Home » Posts tagged 'iran' (Page 27)

Tag Archives: iran

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Road to Hell in the Middle East

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Road to Hell in the Middle East

It’s already long forgotten here, but the theocratic regime in Iran was really our baby. After all, in 1953, the CIA and British intelligence engineered a coup to replace a democratic government in Iran with the autocratic Shah and so gave Iranians just what they didn’t want (including his creepy secret police, the Savak). In those days, however, blowback from such American acts didn’t arrive with the speed of the Internet. It took a quarter of a century for our man in Iran to go down and the theocrats to rise. They were, of course, born of us (as in the U.S.), but no one talks about that anymore.

Then Washington switched partners. The administration of Ronald Reagan found someone else in the region we could really admire, another strongman by the name of — does this ring a bell? — Saddam Hussein. He ruled Iraq, not Iran, and like the Saudis of today (and the Israelis of just about any time), he wanted to take out the Iranian theocrats. (How familiar does that sound now that Donald Trump has done his best to smash the Iran nuclear deal?) In 1980, Saddam launched a war of aggression against that country. As the U.S. military now helps the Saudis with targeting intelligence and weaponry in their brutal war in Yemen, so it then helped Saddam, targeting Iranian military contingents, even knowing that Saddam’s troops were likely to use chemical weapons against them. Five hundred thousand or so Iranians died in that invasion and the eight-year disaster of a war that followed. Then, in another curious reversal, Saddam suddenly became “Hitler,” the ultimate evil one. In 1990, the U.S. military (and its allies) drove his troops out of Kuwait, and in 2003 the administration of George W. Bush took him out completely.

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

Lousy Deals and Turning Wheels


In that long ago yesteryear of 1979, before blogging, tweeting, twerking, hacking, posting, ghosting, doxing, and all the other Internet-enabled compulsions of the present day, a gang of inflamed young men, said to be students, invaded the US embassy compound in Teheran and took fifty-two American embassy personnel hostage — crossing an age-old line of geopolitical conduct that kicked off the epic conflict between global Islam and a USA-led West, still on-going as you read.

I followed the Iran Hostage Crisis avidly… the gibbering mullahs, the blindfolded captives, the rotating cast of double-taking prime ministers who lectured Jimmy Carter on the Nightly News, the rescue attempt fiasco that killed eight American soldiers out in the Persian desert. Oddly, what I remember most after all these years was the fact that the hostages ran out of dental floss and had to swap around between them the same recycled last strand for weeks on end — a ticket to periodontal hell, if ever there was one.

And then, as if by magic, Iran released the hostages on Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day and our splendiferous “morning in America” commenced. What really began that day, of course, was the asset-stripping of this land and its people, leading to the political disorders of the moment. Forty years later it’s hard to say which nation is a bigger pain-in-the-ass on the world stage, Iran or the USA. But the net effect of all that mutual antagonism is a vast region from North Africa to Central Asia of failed states, ruined cities, and dead bodies.

I’m rather skeptical that President Trump will manage to get a new-and-improved “deal” with Iran after tearing up the old one put together by Mr. Obama, which may have not been of much value anyway. I don’t believe that anything in it would have really deterred Iranian technicians from developing a serviceable nuclear weapon. It’s just not that hard to do anymore, given the number of physicists trained all over the world since 1945.

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

Iran Sanctions Threaten The Petrodollar

Iran Sanctions Threaten The Petrodollar

Iranian oil

One country must be quite pleased with the prospect of new U.S. economic sanctions against Iran’s oil industry, and this country is the largest oil importer in the world, and is Iran’s largest single oil client.

When China launched its long-awaited yuan-priced oil futures last month, it did so as part of its strategy to expand the international clout of its currency. Now, with U.S. sanctions on Iran’s horizon, the yuan could further advance down this road, as Beijing has vowed to continue buying Iranian crude, which will most likely be paid in yuan.

Iran should be on board with the idea. The country has made it clear even before President Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA that it would prefer to settle its trade in currencies other than the greenback, to which it has limited access.

Last month, Tehran and Moscow inked a deal to conduct all its business in goods rather than in dollars as both seek to reduce the influence of the U.S. currency on their economies. A month earlier, Iran banned settlement of import deals in dollars and ditched the currency in favor of the euro in reporting its forex reserves. In other words, Iran will be more than happy to take in Chinese yuan for its crude, or alternatively, to apply some oil-for-goods exchange scheme similar to the one agreed with Russia.

The point is that those one million barrels daily that new Iran sanctions are supposed to take off the market may not in fact be taken off the market. Analysts are citing this figure because that’s how much Iranian crude left global markets during the period when both the U.S. and the EU had sanctions in place against Tehran.

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

Iran And Syria: Why Regime Change In One Means Regime Change In Both 

Iran And Syria: Why Regime Change In One Means Regime Change In Both 

Probably the weirdest, dumbest, most annoying thing about writing on US foreign policy right now is the fact that regime change in Iran and regime change in Syria have been falsely spun into the illusion of two separate issues along partisan lines. People who are more aligned with America’s Democratic Party are a lot more opposed to the overthrow of the Iranian government and a lot more sympathetic to the idea of getting rid of Assad, and with those who are more aligned with the Republican party it’s the exact opposite.

Partisan politics turn people into such drooling idiots. Democratic Party-aligned Americans oppose Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal because it was Obama’s baby, while Republican-aligned Americans support it for the exact same reason. This is a deliberate provocation designed to enable crushing economic sanctions, which the US-centralized war machine always uses as a prelude to war, to weaken and destabilize the nation. Plan A will be for imperial intelligence agencies to stage a coup or fund a violent uprising in order to either throw Iran into impotent chaos or replace its government with a puppet regime (either one satisfies Plan A). Plan B will be something more direct.

We’re seeing the reverse in Syria: Democratic Party-aligned Americans are virulently opposed to Assad because Russia is actively fighting on his side, and the Russiagate psyop has Democrats hating anyone who they suspect might have anything to do with Vladimir Putin. They also need to justify the fact that the Obama administration helped stage a premeditated violent uprising and flooded Syria with terrorists with the goal of destabilization or regime change. Trump supporters, meanwhile, oppose regime change in that nation largely because it’s a secular government besieged by violent deep state-funded jihadists.

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

Weekly Commentary: Disequilibrium

Weekly Commentary: Disequilibrium

Much to the consternation of our allies, President Trump withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal. WTI crude adds another 1.5% (up 17% y-t-d) this week to the high since November 2014. Iran and Israel moved closer to direct military confrontation. With even 40% rates unable to staunch the bleeding, a stunned Argentine government warily negotiates an IMF bailout. Italy’s far right and far left parties – both populist, anti-establishment, anti-euro and anti-immigration – begin negotiations to form a coalition government. Malaysians elect 92-year old Mahathir Mohamad, ending the 60-year reign of the Barisan Nasional party (including Mahathir as prime minister between 1981 and 2003).

Some astounding developments, but not enough these days to shake financial markets. Why fret a complex and increasingly unstable world, not with the timely return of Goldilocks. She’s back… Headline U.S. April CPI was up 0.2% vs. expectations of 0.3%. Core CPI was up only 0.1% against expectations of 0.2%. April Import Prices were up 0.3% vs. estimates of 0.5%. Forget surging energy prices, rather quickly the rosy narrative shifts to peak inflation.

May 11 – Reuters (Howard Schneider): “St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard on Friday spelled out the case against any further interest rate increases, saying rates may already have reached a ‘neutral’ level that is no longer stimulating the economy… ‘We should be opening the champagne here,’ not raising interest rates with unemployment low and inflation in no seeming danger of accelerating, Bullard said… ‘The economy is operating quite well right now.'”

I suggest the Fed and global central bankers hold back on carting out the bubbly. “Opening the champagne” is reminiscent of Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince’s summer of 2007 “still dancing.” Bullard focuses on traditional yield curve analysis. “I would say the yield curve inversion is getting close to crunch time.” “The yield curve inversion would be a bearish signal for the US economy if that develops.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Blowout Week 228

Blowout Week 228

The big news this week is Trump’s re-imposition of sanctions on Iran, which will cut Iran’s oil production to the point where, combined with cratering oil production from Venezuela, it could cause another oil price spike. We follow with our usual mix – more on Iran, Venezuela and OPEC; oil in Norway; gas pipeline constraints in Europe; Japan moves to coal; British Columbia misses its renewables target; stalemate at the Bonn Climate Conference; California to mandate rooftop solar on new houses; Tesla’s 1GW battery; hydrogen storage in UK; the Swansea Bay tidal standoff; more cracks at Hunterston and how the ravages of climate change threaten historical records.

Reuters: Sanctions spell the end of OPEC output deal

President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement with Iran marks the end of the current output agreement between OPEC and its allies.

The prospective removal of several hundred thousand barrels per day of Iranian exports from the market will require a major adjustment. Saudi Arabia and its close allies Abu Dhabi and Kuwait hold almost all the spare capacity that could respond quickly to a reduction in Iranian exports. U.S. shale producers could also increase their output but it would take time and their light crude is not a good substitute for heavier Iranian oil. Russian firms may also hold spare capacity and could certainly increase output over a 12-month horizon. Their crude is a close equivalent to Iranian grades.

CNN: Oil prices could hit $100 a barrel next year

Collapsing oil production in Venezuela and potential export disruptions in Iran could push the price of Brent crude as high as $100 per barrel in 2019. Bank of America analysts said their target price for Brent, the global benchmark, was $90 for the second quarter of next year. But they warned there was a risk that deteriorating conditions in Iran would push prices to $100, a level not seen since 2014.

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

Let’s (Not) Make a Deal

James McNeill Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket 1875

Dr. D again. And wait, that deal was never even -legally- signed?

Dr. D: I know the U.S. hasn’t followed the law in 100 years, but let’s review the Iran Deal. A “Deal” with a foreign nation is supposed to be, for 200 years has been, and legally must be, a “Treaty”. Treaties under U.S. law are unique, as they are NOT to be brokered by the Congress and are a point of contention if Congressmen get involved, as you can imagine special deals and/or information leaks could damage the negotiating position.

This is one of the few things Congress doesn’t do. However, the deal, brokered by the President, is presented to the Senate and only the Senate, which is supposed to be the older, more stable house, and once upon a time when Americans were adults and the Senate was chosen by the State governments, this was true. Even with a Democratic election of Senators representing the people and not the States, (which is what the House is supposed to be) it’s the best we have.

So when Obama arranged the Iran “Deal”, he knew and did so against 220 years of history exclusively BECAUSE he knew the Senate would never approve an honest-to-God, legal “Treaty.” Worse, it was part of the reason the “Deal” was effectively secret, not overseen by anyone, and even John Kerry when asked what was in it said, “I don’t know.” You don’t know??? You’re the Secretary of State presumably brokering the deal. Who’s above you in the food chain that you’re not allowed to know? That was an interesting disclosure that the media – of course – never followed up on.

He also said, as the deal was never signed, it was “not legally binding.”

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

Trump’s Pyrrhic Victory: the US Opts for a Path That Can Only Lead to War

Trump’s Pyrrhic Victory: the US Opts for a Path That Can Only Lead to War

Trump’s Pyrrhic Victory: the US Opts for a Path That Can Only Lead to War

Nearly everyone loses by President Donald Trump’s decision on Tuesday to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) relating to Iran’s nuclear energy program and to reinstate the “highest level” of sanctions while also threatening secondary sanctions on any country that “helps” the Iranians. The whole world loses because nuclear proliferation is a disaster waiting to happen and Iran will now have a strong incentive to proceed with a weapons program to defend itself from Israel and the United States. If Iran does so, it will trigger a regional nuclear arms race with Saudi Arabia and Egypt undoubtedly seeking weapons of their own.

Iran and the Iranian people will lose because their suffering economy will not now benefit from the lifting of sanctions and other economic inducements that convinced it to sign the agreement in the first place. And yes, even the United States and Israel will lose because an agreement that would have pushed back by ten or fifteen years Iran’s timetable if it were to choose to develop a weapon will now be reduced to a year or less. And the United States will in particular lose because the entire world will understand that the word of an American president when entering into an international agreement cannot be trusted.

The only winners from the withdrawal are President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will enjoy the plaudits of their hardline supporters. But their victory will be illusory as the hard reality of what they have accomplished becomes clear.

Failure of JCPOA definitely means that war is the only likely outcome if Tel Aviv and Washington continue in their absurd insistence that the Iranians constitute a major threat both to the region and the world.

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

The Coming War Against Iran

The Coming War Against Iran

We’ve been through this before: the trumped-up threat from Iraq based on false evidence in 2003 is the harrowingly similar model to what is emerging for Iran in 2018, argues John Kiriakou.


I spent nearly 15 years in the CIA. I like to think that I learned something there. I learned how the federal bureaucracy works. I learned that cowboys in government – in the CIA and elsewhere around government – can have incredible power over the creation of policy. I learned that the CIA will push the envelope of legality until somebody in a position of authority pushes back. I learned that the CIA can wage war without any thought whatsoever as to how things will work out in the end. There’s never an exit strategy.

I learned all of that firsthand in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. In the spring of 2002, I was in Pakistan working against al-Qaeda. I returned to CIA headquarters in May of that year and was told that several months earlier a decision had been made at the White House to invade Iraq. I was dumbfounded, and when told of the war plans could only muster, “But we haven’t caught bin Laden yet.” “The decision has already been made,” my supervisor told me. He continued, “Next year, in February, we’re going to invade Iraq, overthrow Saddam Hussein, and open the world’s largest air force base in southern Iraq.” He went on, “We’re going to go to the United Nations and pretend that we want a Security Council Resolution. But the truth is that the decision has already been made.”

Next Year: Saddam

Soon after, Secretary of State Colin Powell began traveling around Europe and the Middle East to cultivate support for the invasion. Sure enough, he also went to the United Nations and argued that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, necessitating an invasion and overthrow because that country posed an imminent threat to the United States.

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

Merkel: “Trump’s Decision Damages Trust In The International Order”

One day after Angela Merkel said Europe can no longer rely on the US “to protect it” in the aftermath of Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord, stating that “It’s no longer the case that the United States will simply just protect us. Rather, Europe needs to take its fate into its own hands, that’s the task of the future”, the  German Chancellor has doubled down, and said President Trump’s decision to scrap the Iran nuclear accord was “not right.”

“It’s not right to unilaterally cancel an accord that was negotiated, that was unanimously approved in the UN Security Council,” Merkel said in a speech at a Catholic religious conference in Muenster, Germany “That damages the trust in the international order.”

“What we’re seeing at the moment, which is probably the most alarming, is that multilateralism is in a real crisis” she added. She then echoed her prior warning: “I’ve said this about the U.S. decision on the Iran accord, I could say the same thing about the climate accord, the WTO – if we always say that something doesn’t suit us, and we don’t get a new international order, and everybody simply does what they want – then that’s bad news for the world.”

Or it could simply be bad news for Europe, or rather everyone but the US, and since Trump’s promise was “America first” it should hardly come as a surprise. Perhaps what Angela should be more worried about is that her disastrous “open door” immigration policy has ushered in not only Brexit but – as of yesterday – laid the groundwork for the first populist, anti-establishment government in Italy where the Five Star and League are about to form a government, which will have immigration as its key talking point.

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

How Much Iranian Oil Can Trump Disrupt?

How Much Iranian Oil Can Trump Disrupt?

Trump

Oil prices surged following President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. So, what happens next?

Trump did not offer any new justification for how Iran was violating the nuclear accord – the IAEA confirmed on May 9 that Iran is in compliance with its nuclear commitments – and offered no Plan B or even a coherent strategy on what comes next. For now, Washington is pursuing confrontation with Iran, and hoping that “maximum pressure” will force Iran to not only abandon any hint of a nuclear weapons program, but also agree to concessions on a range of non-nuclear issues. If history is any guide, there is little chance of this happening, so we are now on a course of escalating confrontation.

The U.S. will re-impose all nuclear related sanctions on Iran, which could begin to disrupt oil flows from the country. There will be a 90-day and 180-day wind down period before sanctions really start to bite, which puts the deadline at early November. However, there is a great deal of disagreement and uncertainty over how quickly and how severely the impact of U.S. confrontation will be.

The U.S. will not have the coalition that shut in 1 million barrels per day (mb/d) of Iranian oil exports prior to the 2015 agreement. The EU, China and Russia have said they are sticking with the deal. Still, U.S. sanctions will loom over private companies from those nations, which could keep them from doing business with Iran. The EU has vowed to protect its companies, and could even pursue trade retaliation if the U.S. Treasury moves to penalize European companies. However, U.S. sanctions will almost certainly deter large-scale investment in Iran’s oil and gas sector for years to come.

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

Leaked Doc Reveals White House Planning “Regime Change” In Iran

It appears Rudy Giuliani wasn’t lying.

Just a few days after the former NYC mayor and latest member of President Trump’s unexpectedly let it slip that “we got a president who is tough, who does not listen to the people who are naysayers, and a president who is committed to regime change [in Iran]”, the Washington Free Beacon has obtained a three-page white paper being circulated among National Security Council officials with drafted plans to spark regime change in Iran, following the US exit from the Obama-era nuclear deal and the re-imposition of tough sanctions aimed at toppling the Iranian regime.

The plan, authored by the Security Studies Group, or SSG, a national security think-tank that has close ties to senior White House national security officials, including – who else – National Security Adviser John Bolton, seeks to reshape longstanding American foreign policy toward Iran by emphasizing an explicit policy of regime change, something the Obama administration opposed when popular protests gripped Iran in 2009, writes the Free Beacon, which obtained a leaked copy of the circulating plans.

The regime change plan seeks to fundamentally shift U.S. policy towards Iran and has found a receptive audience in the Trump administration, which has been moving in this direction since Bolton—a longtime and vocal supporter of regime change—entered the White House.

It deemphasizes U.S military intervention, instead focusing on a series of moves to embolden an Iranian population that has increasingly grown angry at the ruling regime for its heavy investments in military adventurism across the region. –Free Beacon

The ordinary people of Iran are suffering under economic stagnation, while the regime ships its wealth abroad to fight its expansionist wars and to pad the bank accounts of the Mullahs and the IRGC command,” SSG writes in the paper.

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

We Are Being Lied To About Yet Another Middle Eastern Country By Yet Another US President 

We Are Being Lied To About Yet Another Middle Eastern Country By Yet Another US President 

Do you know who the single biggest donor was to any candidate in the 2016 presidential race?

Hillary Clinton’s massive $1.2 billion losing campaign budget might make you think that it was one of the many, many powerful influencers who were looking to get on her good side prior to her anticipated coronation, but it wasn’t. The largest donor to any campaign was oligarch Sheldon Adelson, who gave $25 million to the Trump campaign, and who in 2013 said that the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

After his election win, Adelson gave another $5 million to Trump’s inauguration, the largest single presidential inaugural donation ever made. Newt Gingrich, another of the billionaire’s hired politicians, has said that Adelson’s “central value” is Israel.

Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Adelson lackey, made an absurd and dishonest presentation arguing in favor of the termination of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal. Today, Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal and announced aggressive new sanctions against Iran, like a good little boy. Lobelog‘s Eli Clifton has published an article on how two other pro-Israel, anti-Iran oligarchs, Bernard Marcus and Paul Singer, helped pave the way for this decision along with Adelson.

If you want to know what policies a politician will take seriously, ignore his campaign rhetoric and look at his largest sponsors.


Statement on the Iran Nuclear Deal: https://www.pscp.tv/w/bcHoFDFvTlFsTFJub1dwUXd8MVlxS0RkRWt3RG9LVuGHoVNqHUMTOFsKvNeEtRThrkhTbwCW_TKUlteUhH3s?t=1s 

Fox News @FoxNews

LIVE: President Trump makes an announcement on the Iran deal

pscp.tv


In his statement on the decision to pull out of the deal, Trump repeated the brazen, demonstrable lie that Iran is the world’s “leading state sponsor of terrorism”, a lie again repeated on his Twitter account.

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

Israeli Airstrike In Syria Was “Most Extensive Attack In Decades”

In what is now being described as the “most direct confrontation between Israel and Iran in decades,” Israel exchanged fire with Syrian and Iranian forces during a late-night showdown that ended early Thursday morning.

The exchange came days after Israel called up reserve troops to the Golan Heights, the disputed border region.

It also followed by less than two days President Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Iran deal. Trump said Tuesday that the US would swiftly reimpose economic sanctions on Iran that had been lifted following the 2015 agreement.

Israel

According to Syrian media, some 28 Israeli aircraft fired around 60 air-to-surface missiles at Syria during the exchange. Iranian lawmakers have denied the IDF’s claims that Iranian forces in Syria provoked Israel by firing on their positions in the Golan Heights border area.

Israel also launched roughly 10 surface-to-surface missiles, which struck military targets near Damascus and in Southern Syria, according to the Russian military.

Attack

Meanwhile, the IDF says Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted 20 rockets launched at Israeli targets by Syrian and Iranian forces based in Syria.

While Israeli has pointed the finger squarely at Iran, the country’s bitter rival has denied any involvement.

Mohammad Javad Jamali Nobandegani, a member of Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said Israel’s claim was “a lie,” adding that Israel’s history of carrying out unprovoked attacks in Syria has been well-documented.

“Iran does not have military base in Syria,” Nobandegani added.

The Israeli officials said the strikes damaged Iranian infrastructure in Syria, according to CNN.

“Israel has hit almost all of Iran’s infrastructure in Syria,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said Thursday morning. “If it will rain in Israel, there will be a biblical flood on the other side.”

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

re is still being evaluated.

War Codes in Trump’s Iran Proclamation

War Codes in Trump’s Iran Proclamation

undefined

Today President Trump announced that he was canceling US participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JPCOA) otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. The president’s assertions were ludicrous and factually incorrect, but the neocons who were no doubt behind the speech have never been all that wedded to the truth. It became obvious fairly on that Trump’s rationale was not to be taken seriously, when he cited last week’s comical stage performance by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “Iran Lied” about its nuclear program.

Netanyahu’s fairy tale required us to believe that the Iranians were storing their most sensitive national security (paper) documents and compact discs in an unguarded desert hut, which the crack Israeli team of intelligence operatives were able to discover and remove by the truckload right under the noses of what they claim is among the most totalitarian “regimes” on earth.

And even if one believes that fairy tale, one is required to suspend logic and reason and conclude that evidence that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons technology but had halted the program by 2003 is actually proof that Iran is currently pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities — despite repeated inspections that have concluded otherwise. Really, it’s something a child could see through. Which is perhaps why the neocons were so successful at packaging it for Trump’s consumption.

Likewise Trump’s claim that Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism…for among other things fighting actual terrorists (al-Qaeda and ISIS) in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government!

Only in the twisted world of the neocons can one country arming al-Qaeda and ISIS (the US) be “anti-terrorist” and another country killing al-Qaeda and ISIS (Iran) be “pro-terrorist.”

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress