but in the world, is Saudi Arabia,whose purchases have soared 192% over a five year period.

Locked in an endless war in Yemen, and always looking toward a war with Iran, Saudi Arabia has seen its military spending soar in recent years. Recent estimates have put Saudi Arabia at the third costliest military on Earth, behind on the US and China, and ahead of Russia.

Unlike the US, China, or Russia, however, Saudi Arabia lacks a huge decades-old military-industrial complex to make all their weapons of war. Instead, the Saudis are pouring into overseas contracts, buying vast amounts of arms from the US and Britain.

The Saudis show no sign of slowing down on this, but it isn’t clear how sustainable this is either. Already, Saudi war crimes are fueling a lot of calls to rethink arms sales to them. On top of that, the Saudis are spending 10% of their annual GDP on a mostly-imported military, which is a heavy burden for their economy to bear.

NATO Sends 50,000 Troops to Largest Exercise Since Cold War

October 24, 2018

NATO Sends 50,000 Troops to Largest Exercise Since Cold War

Operations centered on Arctic and Scandinavia

US Marines are landing in Iceland and warplanes are flying overhead in Scandinavia, just days ahead of the kickoff of Trident Juncture. The annual exercise, focused on the Arctic Circle and Scandinavia, is set to be the largest operation since the Cold War.

31 countries are involved, 29 NATO members and Finland and Sweden. They will overall be sending 50,000 troops, 10,000 vehicles, 150 warplanes and 65 ships. Starting Thursday, the exercise will last a month.

And while officials insist it’s not strictly along the Russian border, Russian military officials say it is close enough, and clearly targeted at growing Russian interests in the Arctic Circle, as warmer temperatures open up new route.

NATO officials are being two-faced about this, however, on the one hand insisting this is just an annual exercise, and on the other hand presenting it as a “response to Russian aggression,” the same excuse for every massive exercise along the Russian frontier.

US Strategy in Syria: ‘Create Quagmires Until We Get What We Want’

September 2, 2018

US Strategy in Syria: ‘Create Quagmires Until We Get What We Want’

In seeking to control post-war Syria, US determined to keep war going

In 2013, top Obama Administration officials described their policy in the Syrian War as one of keeping the war going. The administration wanted a big seat at the table for a political settlement, which officials clarified meant ensuring that the war kept going so that there was never a clear victor.

The Trump Administration seems to be slipping into that same destructive set of priorities in Syria. TheWashington Post this week quoted an unnamed Administration official as saying that “right now, our job is to help create quagmires [for Russia and the Syrian regime] until we get what we want.”

As ever, hat the US really wants is to have a dominant position in post-war negotiations, so they can dictate the form that post-war Syria takes. This means ensuring that the Syrian government doesn’t win the war outright.

That’s not as realistic as it once was, with the Assad government, backed by Russia, having retaken virtually all of the rebel-held territory except for a far north bastion in Idlib, dominated by al-Qaeda. This means the US now has to save al-Qaeda to keep the war going, which if we’re being honest has been a recurring undercurrent in US policy in Syria for years.

It is this desire that has the US repeatedly threatening Syria and warning them not to attack Idlib. It is this desire that is sparking almost daily US threats to intervene militarily if the Idlib offensive involves chemical weapons. Most importantly, it is this desire that has Russia very much believing media reports that the rebels could “stage” a fake chemical attack just to suck the US into the war, and be fairly confident it would work.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Treasury Dept Warns Allies Against Accidentally Trading With Iran

June 6, 2018

US Treasury Dept Warns Allies Against Accidentally Trading With Iran

Companies ‘face substantial risks’ if they’re caught trading with Iran

The US Treasury Department on Tuesday issued a statement directed at allied governments, and private companies operating out of allied countries, warning them against any trade with Iran, warning they “face substantial risks” if they are caught.

Undersecretary of the Treasury Sigal Mandelker says that the world must “harden your financial networks,” and make sure they have “airtight” procedures in place to prevent even accidental business ties to Iran. He added that nations must make sure “Iran and its proxies are not exploiting your companies to support their nefarious activities.”

Though presented as a warning about being tricked by Iran, the warning is likely primarily directed at EU nations, as the EU has already decided to prohibit its companies complying with US sanctions on Iran. The EU is planning to try to block the US from punishing those companies, but many of the major businesses are being very cautious about new deals with Iran, fearing the US will go after them anyhow.

US sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program are expected to ratchet up in the next several months, after President Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal. Yet the deal remains in place, and many nations may not be willing to follow the US in this crackdown so long as Iran remains compliant.

US Still Pouring Massive Supply of Weapons Into War-Torn Yemen

March 10, 2018

(ANTIWAR.COM) — Three years into the 2015 Saudi-led invasion of Yemen, untold thousands are dead. Northern Yemen has been through the worst cholera outbreak in human history, and civilians continue to die in bunches from Saudi airstrikes against the region.

To call Yemen war-torn is really putting it mildly. Yemen is in a disastrous state, with a Saudi-led naval blockade threatening to starve millions. If there’s one thing Yemen has no shortage of, however, it’s weapons, with the US ensuring a massive supply continues to pour into the hands of Saudi and Emirati forces.

US arms sales are themselves at a record high during this war, in no small part because of purchases by the United Arab Emirates, and particularly by the Saudis, who are dropping US bombs on northern Yemen as fast as they can buy them.

And while bombs and warplanes are the big dollar amount of sales, they also include large numbers of US-made automatic rifles and small arms ammunition. The UAE is particular bought $60 million in small arms in 2016 alone, both for their own direct involvement in Yemen and to arm their allied factions on the ground. The Saudis bought another $11 million.

Yemen isn’t a place to send weaponry that you want well-documented and carefully tracked, either. The Pentagon has confirmed they can’t account for about $500 million more in weapons that they’d given to the Hadi government up to 2015.

So the Saudi and UAE-bought small arms are being sent to Yemen to replace those “lost” weapons, but it’s not as if those weapons literally disappeared. Rather, they’re just not in the hands of officials, or at least not in any above-board way. That’s virtually certain to be the fate of this new influx as well.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Turkey Detains Nearly 600 for Opposing Syria Invasion

February 7, 2018

Turkey Detains Nearly 600 for Opposing Syria Invasion

Erdogan Spokesman: Opposing War Means Glorifying Terrorism

As Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria continues, so too does their policy of arresting anyone seen as even sort of opposed to the attack. The Turkish Interior Ministry now says 449 people have been detained for criticizing the war on social media, and 124 more detained for taking part in actual protests.

*Riot police detain a demonstrator during a protest against Turkey’s military operation in Syria’s Afrin region, in Istanbul, Turkey*

Turkey’s Erdogan government doesn’t have a lot of patience for dissent, or for Kurds. Unsurprisingly, dissent about a war against Kurds is being cracked down on intensely. Erdogan’s spokesman warned that statements criticizing the war amount to statements “glorifying terrorism,” and that the government is just enforcing the law as written.

With Turkey’s largely state-run media praising the war, public support for it is still relatively strong. Opposition is mostly in the ethnic Kurdish region, which Turkey is more than willing to crack down on at any rate, and political opponents.

When other NGOs issue statements against the war, as did a medical union in the country, President Erdogan has condemned them as traitors, and arrested 11 of their senior members for a statement calling for “peace immediately.”

With the war continuing and casualties rising, war exhaustion is inevitable. For now,however, expressing opposition to the conflict is a very dangerous crime indeed in Turkey.

Obama Ordered Cyberweapons Implanted Into Russia’s Infrastructure

June 25, 2017

Obama Ordered Cyberweapons Implanted Into Russia’s Infrastructure

A new report from the Washington Post today quoted a series of Obama Administration officials [5] reiterating their official narrative on Russia’s accused hacking of the 2016 election. While most of the article is simply rehashes and calls for sanctions, they also revealed a secret order by President Obama in the course of “retaliation” for the alleged hacking.

[6]

This previously secret order involved having US intelligence design and implant a series of cyberweapons into Russia’s infrastructure systems, with officials saying they are meant to be activated remotely to hit the most important networks in Russia and are designed to “cause them pain and discomfort [7].”

The implants, developed by the NSA, are designed to hit Russian networks deemed “important to the adversary and that would cause them pain and discomfort if they were disrupted,” a former U.S. official told the Post.

They could be activated in the event that Russia attacked a U.S. power grid or interfered in a future U.S. presidential race.

The US has, of course, repeatedly threatened “retaliatory” cyberattacks against Russia, and promised to knock out broad parts of their economy in doing so. These appear to be the first specific plans to have actually infiltrate Russian networks and plant such weapons to do so.

Despite the long-standing nature of the threats, by the end of Obama’s last term in office this was all still in the “planning” phases. It’s not totally clear where this effort has gone from there, but officials say that the intelligence community, once given Obama’s permission, did not need further approval from Trump to continue on with it, and he’d have actually had to issue a countermanding order, something they say he hasn’t.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Erdogan: Democracy, Freedom Have ‘Absolutely No Value Any Longer’

March 18, 2016

Erdogan: Democracy, Freedom Have ‘Absolutely No Value Any Longer’

Vows to Turn Military on Political Opposition

Concerns about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian leanings have been at the fore in the nation’s political dialogue since he assumed the presidency, and appear to have been well founded, as in a televised speech today he declared “democracy,, freedom, and the rule of law have absolutely no value any longer.”

Rather, Turkey is about one thing in 2016, and that’s wars, with Erdogan insisting anyone who supports his wars is a friend and anyone “on the opposite side are our enemy,” insisting the nation will treat them all with an iron fist.

Erdogan also vowed to turn the nation’s military against the opposition HDP, which opposes the war against the Kurds, saying that “wherever you run, our soldiers, police, and village guards will find you there and do what is necessary.” Erdogan had previously pushed for the HDP’s parliamentarians to lose their legal immunity so they could be charged as terrorists.

“I no longer see as legitimate political actors the members of a party which is operating as a branch of the terrorist organization,” Erdogan reiterated today, demanding parliament take quick action against opposition MPs from the Kurdish-dominated southeast.

Erdogan has increasingly sought to charge political opponents as terrorists, and has in the past few weeks not only arrested academics as “terrorists” for their positions on his government, but nationalized the nation’s largest newspaper for publishing articles critical of his ruling party.

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