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By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Turkey on Friday (July 12) received first shipment of Russian S-400 missile defense system hardware from Russia, Turkish Defense Ministry announced.

“The first batch of equipment of S-400 missile defense system, which is procured to meet Turkey’s air and missile defense needs, has started to arrive at Murted Air Base in Ankara,” the ministry said in a statement.

The second Russian military transport aircraft carrying the S-400 missile systems will depart for Turkey soon, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“The Russian Aerospace Force’s military transport aircraft carrying parts of a S-400 regiment set has arrived in Turkey. Another plane will soon deliver the second batch of equipment to the country,” TASS quoted a diplomatic source as saying. “The third batch, containing more than 120 guided missiles of various types, will be dispatched later by sea. It is expected to happen at the end of the summer,” the agency added.

Turkish S-400 operators plan to train Turkish military service members this month and in August, according to TASS. In May, about 20 Turkish service members underwent training at a Russian training center.

The S-400 Triumph, which became operational in 2007, is designed to destroy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, including medium-range ones. The S-400 system can hit targets at a distance of round 250 miles and at an altitude up to around 22 miles.

The purchase sparked a row within NATO, with the US threatening sanctions against Turkey for buying the Russian-made military technology.

Specifically, the Pentagon fears that Russia will be able to spy on the US-made F-35, the latest generation fighter jet, once S-400 becomes part of Turkey’s defense network, according to German news agency Deutsche Welle. Earlier this year, the US suspended deliveries related to the F-35 and gave Turkey a deadline until the end of July to cancel the S-400 deal. If Ankara did not comply, Turkish pilots training to fly F-35 in the US would be expelled from the country.

US officials also pressured Turkey to buy the more expensive, US-made Patriot missiles instead.

“S-400 is at least twice as cheap as the US system Patriot-2,” UK military expert Richard Connolly at Birmingham University told DW’s Russian service.

“The Russians and before them the Soviet Union were always leading in missile technology,” he added. “The reason for that was that the Americans and the West produced better aircraft.”

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Less than two weeks ago, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that US President Donald Trump reassured him there will be no sanctions over buying the S-400s.

“We heard from him that there won’t be anything like this (sanctions),” Erdogan told a press conference in Osaka, Japan, following a meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

“It is out of the question that such a thing takes place between two strategic allies. I believe it cannot happen,” Erdogan said.

“By accepting delivery of the S-400 from Russia, President Erdogan has chosen a perilous partnership with Putin at the expense of Turkey’s security, economic prosperity and the integrity of the NATO alliance,” the Wall Street Journal reported a joint statement by Sens. Jim Risch (R., Idaho), Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) and Jack Reed (D., R.I.).

During a visit to NATO headquarters in Belgium late last month, acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said: “If Turkey accepts delivery of the S-400, they will not receive the F-35. It’s that simple.”

According to the UPI, Shanahan sent a letter on June 6 to Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar that Turkey would be pulled from the F-35 Lightning II jet program — including sales and the banning of Turkish contractors — unless Ankara decides not to go ahead with purchasing S-400.

U.S.-Turkish relations

The events in the coming weeks could determine the future of U.S.-Turkish relations, and raise questions about Turkey’s long-term role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as Russia attempts to build on its own influence in the country in a bid to weaken the alliance, the Wall Street Journal said adding:

“Turkey’s decision to source critical weapons from Russia is a setback for the U.S., which courted Ankara throughout the Cold War for its strategic location on the southwestern flank of the Soviet empire. It is also an economic issue. The U.S. and Russia are world’s biggest arms exporters and their contractors compete for dominance in the sector.”

“The S-400 issue has further roiled years of frayed U.S.-Turkey relations. U.S. officials still recall a key breaking point in 2003 when Turkish officials refused to allow U.S. troops to use Turkey as a launch pad for the invasion of Iraq. American presidents have tried repeatedly to reset relations with Turkey, only to hit new snags,” the Wall Street Journal argued and said:

“Former President Obama’s initial strong relationship with Mr. Erdogan was strained by the U.S. decision to arm and train Syrian Kurdish fighters in the battle against Islamic State that Turkey views as terrorists. The same issue has dogged relations between Messrs. Trump and Erdogan.

“The relationship also was strained by an American refusal to deport a U.S.-based cleric who Mr. Erdogan accuses of fomenting a failed coup in 2016 that led Mr. Erdogan to impose mass arrests and purges. The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, denies the accusation.

“Last summer, Washington imposed sanctions on Turkey when Ankara failed to release an American pastor who had been detained as part of the post-coup sweeps. Turkey eventually released the pastor, Andrew Brunson, and the U.S. partly lifted the sanctions, but the episode left scars, say U.S. diplomats.”

Resistance of Western Hegemony

“For the political elite of both countries, for Erdogan and Putin, it became kind of a symbol of their resistance of Western hegemony,” Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, think tank in Moscow. “That’s why they try to peddle the deal by showing both the internal and external public…that surrender is not an option, Pukho was quoted by WSJ as saying.”

The S-400 reflects growing cooperation between Turkey and Russia, including construction of the Russia-financed Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Turkey’s first such facility, and the TurkStream natural-gas pipeline that runs from Russia to Turkey.

Making good on the delivery of the S-400s “shows the whole world that Russia is a reliable supplier,” Mr. Pukhov said. “Imagine: Turkey was a longstanding partner for F-35s, paid down-payments, and the United States refused to deliver.”

Deployed across Russia, from its Kaliningrad exclave in the Baltics to Vladivostok in the Far East, the S-400 has also become a successful export product. In addition to Turkey, Russia has sold the weapon to China and India. Saudi Arabia, one of the top buyers of U.S. military equipment, is in talks with Moscow over a possible S-400 purchase.

Russian state-owned holding conglomerate Rostec said earlier this year that as of late 2018 its arms export order book exceeded $51 billion, a record for the past 10 years, with S-400 supply contracts accounting for some of the largest deals.

“Turkish officials say closer ties with the Kremlin are compatible with NATO membership, and have expressed interest in not being entirely dependent on Russia for air-defense equipment. While taking delivery of the S-400, Turkey has been pursuing talks with France and Italy over the joint production of a rival European system. Industrial partners in the project are expected to submit a detailed study on how to divide workload in the autumn, according to European officials. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Friday that Ankara had not closed the door to buying Patriots from the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal concluded.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com

13 July 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

July 11 marks the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, the worst atrocity on European soil since the World War Two. In July, 1995, Serb forces systematically killed more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in the UN-protected enclave in Srebrenica, Bosnia.

Al Jazeera provides a graphic account of the Srebrenica genocide.

On July 11, 1995 at 16:15 General Ratko Mladic (now a convicted war criminal) entered Srebrenica with Serb forces, including paramilitary units from Serbia, claiming the town for Serbs. Strolling through the streets with the TV cameras rolling, Mladic announced that there will be “revenge against the Turks”.

Panicked residents in the enclave fled to the UN Dutch Battalion base only to find that the 400 lightly-armed peacekeepers were unable to defend them. Serb forces had inherited much larger resources of the former Yugoslav army, the fourth largest in the world at the time.

On that day, thousands of Bosniak men start to make their escape through the woods, forming a column and hiking some 100km in an attempt to reach free territory controlled by the Bosnian army.

The journey was known as the death march, as they were ambushed, shot at and attacked by Serb forces. Less than a quarter of them survived.

Over the course of six days, more than 8,000 Bosniaks were killed. Women and small children were deported.

In an attempt to conceal the killings, Serb forces transported the dead bodies with bulldozers and trucks and buried them in numerous locations, leaving the victims’ remains fragmented and crushed.

Human bones can be found as far as 20km apart, making it difficult for families to give their loved ones a proper burial.

What led to the massacre?

Genocide is not committed by a small group of individuals, rather a large number of people and the state all contribute to genocide.

The idea of a Greater Serbia (including the territories of Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia, Montenegro and other neighboring countries) dates back to the 19th century, and was revived following the death of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980.

With the decline of the Communist bloc, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Serbian nationalists saw a chance to mobilise the masses in support of establishing a homogenous Serbian state.

In Milosevic’s famous address to a crowd in Belgrade in 1989, he presented himself as the savior of Serbdom and Europe. It enforced the notion of “us [Serbs] vs them”.

Bosniaks were typically called Turks, Balije (a slur for a Bosnian Muslim) and branded as terrorists and Islamic “extremists”.

A plan to destroy Bosnia and “completely exterminate its Muslim people” was drawn up as early as the 1980s by the General Staff of the Yugoslav People’s Army, according to Vladimir Srebrov, a politician who cofounded the SDS party with convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic.

One document, written by the army’s special services including experts in psychological warfare, stated that the most effective way to create terror and panic among the Bosniak population would be by raping women, minors, and even children.

How genocide was organized?

Organized from Belgrade, Serbia, weapons were distributed to the Serb population by the truckload throughout 1990 and 1991 in Bosnia, according to Al Jazeera.

“Weapons and military equipment were even flown in by military helicopters to Serbian military officers. It is said that by the end, almost no Serbian house was without an automatic gun,” according to a UN report from 1994.

“The pretext for the arms deliveries and the rearmament was that this was necessary for the defence against ‘the enemies of the people’ – the Muslim extremists.”

As Serb troops arrived in each town, they killed non-Serbs, often after torturing them. Bosniak properties were confiscated.

As many as 50,000 Bosniak and Croat women, girls and young children were raped in Bosnia from 1992- 1995.

In Prijedor, a city in western Bosnia, Bosniaks were forced to wear white armbands to be clearly identified and tie white flags to their doors.

Across the country 200,000 people were deported to concentration camps where they were tortured, starved and killed.

Others living under siege, such as in Sarajevo and Mostar, starved while being targeted by snipers and heavy shelling.

Srebrenica, which was known as the world’s biggest detention camp, was under siege for three years, before it fell to Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995.

Serb troops separated boys and men aged between 12 and 77 from the rest of the population and took them to fields, schools and warehouses to be executed.

International Court of Justice

The systematic murder of over 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in Srebrenica by Serb forces in July 1995 was ruled as an act of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice.

Theodor Meron, the presiding judge at the ICTY, stated in 2004 that “by seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed a genocide.”

“They targeted for extinction of the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of Bosnian Muslims in general,” he said.

Serbian General Vladimir Lazarevic, Bosnian Croat Dario Kordic and Bosnian Serb Momcilo Krajisnik were convicted for “horrific crimes against humanity”, yet they were given a hero’s welcome upon release from prison with government officials in attendance, the report noted. Fourteen Serb war criminals were convicted of genocide and other crimes at the ICTY including former Military Commander Radislav Krstic, former President of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadzic, and Bosnian Serb Military Leader Ratko Mladic.

“All three, as senior officials and commanders, participated in ethnic cleansing and campaigns harming millions and devastating communities. The mentality that can regard those men as heroes is difficult to understand,” Meron wrote.

The systematic murder of over 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in Srebrenica by Serb forces in July 1995 was ruled as an act of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice.Denial of facts established in the Tribunal’s judgments are widespread in the education system throughout former Yugoslavia, the report noted, where students are taught “widely different and irreconcilable versions of the recent past”. International Court of Justice

Theodor Meron, the presiding judge at the ICTY, stated in 2004 that “by seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed a genocide.”

“They targeted for extinction of the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of Bosnian Muslims in general,” he said.

Serbian General Vladimir Lazarevic, Bosnian Croat Dario Kordic and Bosnian Serb Momcilo Krajisnik were convicted for “horrific crimes against humanity”, yet they were given a hero’s welcome upon release from prison with government officials in attendance, the report noted. Fourteen Serb war criminals were convicted of genocide and other crimes at the ICTY including former Military Commander Radislav Krstic, former President of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadzic, and Bosnian Serb Military Leader Ratko Mladic.

“All three, as senior officials and commanders, participated in ethnic cleansing and campaigns harming millions and devastating communities. The mentality that can regard those men as heroes is difficult to understand,” Meron wrote.

Canadians launch petition to ban Srebrenica genocide denialDenial of facts established in the Tribunal’s judgments are widespread in the education system throughout former Yugoslavia, the report noted, where students are taught “widely different and irreconcilable versions of the recent past”.

An online petition has been launched in Canada by the Institute for Research of Genocide (IRGC), requesting the Canadian government to enact a law making Srebrenica genocide denial a punishable offence.

If the petition is adopted, Canada would join nine other countries in Europe including Switzerland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Macedonia in prohibiting genocide denial.

Canada has already adopted two resolutions recognizing the Srebrenica genocide, launched by the IRGC.

However, its Director Emir Ramic noted that the process of adopting the first resolution took five years as the Conservative Party – under the influence of the Serbian and Russian lobby – had rejected the resolution.

He told Al Jazeera that the threats intensified as discourse changed from denial to glorification and triumphalism.Ramic’s work with the institute has made him a target of death threats and verbal abuse for years by genocide deniers.

However, he says it has made him all the more determined to make sure a law is enacted banning the denial of Srebrenica genocide. If adopted, Canada would make a major contribution in the fight against genocide denial worldwide, Ramic told Al Jazeera.

“Denying the genocide in Srebrenica is very dangerous. We need to learn from history, recognise [what happened in Srebrenica] and call it by its real name,” he said.

“The aggression and genocide in Bosnia have shown that … there aren’t adequate mechanisms in place to protect freedom and human rights.””Human rights are under attack worldwide,” Ramic added. “Bosniaks, as the only people in Europe who survived aggression and genocide [since the Holocaust], are exposed to unacceptable discrimination not just in the motherland, but in the Diaspora as well.”

“We’ve seen this with Holocaust denial, we’ve seen this with denial for Rwanda and of course with Srebrenica,” said Parliamentarian Brian Masse on the necessity of a law.

“It’s very hurtful for the victims and families of the survivors to continue to wrestle with something based on facts, so the initiative will help in preventing denial and create awareness that we will never forget.”

On April 24, 2015, the House of Commons passed a motion to include the Srebrenica genocide, and Srebrenica Remembrance Day as part of “Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Awareness Month” every April. Earlier on October 19, 2010, the House of Commons passed a motion to recognize July 11 annually as Srebrenica Remembrance Day in Canada.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gamil.com

12 July 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Justin Podur

The ICC provides no legal counterbalance to the arrogance of an empire’s power. It is the empire’s court.

In June, a group of international lawyers sued the European Union for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The lawyers claim that when the EU switched to a policy of deterring refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2014, in particular trying to prevent Libyan refugees from fleeing their destroyed state, they killed thousands of refugees and sent tens of thousands more back to Libya to be enslaved, tortured, raped, and killed.

As a symbolic gesture, the lawsuit is powerful. But the possibility of getting justice for Libyan refugees from the ICC is practically nonexistent.

In fact, the ICC bears some responsibility for the destruction of the Libyan state that led to the refugee crisis in the first place. When the United States decided to overthrow Gaddafi in 2011, it had the UN Security Council make a “referral” of the Libyan situation to the ICC. There were some peculiarities in the details of the referral as well: the ICC was directed to investigate the situation in Libya, exempting non-state actors, since February 15, 2011. “It would appear,” scholar Mark Kersten writes in a chapter in the 2015 book “Contested Justice” (pg. 462), “that the restriction to events after 15 February 2011 was included in order to shield key Western states… In the years preceding the intervention, many of the same Western states that ultimately intervened in Libya and helped overturn the regime had maintained close economic, political and intelligence connections with the Libyan government.” The African Union, led by the South African president, tried to broker a peace deal between Gaddafi and the rebels: Gaddafi accepted, but the rebels refused. For them, Gaddafi had to go. And the ICC investigation strengthened their hand. In Libya, the ICC was harmful to a negotiated solution.

In general, the ICC prefers war to negotiated peace. As scholar Phil Clark pointed out in his 2018 book “Distant Justice” (pg. 91): “… the ICC has expressed immense skepticism toward peace negotiations involving Ugandan and Congolese suspects whom it has charged — especially when those talks involve the offer of amnesty — but has strongly supported militarized responses to these suspects and their respective rebel movements. In short, the ICC has viewed ongoing armed conflict rather than peace talks as more useful for its own purposes.” The president of the DR Congo’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission told Clark in an interview (pg. 223): “The ICC came up forcefully in our discussions with several rebel leaders… We would start talking to them, make good progress, then the conversation would stop. They didn’t want to incriminate themselves, even when we stressed that the amnesty was in place.” In the DR Congo, the ICC made offers of amnesty less credible. Rebel leader Mathieu Ngudjolo was pardoned in 2006, integrated into the army, promoted to the rank of colonel, and then arrested on an ICC warrant 18 months later: the government’s “duplicity toward an amnesty recipient undermined the broader use of amnesty as an incentive for members of rebel groups to disarm” (pg. 203).

The ICC’s careful selection of when it investigates crimes (like limiting its Libya investigation to crimes after February 15, 2011, or its predecessor the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda limiting its investigation to crimes committed after the assassination of the Rwandan president on April 6, 1994) is mirrored in its careful selection of where it investigates and where it ignores. Take the DR Congo again: the ICC limited its mandate to the province of Ituri. Horrific violence took place in Ituri, but there was less violence overall than in the Kivu provinces (especially North Kivu). Why didn’t the ICC investigate in the Kivus? Because in the Kivus, the worst crimes were committed by armed groups supported by Rwanda and Uganda, favored U.S. allies in the region. When Sri Lanka’s government killed tens of thousands of people at the end of its counterinsurgency war against the Tamil Tigers in 2009, the ICC wrung its hands: Sri Lanka wasn’t a signatory to the Rome Statute that empowered the ICC.

The ICC gets even twistier when it comes time to prevent accountability for Israel. After the Goldstone report on Israel’s massacres in Gaza in 2008/9, Palestinians tried to bring a suit to the ICC against the Israeli generals and politicians who organized them. David Bosco reports in his book Rough Justice(pg. 162) that the Israelis met with Ocampo and “pressed Moreno-Ocampo to determine quickly that Palestine was not a state and that the court could therefore not accept its grant of jurisdiction.” The Americans told Ocampo “that they saw little value in ‘criminalizing the world’s longest running and most intractable regional dispute.’” Moreno saw the light: “The prosecutor’s long-awaited decision on Palestine — released in April 2012… more than three years after Palestine asked the court to investigate, the prosecutor decided that it was not his role to determine Palestine’s legal status.” The massacred Palestinians were colonized, and therefore stateless. Only states can sign the Rome Statute and bring the ICC in. Therefore, the ICC had no jurisdiction over the 2008/9 massacres of the Palestinians.

When the U.S. and UK saw no benefit to having the ICC involved in Afghanistan, the ICC prosecutor (Bosco, pg. 163): “limited himself to occasional private requests and put no pressure on involved states. That approach contrasted sharply with his willingness to sharply chastise states for their failure to enforce existing arrest warrants.”

Given the proclivity of the Western coalition in Afghanistan for bombing weddings and operating death squads (sometimes euphemistically called “kill teams”), their squeamishness in the face of potential legal probes is understandable. The ICC, like its predecessor tribunals on Rwanda and Yugoslavia, fully understands that the U.S. and UK are exempt from its brand of justice. Bosco (pg. 66) quotes British Foreign Minister Robin Cook speaking about the international tribunal after the Kosovo war in 1999: “If I may say so, this is not a court set up to bring to book Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom or Presidents of the United States.” Legal scholar Hans Kochler, writing in 2003 (pg. 178), quoted NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, who responded, when asked if he would accept the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY)’s jurisdiction over NATO officials: “… I think we have to distinguish between the theoretical and the practical. I believe when Justice [Louise] Arbour starts her investigation, she will because we will allow her to. It’s not [Serbian President Slobodan] Milosevic that has allowed Justice Arbour her visa to go to Kosovo to carry out her investigations. If her court, as we want, is to be allowed access, it will be because of NATO… So NATO is the friend of the Tribunal, NATO are the people who have been detaining indicted war criminals for the Tribunal in Bosnia.”

NATO’s spokesman reminded the world that as a “practical” matter, since it was Western militaries and police services that provide the law enforcement services to the ICC, these Western militaries wouldn’t subject themselves to the ICC’s justice. The second ICTY prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, admitted her dependence on NATO forces and the partiality of justice that ensued (quoted in Bosco pg. 66): “if I went forward with an investigation of NATO, I would not only fail in this investigative effort, I would render my office incapable of continuing to investigate and prosecute the crimes committed by the local forces during the wars of the 1990s.”

The ICC’s prosecutors depend on Western forces to make arrests and renditions. The ICC also recycles intelligence material from these Western countries into evidence against ICC suspects. This should be a legal problem: intelligence material is not evidence. There are many people trapped in Kafkaesque situations precisely because courts used intelligence materials — which are best guesses and probabilities used to inform police and military actions usually before events occur — as evidence, which should consist of provable facts intended to hold people accountable after the fact. Canadian academic Hassan Diab — imprisoned in France based on a similar-sounding name in a notebook from an intelligence agency interrogation — is just one example.

There was a time, decades ago, when the ICC was forming, when American and Israeli officials were actually worried about the prospect of a court that had universal jurisdiction. Suddenly, U.S. officials talked about national sovereignty. At that time you could hear John Bolton arguing that it was a bad idea “assert the primacy of international institutions over nation-states.” Bolton was very explicit about his problems with the U.S. being a party to the ICC, as quoted by Mahmood Mamdani in 2008:

“‘Our main concern should be for our country’s top civilian and military leaders, those responsible for our defense and foreign policy.’ Bolton went on to ask ‘whether the United States was guilty of war crimes for its aerial bombing campaigns over Germany and Japan in World War II’ and answered in the affirmative: ‘Indeed, if anything, a straightforward reading of the language probably indicates that the court would find the United States guilty. A fortiori, these provisions seem to imply that the United States would have been guilty of a war crime for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is intolerable and unacceptable.’ He also aired the concerns of America’s principal ally in the Middle East, Israel: ‘Thus, Israel justifiably feared in Rome that its pre-emptive strike in the Six-Day War almost certainly would have provoked a proceeding against top Israeli officials. Moreover, there is no doubt that Israel will be the target of a complaint concerning conditions and practices by the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza.’”

Near the end of his term, Clinton signed the Rome Statute. At the beginning of his term, George W. Bush had Bolton “unsign” it, and negotiate bilateral agreements with the countries of the world that they would never hand Americans over to any international courts. The U.S. went even further, passing in 2002 the Armed Service-Members Protection Act, which includes the line: “The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute and will not be bound by any of its terms. The United States will not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over United States nationals.” Then the U.S. got the Security Council to pass resolutions enshrining U.S. immunity.

Israel also never signed the Rome Statute, which is why its officials are now arguing that the ICC has no jurisdiction in an ICC suit about another massacre it committed, this time on a boat trying to relieve the Gaza siege in 2010.

The powerful are exempt from the ICC’s justice. But the U.S. does believe in a kind of universal jurisdiction: its own. Kochler (2003, pg. 106) cites an internal Department of Justice memorandum from the George H.W. Bush era stating the opinion that the FBI has the power “to apprehend and abduct a fugitive residing in a foreign state when those actions would be contrary to customary international law.” That memo was from 1989, and it was about arresting Manuel Noriega, the president of Panama who fell afoul of the U.S., whose country was bombed and invaded, and who was taken away to jail.

The ICC won’t be doing anything for Libyan refugees or the victims of Israel’s massacres, but it continues to make strong statements about Sudan’s now ousted president Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for crimes committed as part of a counterinsurgency campaign in Darfur. The trial of an African leader from an enemy state, more than a decade after the crimes took place: now this is where the ICC shines.

In 2008, writing about the ICC’s arrest warrant for al-Bashir, Uganda-based scholar Mahmood Mamdani warned that the ICC was becoming a tool of neocolonial domination. The theory implicit in the ICC’s interventions, he wrote, “…turns citizens into wards. The language of humanitarian intervention has cut its ties with the language of citizen rights. To the extent the global humanitarian order claims to stand for rights, these are residual rights of the human and not the full range of rights of the citizen. If the rights of the citizen are pointedly political, the rights of the human pertain to sheer survival… Humanitarianism does not claim to reinforce agency, only to sustain bare life. If anything, its tendency is to promote dependence. Humanitarianism heralds a system of trusteeship.” And what is an empire if not a system of trusteeship?

The ICC provides no legal counterbalance to the arrogance of an empire’s power. It is the empire’s court.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer and a writing fellow at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

12 July 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Michael T Klare

It’s always the oil. While President Trump was hobnobbing with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit in Japan, brushing off a recent U.N. report about the prince’s role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Asia and the Middle East, pleading with foreign leaders to support “Sentinel.” The aim of that administration plan: to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. Both Trump and Pompeo insisted that their efforts were driven by concern over Iranian misbehavior in the region and the need to ensure the safety of maritime commerce. Neither, however, mentioned one inconvenient three-letter word — O-I-L — that lay behind their Iranian maneuvering (as it has impelled every other American incursion in the Middle East since World War II).

Now, it’s true that the United States no longer relies on imported petroleum for a large share of its energy needs. Thanks to the fracking revolution, the country now gets the bulk of its oil — approximately 75% — from domestic sources. (In 2008, that share had been closer to 35%.) Key allies in NATO and rivals like China, however, continue to depend on Middle Eastern oil for a significant proportion of their energy needs. As it happens, the world economy — of which the U.S. is the leading beneficiary (despite President Trump’s self-destructive trade wars) — relies on an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to keep energy prices low. By continuing to serve as the principal overseer of that flow, Washington enjoys striking geopolitical advantages that its foreign policy elites would no more abandon than they would their country’s nuclear supremacy.

This logic was spelled out clearly by President Barack Obama in a September 2013 address to the U.N. General Assembly in which he declared that “the United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests” in the Middle East. He then pointed out that, while the U.S. was steadily reducing its reliance on imported oil, “the world still depends on the region’s energy supply and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy.” Accordingly, he concluded, “We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world.”

To some Americans, that dictum — and its continued embrace by President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo — may seem anachronistic. True, Washington fought wars in the Middle East when the American economy was still deeply vulnerable to any disruption in the flow of imported oil. In 1990, this was the key reason President George H.W. Bush gave for his decision to evict Iraqi troops from Kuwait after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of that land. “Our country now imports nearly half the oil it consumes and could face a major threat to its economic independence,” he told a nationwide TV audience. But talk of oil soon disappeared from his comments about what became Washington’s first (but hardly last) Gulf War after his statement provoked widespread public outrage. (“No Blood for Oil” became a widely used protest sign then.) His son, the second President Bush, never even mentioned that three-letter word when announcing his 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yet, as Obama’s U.N. speech made clear, oil remained, and still remains, at the center of U.S. foreign policy. A quick review of global energy trends helps explain why this has continued to be so.

The World’s Undiminished Reliance on Petroleum

Despite all that’s been said about climate change and oil’s role in causing it — and about the enormous progress being made in bringing solar and wind power online — we remain trapped in a remarkably oil-dependent world. To grasp this reality, all you have to do is read the most recent edition of oil giant BP’s “Statistical Review of World Energy,” published this June. In 2018, according to that report, oil still accounted for by far the largest share of world energy consumption, as it has every year for decades. All told, 33.6% of world energy consumption last year was made up of oil, 27.2% of coal (itself a global disgrace), 23.9% of natural gas, 6.8% of hydro-electricity, 4.4% of nuclear power, and a mere 4% of renewables.

Most energy analysts believe that the global reliance on petroleum as a share of world energy use will decline in the coming decades, as more governments impose restrictions on carbon emissions and as consumers, especially in the developed world, switch from oil-powered to electric vehicles. But such declines are unlikely to prevail in every region of the globe and total oil consumption may not even decline. According to projections from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its “New Policies Scenario” (which assumes significant but not drastic government efforts to curb carbon emissions globally), Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are likely to experience a substantially increased demand for petroleum in the years to come, which, grimly enough, means global oil consumption will continue to rise.

Concluding that the increased demand for oil in Asia, in particular, will outweigh reduced demand elsewhere, the IEA calculated in its 2017 World Energy Outlook that oil will remain the world’s dominant source of energy in 2040, accounting for an estimated 27.5% of total global energy consumption. That will indeed be a smaller share than in 2018, but because global energy consumption as a whole is expected to grow substantially during those decades, net oil production could still rise — from an estimated 100 million barrels a day in 2018 to about 105 million barrels in 2040.

Of course, no one, including the IEA’s experts, can be sure how future extreme manifestations of global warming like the severe heat waves recently tormenting Europe and South Asia could change such projections. It’s possible that growing public outrage could lead to far tougher restrictions on carbon emissions between now and 2040. Unexpected developments in the field of alternative energy production could also play a role in changing those projections. In other words, oil’s continuing dominance could still be curbed in ways that are now unpredictable.

In the meantime, from a geopolitical perspective, a profound shift is taking place in the worldwide demand for petroleum. In 2000, according to the IEA, older industrialized nations — most of them members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — accounted for about two-thirds of global oil consumption; only about a third went to countries in the developing world. By 2040, the IEA’s experts believe that ratio will be reversed, with the OECD consuming about one-third of the world’s oil and non-OECD nations the rest. More dramatic yet is the growing centrality of the Asia-Pacific region to the global flow of petroleum. In 2000, that region accounted for only 28% of world consumption; in 2040, its share is expected to stand at 44%, thanks to the growth of China, India, and other Asian countries, whose newly affluent consumers are already buyingcars, trucks, motorcycles, and other oil-powered products.

Where will Asia get its oil? Among energy experts, there is little doubt on this matter. Lacking significant reserves of their own, the major Asian consumers will turn to the one place with sufficient capacity to satisfy their rising needs: the Persian Gulf. According to BP, in 2018, Japan already obtained 87% of its oil imports from the Middle East, India 64%, and China 44%. Most analysts assume these percentages will only grow in the years to come, as production in other areas declines.

This will, in turn, lend even greater strategic importance to the Persian Gulf region, which now possesses more than 60% of the world’s untapped petroleum reserves, and to the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passagewaythrough which approximately one-third of the world’s seaborne oil passes daily. Bordered by Iran, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, the Strait is perhaps the most significant — and contested — geostrategic location on the planet today.

Controlling the Spigot

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the same year that militant Shiite fundamentalists overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran, U.S. policymakers concluded that America’s access to Gulf oil supplies was at risk and a U.S. military presence was needed to guarantee such access. As President Jimmy Carter would say in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980,

“The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two thirds of the world’s exportable oil… The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow… Let our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

To lend muscle to what would soon be dubbed the “Carter Doctrine,” the president created a new U.S. military organization, the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), and obtained basing facilities for it in the Gulf region. Ronald Reagan, who succeeded Carter as president in 1981, made the RDJTF into a full-scale “geographic combatant command,” dubbed Central Command, or CENTCOM, which continues to be tasked with ensuring American access to the Gulf today (as well as overseeing the country’s never-ending wars in the Greater Middle East). Reagan was the first president to activate the Carter Doctrine in 1987 when he ordered Navy warships to escort Kuwaiti tankers, “reflagged” with the stars and stripes, as they traveled through the Strait of Hormuz. From time to time, such vessels had been coming under fire from Iranian gunboats, part of an ongoing “Tanker War,” itself part of the Iran-Iraq War of those years. The Iranian attacks on those tankers were meant to punish Sunni Arab countries for backing Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein in that conflict. The American response, dubbed Operation Earnest Will, offered an early model of what Secretary of State Pompeo is seeking to establish today with his Sentinel program.

Operation Earnest Will was followed two years later by a massive implementation of the Carter Doctrine, President Bush’s 1990 decision to push Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Although he spoke of the need to protect U.S. access to Persian Gulf oil fields, it was evident that ensuring a safe flow of oil imports wasn’t the only motive for such military involvement. Equally important then (and far more so now): the geopolitical advantage controlling the world’s major oil spigot gave Washington.

When ordering U.S. forces into combat in the Gulf, American presidents have always insisted that they were acting in the interests of the entire West. In advocating for the “reflagging” mission of 1987, for instance, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger argued (as he would later recall in his memoir Fighting for Peace), “The main thing was for us to protect the right of innocent, nonbelligerent and extremely important commerce to move freely in international open waters — and, by our offering protection, to avoid conceding the mission to the Soviets.” Though rarely so openly acknowledged, the same principle has undergirded Washington’s strategy in the region ever since: the United States alone must be the ultimate guarantor of unimpeded oil commerce in the Persian Gulf.

Look closely and you can find this principle lurking in every fundamental statement of U.S. policy related to that region and among the Washington elite more generally. My own personal favorite, when it comes to pithiness, is a sentence in a report on the geopolitics of energy issued in 2000 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank well-populated with former government officials (several of whom contributed to the report): “As the world’s only superpower, [the United States] must accept its special responsibilities for preserving access to [the] worldwide energy supply.” You can’t get much more explicit than that.

Of course, along with this “special responsibility” comes a geopolitical advantage: by providing this service, the United States cements its status as the world’s sole superpower and places every other oil-importing nation — and the world at large — in a condition of dependence on its continued performance of this vital function.

Originally, the key dependents in this strategic equation were Europe and Japan, which, in return for assured access to Middle Eastern oil, were expected to subordinate themselves to Washington. Remember, for example, how they helped pay for Bush the elder’s Iraq War (dubbed Operation Desert Storm). Today, however, many of those countries, deeply concerned with the effects of climate change, are seeking to lessen oil’s role in their national fuel mixes. As a result, in 2019, the countries potentially most at the mercy of Washington when it comes to access to Gulf oil are economically fast-expanding China and India, whose oil needs are only likely to grow. That, in turn, will further enhance the geopolitical advantage Washington enjoyed as long as it remains the principal guardian of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. How it may seek to exploit this advantage remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that all parties involved, including the Chinese, are well aware of this asymmetric equation, which could give the phrase “trade war” a far deeper and more ominous meaning.

The Iranian Challenge and the Specter of War

From Washington’s perspective, the principal challenger to America’s privileged status in the Gulf is Iran. By reason of geography, that country possesses a potentially commanding position along the northern Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, as the Reagan administration learned in 1987-1988 when it threatened American oil dominance there. About this reality President Reagan couldn’t have been clearer. “Mark this point well: the use of the sea lanes of the Persian Gulf will not be dictated by the Iranians,” he declared in 1987 — and Washington’s approach to the situation has never changed.

In more recent times, in response to U.S. and Israeli threats to bomb their nuclear facilities or, as the Trump administration has done, impose economic sanctions on their country, the Iranians have threatened on numerous occasions to block the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic, squeeze global energy supplies, and precipitate an international crisis. In 2011, for example, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned that, should the West impose sanctions on Iranian oil, “not even one drop of oil can flow through the Strait of Hormuz.” In response, U.S. officials have vowed ever since to let no such thing happen, just as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta did in response to Rahimi at that time. “We have made very clear,” he said, “that the United States will not tolerate blocking of the Strait of Hormuz.” That, he added, was a “red line for us.”

It remains so today. Hence, the present ongoing crisis in the Gulf, with fierce U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil sales and threatening Iranian gestures toward the regional oil flow in response. “We will make the enemy understand that either everyone can use the Strait of Hormuz or no one,” said Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, in July 2018. And attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz on June 13th could conceivably have been an expression of just that policy, if — as claimed by the U.S. — they were indeed carried out by members of the Revolutionary Guards. Any future attacks are only likely to spur U.S. military action against Iran in accordance with the Carter Doctrine. As Pentagon spokesperson Bill Urban put it in response to Jafari’s statement, “We stand ready to ensure the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce wherever international law allows.”

As things stand today, any Iranian move in the Strait of Hormuz that can be portrayed as a threat to the “free flow of commerce” (that is, the oil trade) represents the most likely trigger for direct U.S. military action. Yes, Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its support for radical Shiite movements throughout the Middle East will be cited as evidence of its leadership’s malevolence, but its true threat will be to American dominance of the oil lanes, a danger Washington will treat as the offense of all offenses to be overcome at any cost.

If the United States goes to war with Iran, you are unlikely to hear the word “oil” uttered by top Trump administration officials, but make no mistake: that three-letter word lies at the root of the present crisis, not to speak of the world’s long-term fate.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association.

11 July 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Peter Koenig

Iran announced the second step in reducing her commitment under the 2015 so-called Nuclear Deal, officially known as The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by exceeding the limit set by agreement of 3.67% uranium enrichment and 300 kg of enriched uranium accumulation. When asked by the media about his reaction, Trump says, “they know what they are doing” and adds, “they better be careful”. Pompeo warns Iran of “more isolation, more sanctions.”

Iran waited for 60 weeks, after the US unilaterally withdrew from the deal in May 2018, hoping that the Europeans, the so-called E3 (Germany, France and the UK) would honor their commitment to JCPOA, signed in July 2015 in Vienna, Austria. But to this day, the Europeans cannot bring themselves to detach from the US tyranny of sanctions. So, Iran went ahead with this crucial decision to also step out from the agreement.

Today, RT reports that Iran is forced to step further away from the nuclear deal. Iran is “pushing back against US sanctions and European inaction on trade, Iran is stepping up its uranium enrichment.”

In fact, Iran has already exceeded the 3.67% of enrichment and the 300 kg cap set under the JCPOA. And according to Iran’s deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, who spoke to a press conference a few days ago, the enrichment levels would stand at 5 percent for now. Iran would give it another 60 weeks to wait for the European reaction.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, tweeted that “All such steps are reversible only through E3 compliance. Having failed to implement their obligations under JCPOA – including after the US withdrawal – EU/E3 should at a minimum politically support Iran’s remedial measures under Para 36 [of the JCPOA], including at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).”Mr.Zarif added, “E3 have no pretexts to avoid a firm political stance to preserve JCPOA and counter U.S unilateralism.”

IAEA’s Director General, Yukiya Amano has informed the Board of Governors that the Agency verified on 1 July that Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile exceeded the deal’s limit, and that Iran was in breach of the agreement.

But that is not true. There is no breach. Foreign Minister Zarif, rightly pointed out that Iran’s amassing more enriched uranium than permitted under the deal, was not a violation. Iran was exercising its right to respond to the US unilateral withdrawal from the pact a year ago, to the E3 not honoring their part of the deal, and to Washington’s imposed totally illegal and unjustified punishing sanctions on Tehran.

Zarif confirmed Iran’s action and why, by tweeting, “We triggered and exhausted para 36 after US withdrawal. Para 36 of the accord illustrates why. We gave E3+2 [also including Russia and China] a few weeks, while reserving our right. We finally took action after 60 weeks. As soon as E3 abide by their obligations, we’ll reverse.”

Mr. Zarif is absolutely right. Here is what the famous para 36 of the JCPOA says:

Disputed Resolution Mechanism

36. If Iran believed that any or all of the E3/EU+3 were not meeting their commitments under this JCPOA, Iran could refer the issue to the Joint Commission for resolution; similarly, if any of the E3/EU+3 believed that Iran was not meeting its commitments under this JCPOA, any of the E3/EU+3 could do the same. The Joint Commission would have 15 days to resolve the issue, unless the time period was extended by consensus. After Joint Commission consideration, any participant could refer the issue to Ministers of Foreign Affairs, if it believed the compliance issue had not been resolved. Ministers would have 15 days to resolve the issue, unless the time period was extended by consensus. After Joint Commission consideration – in parallel with (or in lieu of) review at the Ministerial level – either the complaining participant or the participant whose performance is in question could request that the issue be considered by an Advisory Board, which would consist of three members (one each appointed by the participants in the dispute and a third independent member). The Advisory Board should provide a non-binding opinion on the compliance issue within 15 days. If, after this 30-day process the issue is not resolved, the Joint Commission would consider the opinion of the Advisory Board for no more than 5 days in order to resolve the issue. If the issue still has not been resolved to the satisfaction of the complaining participant, and if the complaining participant deems the issue to constitute significant nonperformance, then that participant could treat the unresolved issue as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part and/or notify the UN Security Council that it believes the issue constitutes significant non-performance.

The provocations by the west seem to be inexhaustible. On Thursday, 4 July, the UK, ordered by Washington, has seized an Iranian oil tanker which they suspected of carrying oil for Syria. Al Jazeera reports: “British Royal Marines, police and customs agents on Thursday [4 July] stopped and seized the Grace 1 vessel in Gibraltar on suspicion it carried Iranian crude oil to Syria in breach of European union sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad’s government.”

Foreign Minister Zarif tweeted that UK’s unlawful seizure of a tanker with Iranian oil is piracy, pure and simple. Iran denied that the tanker was bound for Syria’s Baniyas refinery – which does not even have the capacity for such a super tanker to dock, says Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. He did not elaborate on the final destination of the super tanker.

It is clear, the UK, in connivance with its transatlantic empire, does the bidding for Trump’s warrior team, Bolton and Pompeo. – How much farther will they go, the provocateurs? Do they want to incite war with Iran, a retaliatory action, like Iran seizing a UK tanker in return – so as to ‘justify’ a western, possibly Israeli, aggression on Iran, with a counter attack by Iran, triggering a direct intervention by Washington – of course, in defense of Israel – and a major conflict, possibly nuclear, might erupt?

Iran most likely will not fall into this trap. But the question must be asked, how far will the US-western threats, sanctions and physical aggressions go?

This morning, 10 July, RT reports, “The latest out of Washingtonis that the US is looking to put together a “coalition” that would “ensure freedom of navigation both in the Straits of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb,” as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said on Tuesday. These are the waterways connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, and the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, respectively.”

What this “freedom of navigation” means, is outsourcing naval blockade and wester piracy of Iranian oil tankers. And that in the 21st Century. How deep can you, WEST, fall to go for this kind of high sea crime practiced centuries ago? Your moral and ethical deterioration is accelerating rapidly into a bottomless black hole from where there is no return.

There is no question, that Iran does not seek to become a nuclear power, that was never the intention in the first place as was attested already almost ten years ago by the American 16 foremost intelligence agencies, but Iran wants to use its nuclear power generation capacity more efficiently – and that is their full right, especially if the Nuclear Deal is broken. The saber rattling, fear mongering and sanctions are meant to intimidate and punish Iran for not bending to the tyranny of Washington – mainly changing regime and hand over Iran’s riches to the US-western corporatocracy.

What it boils down to is whether the E3 – Germany, France and the UK – have sufficient backbone to go ahead on their own, honoring the JCPOA accord, and whether they and the European Union as a whole, would be willing and sovereignly capable of defending their companies from US sanctions, if they start trading with Iran. This is the question that many European corporations are already asking, especially European oil corporations.

At one point, there seems to have been political will by Europe to circumvent the US sanctions regime by introducing a special payment method, called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) which would allow companies in Europe to do business with Iran outside the US-and dollar-dominated SWIFT payment system. However, this works only, if the EU stands up for their companies defending them from US sanctions. Otherwise, as Pompeo already hinted, “We will simply sanction all companies that use INSTEX.”

In the long run there are three realities to keep in mind.

First, US sanctions will not go away, unless the rest of the world stands up to the US and sanctions them back, in other words stops trading with the US and uses different payment modes than SWIFT and the US-dollar, for example, local currencies, or yuan and ruble through the Chinese International Payment System (CIPS), or the Russian MIR system (MIR – meaning, world, or peace), introduced by the Bank of Russia in 2015 and which is also opening up to worldwide use.

Second, it is only a matter of time until the Europeans, either as a union or as individual countries will realize that trading with the East – Russia, China and all of the huge mega-Continent of Eurasia which also includes the Middle East, is the most natural trading that can be. It has existed for thousands of years, before the ascent of the AngloZionist empire, some 300 years ago. There is no division of seas. It is a contiguous landmass. And everybody from other continents is welcome to join, peacefully, without the intention of domination and ransacking natural resources.

Third, this second reality will be enhanced and accelerated by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road – which makes already significant inroads with peoples connecting infrastructure – roads, railways, maritime routes – plus industry, education, research and cultural connections and bridges along the BRI-routes. BRI will very likely become the future for connecting humanity with equitable socioeconomic development for decades to come.

Therefore, Iran may seriously consider dropping for now her ambition to trade with the west – the west is a sinking ship. And instead look to the East for the future. It may mean temporary losses – yes, but so what – the future is not composed of a pyramid of fake dollar-based instant profit – but of foresight and vision. Iran is on the right track by aspiring and most likely shorty entering the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a full-fledged member. But, yes, it means dropping the west for now – until the west sees the light on her own.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst.

12 July 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Alex Lantier

US and UK military sources claim that Iranian boats intercepted a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday, before a British warship, the HMS Montrose, chased them off.

None of the reports about this incident can be taken at face value. Iran has flatly denied that it took place, and US officials making allegations have not posted videos they claim to have of it. It comes amid a US-led war drive targeting Iran, after Washington unilaterally suspended the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord, launched a major military buildup in the region, and demanded that US allies support it. Yet before anything firm is known about this incident, a press campaign has started in Europe, demanding that the European powers back Washington against Iran.

Wednesday night, European time, US Central Command spokesman Captain Bill Urban accused Iranian Fast-Attack Craft/Fast Inland-Attack Craft (FAC/FIAC) of harassing the tanker. He stated that the Pentagon was “aware of the reports of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy’s FAC/FIAC harassment and attempts to interfere with the passage of the UK-flagged merchant vessel British Heritage today near the Strait of Hormuz.”

The HMS Montrose “pointed its guns at the Iranian boats,” who then allegedly fled. “It was harassment and attempt to interfere with the passage,” US military officials contacted by Britain’s Independent newspaper said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A UK Ministry of Defense statement alleged: “Contrary to international law, three Iranian vessels attempted to impede the passage of a commercial vessel, British Heritage, through the Strait of Hormuz.” It said the HMS Montrose “was forced to position herself between the Iranian vessels and British Heritage and issue verbal warnings to the Iranian vessels, which then turned away.”

Iranian authorities flatly denied the incident took place. Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval forces issued a statement to the Fars News Agency, claiming: “During the last 24 hours, there were no encounters with foreign vessels…”

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif dismissed the allegations as an attempt by US and European officials to escalate tensions with Iran, telling the ISNA News Agency: “They make such claims to create tension, yet these claims are worthless and they have made many such claims. They say such things to cover up their own weaknesses.”

It is for now impossible to determine what happened Wednesday in the Straits of Hormuz; by all accounts, no shots were fired. However, a push for another military escalation is underway. Despite the unpopularity of Middle East wars and of Trump and his administration among workers in Europe and beyond, and explosive foreign policy conflicts between Washington and the European Union (EU), powerful voices in the European ruling class are demanding Europe back a US war drive against Iran.

Asked whether London would escalate its naval presence in the Persian Gulf, a spokesman at the UK prime minister’s office indicated it would: “We have a longstanding maritime presence in the Gulf. We are continuously monitoring the security situation there and are committed to maintaining freedom of navigation in accordance with international law.”

With stunning hypocrisy, the fact that UK troops acting on US orders seized a tanker July 4 off Gibraltar, allegedly taking Iranian oil to Syria, an act of piracy after which Tehran warned of “repercussions,” is being cited as proof that the US-UK allegations against Iran are credible.

On Tuesday, the US magazine Foreign Policy reported that Britain and France had agreed to a 10-15 percent increase in their troop presence in Syria. This bucked Berlin’s temporary refusal Monday to send more troops to fight alongside US troops working with Syrian Kurdish militias against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which is backed by Russia and Iran.

It added that London and Paris “also expressed interest in contributing to Sentinel, a maritime partnership designed to enhance security for commercial ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz and other choke points.” Both London and Paris declined to comment on this decision, citing the secrecy of special forces operations. Their war drive thus is developing behind the back of the British and French people.

Calls are rapidly emerging particularly in Germany for an about-face on its previous opposition to an escalation in Syria and across the Middle East. After Wednesday’s incident, a wave of articles appeared in the German press calling for Berlin to join the US-led war drive against Iran.

In a comment titled, “On the Iran question, Europe must back Trump,” Die Weltargued that Berlin should support Trump’s unilateral ripping-up of the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord. “The atomic treaty with Iran was originally correct,” it writes. “But its ostensible goal, to pacify the region, has failed. The regime is more aggressive than ever. So the US president’s critique of the treaty is justified.”

A similar outlook emerged in the Süddeutsche Zeitung ’s comment, headlined, “Europe and Asia must protect trade ships better.” It stated, “Freedom of navigation is a major priority, especially for an export-dependent nation like Germany.” It similarly called for the formation of an international flotilla of warships to patrol off Iranian waters, “even if this plays into US President Trump’s hand.”

The newspaper wrote, “An international flotilla would also internationalize the conflict, which could well be a goal of the US strategy. But that should not be a reason to rule it out. Warships from Europe or Asia would be less provocative for Iran than US or Saudi patrol boats. They would also be a further signal to Tehran, that while Europe also wants to preserve the nuclear treaty, it will not quietly accept the aggressive regional policy of the Islamic Republic.”

The strategies outlined by representatives of the leading European imperialist powers do indeed play directly into the Pentagon’s plans. On Tuesday, the day before the Strait of Hormuz incident, General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, called on US military allies worldwide to join a US-led battle fleet that would surround Iran.

Dunford said, “We’re engaging now with a number of countries to see if we can put together a coalition that would ensure freedom of navigation both in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab. And so I think probably over the next couple of weeks we’ll identify which nations have the political will to support that initiative, and then we’ll work directly with the militaries to identify the specific capabilities that’ll support that.”

He said the Pentagon would provide “command and control” ships to direct operations. America’s allies would provide escort vessels to follow US command ships’ orders.

Dunford left unsaid that this plan would leave the US Navy with a death grip over not only Iran’s economy, but the oil supply of its main imperialist “allies” in Europe and East Asia, and of Asia’s two most populous countries, China and India.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) notes, “In 2018, [the Strait of Hormuz’s] daily oil flow averaged 21 million barrels per day, or the equivalent of about 21 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption. … EIA estimates that 76 percent of the crude oil and condensate that moved through the Strait of Hormuz went to Asian markets in 2018. China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore were the largest destinations for crude oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz to Asia, accounting for 65 percent of all Hormuz crude oil and condensate flows in 2018.”

Approximately 4 million barrels pass daily through the Bab al-Mandab straits towards Europe.

Such figures lay bare the bitter inter-imperialist struggle for profits and strategic-military influence that have underlain three decades of war in the Middle East since the Soviet bureaucracy dissolved the USSR in 1991. As Trump threatens major Asian and European powers with hundreds of billions of dollars in trade-war tariffs, these tensions are reaching unprecedented intensity. For now, it appears that, fearing a clash with a militarily superior US imperialism, the European powers are deciding to bide their time and abet Washington’s war drive.

This policy, which shows that the EU powers are fundamentally no less predatory than Washington, also exposes the bankruptcy of illusions that workers can rely on rival capitalist powers to restrain Washington from a new, even greater bloodbath. Desperate to seize their share of the plunder, and to continue shoveling hundreds of billions of euros into military budgets despite mounting strikes and protests, the EU powers do not oppose US wars. They respond to US pressure by intensifying their drive to remilitarize and repress protest against austerity and militarism at home.

Originally published in WSWS.org

12 July 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bill Van Auken

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Monday confirmed that Iran has breached the limit imposed by the 2015 nuclear agreement on the level at which it is allowed to enrich uranium.

Iran had announced its breach of the limit on Sunday, a deliberate step aimed at pressuring the remaining signatories to the nuclear accord—particularly Germany, France and the UK—to take substantive steps to counter crippling US economic sanctions that are tantamount to a state of war.

Washington has taken a series of actions that have placed the threat of a war in the Persian Gulf on a hair trigger, raising the specter of a catastrophic military confrontation in a region that is the source of a third of the world’s natural gas and a fifth of its oil.

In May 2018, the Trump administration unilaterally abrogated the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that was reached between Tehran and six major world powers—the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. It not only reimposed nuclear sanctions that had been suspended with the agreement but implemented a series of even more punishing measures.

The increase in the enrichment level—which had been capped at 3.67 percent and has risen to 4.5 percent, according to Iranian authorities—follows last month’s announcement by Iran that it was deliberately exceeding the 300 kg cap imposed by the JCPOA on its enriched uranium stockpiles. The country is supposed to export any excess amounts, but even that option has been undermined by the US “maximum pressure” sanctions regime.

Tehran indicated that it will impose another 60-day deadline for the European powers to take concrete steps to ensure that Iran receives the sanctions relief that it was promised in return for its submission to drastic limits on its nuclear program.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), told the official news agency ISNA Monday that if such relief is not forthcoming, Iran could take a third step of installing more centrifuges and enriching uranium to 20 percent.

While the increase from 3.67 to 4.5 percent is largely symbolic, the rise to 20 percent would place the Iranian nuclear program in a position to move more rapidly toward the 90 percent enrichment level needed to produce weapons-grade uranium.

Tehran has steadfastly denied, both before and after entering into the 2015 agreement, that it has ever sought nuclear weapons or utilized its nuclear program for anything other than peaceful purposes.

Iran’s latest actions provoked a flurry of new threats from top US officials. President Donald Trump told reporters on the White House lawn Monday that “Iran better be careful,” while suggesting that the minimal increase in its uranium enrichment was aimed at securing a nuclear weapon.

Similarly, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that “Iran’s latest expansion of its nuclear program will lead to further isolation and sanctions.”

And Vice President Mike Pence, speaking before a sympathetic audience of right-wing evangelicals at the Christians United For Israel conference in Washington Monday, said: “Iran should not confuse American restraint with a lack of American resolve … the United States of America and our military are prepared to protect our interests and protect our personnel and our citizens in the region.”

A prepared text released before the speech described the US administration as “willing to talk” with Tehran, but Pence dropped the line in his delivered remarks.

Last month, Trump called off air strikes that could have triggered a spiraling escalation into a full-scale war with only 10 minutes to spare before bombs and missiles were set to fly. The US bombardment had been ordered in response to Iran’s downing of a $200 million Golden Hawk spy drone that Tehran charged had violated Iranian airspace.

The threat of a military conflagration remains high, with Iran ringed by reinforced US garrisons containing tens of thousands of US troops, a naval armada that includes an amphibious assault group carrying a Marine expeditionary unit and a nuclear-capable B-52-led bombing strike force.

The response of the European powers to Iran’s latest action has been to call upon Tehran to reverse its breaches of the 2015 accord, while resisting demands from Washington that they respond with the immediate reimposition of sanctions.

French President Emmanuel Macron is sending his chief diplomatic adviser back to Tehran for talks on the nuclear accord. The Élysée Palace said Monday that Emmanuel Bonne would fly to Iran on Tuesday, his second trip in a matter of weeks.

Berlin, meanwhile, placed the onus on Tehran for the increasing crisis surrounding the nuclear deal. “The ball is clearly in Iran’s court,” a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry told a news conference on Monday. “We want to preserve the deal. For this, parties must stick to it.”

The reality, however, is that Tehran has no reason to “stick to it” under conditions in which the US sanctions regime has robbed Iran of the promise of economic normalization that was made in return for its sweeping nuclear concessions.

While the European powers announced last month the activation of Instex (Instrument to Support Trade Exchanges), a trade mechanism meant to evade US sanctions and bypass the dollar-based financial system, there is no indication that the measure will lead to any significant increase in oil exports, which as a result of US sanctions have fallen to 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), compared to more than 2.5 million bpd in April.

For its part, Britain remains embroiled in bitter conflict with Tehran over its act of state piracy and military aggression in its July 4 seizure of an Iranian supertanker loaded with oil in what Iran insists were international waters near the strait of Gibraltar. London made the preposterous claim that it acted at the behest of the Gibraltar police in furtherance of European Union economic sanctions seeking to curtail oil shipments to Syria.

It is obvious, however, that the action was undertaken on behalf of Washington with the aim of further ratcheting up the military confrontation with Iran.

Iranian officials have insisted that the tanker was not bound for Syria, whose terminal could not even accommodate a ship of its size. It has also charged that neither the UK nor any other European power has the legal right to enforce EU sanctions against non-EU members.

The head of Iran’s judiciary, Hojatoleslam Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi demanded that the UK “immediately release the oil tanker, otherwise, they’ll have to face the consequences.”

The threat that Iran may retaliate by seizing a British-flagged vessel has reportedly led the London-based BP energy conglomerate to halt the voyage of a UK-flagged oil tanker through the Persian Gulf on Monday. According to Bloomberg News, the tanker, the British Heritage, had been bound for Iraq’s Basra oil terminal, but turned back on Saturday, stopping off the coast of Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, both Beijing and Moscow responded to Iran’s latest breach of the terms of the JCPOA by indicting Washington for its unilateral abrogation of the treaty.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Geng Shuang told a press briefing in Beijing, “The maximum pressure exerted by the US on Iran is the root cause of the Iranian nuclear crisis.” He added that “it has been proven that unilateral bullying has become a worsening ‘tumor’ and is creating more problems and greater crises on a global scale.”

China is defying the US sanctions regime and is expected to import 200,000 barrels per day from Iran.

Similarly, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared Russia’s continuing support for the JCPOA and described Iran’s action on uranium enrichment as one of the “consequences” of the Trump administration’s tearing up of the agreement.

The Russian Foreign Ministry described as an “ironic quirk” Washington’s demand for a July 10 extraordinary meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors to discuss Iran’s violation of an agreement that the US itself has completely repudiated. Moscow pointed out that Tehran’s concessions under the JCPOA had nothing to do with its continuing compliance with nuclear non-proliferation agreements or other protocols it has signed with the international nuclear agency.

In another sign of the tensions provoked by Washington in its campaign against Iran, members of the Iranian men’s volleyball team were held and interrogated for four hours after landing at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Saturday, as other national teams were waved through. Tehran filed a formal diplomatic protest over the incident Monday with the Swiss embassy in Iran, which represents US interests in the country. The Iranian foreign ministry said that the US should no longer host international sporting events if it cannot treat teams fairly.

9 July 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Mehari Taddele Maru

Increasing tensions between China and the US will be detrimental to African prosperity and peace.

Last month, the twelfth US-Africa Business Summit, a high-level event attended by eleven African heads of state and government and some 1 000 business leaders, was held in Maputo, Mozambique. During the three-day event, US officials unveiled a $60bn investment agency that will seek to invest in low and middle-income countries, with a focus on Africa.

The announcement came six months after US president Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, presented the Trump administration’s ‘New Africa Strategy’. He asserts: ‘Great power competitors, namely China and Russia, are rapidly expanding their financial and political influence across Africa. They are deliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage over the United States.’

Although both China and Russia are mentioned, the US has demonstrated over the past few months that it is mainly concerned about the former. In fact, it already appears that Africa is set to become yet another battleground for the escalating trade war between Beijing and Washington. With increasing foreign military presence and growing diplomatic tensions, the continent is already witnessing the first signs of an emerging new cold war. And just as the previous one devastated Africa, fuelling wars and forcing African governments to make economic choices not in their best interests, this one will also be detrimental to African development and peace.
Economic war
China’s approach to Africa has always been trade oriented. The continent became one of the top destinations for Chinese investment after Beijing introduced its ‘Go Out’ policy in 1999, which encouraged private and state-owned business to seek economic opportunities abroad. As a result, Chinese trade with Africa has increased forty-fold over the past two decades; in 2017, it stood at $140bn. Between 2003 and 2017, Chinese foreign directed investment (FDI) flows have jumped close to sixty-fold to $4bn a year; FDI stocks stand at $43bn – a significant part of which has gone to infrastructure and energy projects.

China has significantly expanded African railways, investing in various projects in Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Angola and Nigeria; it is currently building a massive hydropower plant in Angola, and has built Africa’s longest railway connecting Ethiopia and Djibouti. It also built the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, and that of the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, in Abuja.

By contrast, the USA has long viewed Africa as a battlefield where it can confront its enemies: the Soviets during the Cold War, ‘terrorists’ after 9/11, and now the Chinese. Washington has never really made a concerted effort to develop its economic relations with the continent. As a result, trade between the USA and Africa has decreased from $120bn in 2012 to just over $50bn today. US FDI flows have also slumped from $9.4bn in 2009 to around $330m in 2017. The new $60bn investment fund announced last month is a welcome initiative, but it will not be able to challenge Chinese economic presence on the continent. Just last year, Chinese president Xi Jinping pledged $60bn dedicated solely to investment in Africa.

The US has repeatedly accused China of using ‘debt to hold states in Africa captive to [its] wishes and demands’, and has warned African states to avoid Chinese ‘debt diplomacy’ that is supposedly incompatible with the independence of African nations and civil society, and poses ‘a significant threat to US national security interests’. Yet Africa is only the fourth-biggest recipient of Chinese FDI after Europe (mainly Germany, UK and Netherlands), the Americas (mainly the USA and Canada) and Asia. The USA has also borrowed heavily from China; its current debt to its rival stands at $1.12 trillion. By contrast, Africa owes China around $83bn.

Africans are fully aware of and concerned about high indebtedness, trade imbalances, the relatively poor quality of Chinese goods and services and Beijing’s application of lower standards of labour and environmental practices. But many do not share the American perspective that their economic relationship with China is detrimental to them, and rather see it as an opportunity that provides much-needed unconditional funding and that takes local priorities into account. As Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh argued, ‘The reality is that no one but the Chinese offers a long-term partnership.’

The pressure the USA is currently exerting on African countries to move away from partnerships with China could hurt African economies. It could force African countries into making choices that are not in their best economic interests, and could cause them to miss out on important development projects or funding. Meanwhile, the USA-China trade war is already affecting the continent. According to the African Development Bank, it could cause as much as a 2.5 per cent decrease in GDP for resource-intensive African economies, and a 1.9 per cent dip for oil-exporting countries.
Militarisation
The escalating tensions between the USA and China could also threaten the security of the continent since both countries are militarily involved in Africa. Over the past fifteen years, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has been engaged in a number of security missions across the continent, making modest auxiliary troop contributions to peacekeeping operations in Sudan, South Sudan, Liberia, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has also contributed millions of dollars of peacekeeping equipment to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), and provided significant funding to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) for its mediation efforts in South Sudan.

In 2017, the first Chinese overseas military base was opened in Djibouti. The facility, which hosts some 400 staff and troops, and has the capacity to accommodate 10 000, is officially supposed to provide support for the ongoing anti-piracy operations of the Chinese navy, but it also plays a role in securing maritime routes, part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. There has been speculation that this is the first of a number of planned bases meant to secure Chinese interests in Africa.

China’s military presence in Africa, however, pales in comparison to that of the USA. Over the past few years, the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has run some thirty-six different military operations in thirteen African countries, including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Tunisia. It has more than 7 000 troops deployed on the continent. It maintains a massive military base in Djibouti – the biggest and only permanent US military base in Africa, but also runs at least thirty-four other military outposts scattered across the west, east and north of the continent where US troops are deployed and military operations (including drone attacks) are launched from. The US also directly supports the armies of Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger and others, as well as the G5 Sahel force tasked with counterterrorism.

While a direct confrontation between US and Chinese forces in Africa is unlikely, their growing presence is becoming increasingly destabilising. Already, Washington’s strategy to contain Chinese influence over Africa is playing out at different conflict and social upheaval hotspots across the continent. The fallout of the US-Chinese competition is particularly apparent in the strategic Red Sea region, through which passes one of the most important maritime routes. Countries in the region are not only feeling growing US and Chinese pressure to take one side or the other, but are also increasingly exposed to outside interference by various regional powers.
Growing regional tensions
Djibouti recently found itself at the centre of US-Chinese diplomatic confrontation. Being host to military bases of both superpowers, the small country has had to play a difficult balancing act. In 2018, Djibouti seized control of its Doraleh Container Terminal from the Emirati company DP World, claiming the company’s operation of the facility was threatening Djibouti’s sovereignty. The authorities had feared that the UAE’s investment in the nearby Port of Berbera in the autonomous Somali region of Somaliland could challenge its position as the main maritime hub for Ethiopia’s large economy. The decision to terminate the contract with DP World, however, triggered a sharp reaction from Washington, a close Emirati ally. The Trump administration fears that Djibouti could hand control of the terminal over to China.

Bolton warned: ‘Should this occur, the balance of power in the Horn of Africa – astride major arteries of maritime trade between Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia – would shift in favor of China. And, our U.S. military personnel at Camp Lemonnier could face even further challenges in their efforts to protect the American people.’

Djibouti was forced to publicly declare that it would not allow China to take control of the terminal, but that did not assuage US fears. Ever since, the USA has sought to secure a possible alternative location for its African military base: neighbouring Eritrea. It encouraged regional actors, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to pull Eritrea out of its decades-long isolation. In a matter of months, long-time enemies Ethiopia and Eritrea concluded a peace agreement to end their twenty-year-old cold conflict, while the UN lifted sanctions on Asmara. As a result, Eritrea was able to emerge as a strategic rival to Djibouti, offering its coast for foreign military and economic facilities. The UAE has already set up a military base near the Eritrean port of Assab.

Sudan, to the north, has also been a battleground of the ongoing superpower turf war. China had long been a supporter of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir. Under his rule, Beijing came to dominate its oil industry, buying some eighty per cent of Sudanese oil, and thus providing Khartoum with much-needed cash to wage war against various rebel groups. It was also one of the few countries, along with Russia, that broke the UN arms embargo and sold weapons to Bashir’s regime. After South Sudan gained independence in 2011, China continued to be a close partner of the Sudanese regime, remaining its main trading partner. Sudan, in fact, became the biggest beneficiary of the $60bn Africa investment package that China had pledged in 2018, having some $10bn in Chinese debt written off. The Chinese government also made plans to develop facilities in Port Sudan, where it already operates an oil terminal. Qatar and Turkey also signed deals with Bashir for various facilities in the port city. When mass protests erupted on the streets of Sudan in December 2018, Beijing stood by Bashir, who it saw as the main guarantor of stability in the country, which lies on strategic routes, inlcudes China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Meanwhile, the USA had repeatedly demonstrated that it did not want Bashir running for another term. His removal was approved in Washington, which has since appeared to back the interests of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Sudan. The two Gulf states hope to install another strongman sympathetic to their regional politics, who would maintain Sudan’s participation in the war in Yemen and curb Turkish and Qatari influence. At this point, it seems China is at risk of being sidelined by the significant sway the UAE and Saudi Arabia have with Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC).
Apart from Djibouti and Sudan, various other countries in the region have also felt the consequences of the US bid to contain China. This political confrontation has added to the already-rising tensions between other players in the region, including Egypt, the Gulf countries, Iran and Turkey. The Trump administration has particularly favoured Emirati, Saudi and Egyptian interests, which have emboldened these three countries in their efforts to shape regional dynamics to their advantage.

Thus, in the long-term, given the pre-existing faultlines and conflicts in the region, the US-China cold war could have a detrimental effect, not only on its economy but also on its security. At this stage, to preserve its interests and its peace, Africa has only one option: to reject pressures for it to swear allegiance to either of the two powers. African countries should uphold their sovereignty in policy and decision making, and pursue the course that is in the best interests of their nations.
If the USA wants to compete with China on the continent, it should do so in good faith. It can gain a competitive advantage by offering African countries better, more credible and principled alternatives to those put forward by China. But that can only happen if the USA develops a strategy that focuses on Africa itself, not on containing and undermining the business of a third party.

Mehari Taddele Maru is an independent consultant on matters of peace and security in Africa.

8 July 2019

Source: www.amec.org.za

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

In this article, we examine America’s war strategies, including its ability to launch an all out theater war against the Islamic Republic on Iran.

A follow-up article will focus on the History of US War Plans against Iran as well as the complexities underlying the Structure of Military Alliances.

**

Under present conditions, an Iraq style all out Blitzkrieg involving the simultaneous deployment of ground, air and naval forces is an impossibility.

For several reasons. US hegemony in the Middle East has been weakened largely as a result of the evolving structure of military alliances.

The US does not have the ability to carry out such a project.

There are two main factors which determine America’s military agenda in relation to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

1. Iran’s Military

There is the issue of Iran’s military capabilities (ground forces, navy, air force, missile defense), namely its ability to effectively resist and respond to an all out conventional war involving the deployment of US and Allied forces. Within the realm of conventional warfare, Iran has sizeable military capabilities. Iran is to acquire Russia’s S400 state of the art air defense system.

Iran is ranked as “a major military power” in the Middle East, with an estimated 534,000 active personnel in the army, navy, air force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It has advanced ballistic missile capabilities as well as national defense industry. In the case of a US air attack, Iran would target US military facilities in the Persian Gulf.

2. Evolving Structure of Military Alliances

The second consideration has to do with the evolving structure of military alliances (2003-2019) which is largely to the detriment of the United States.

Several of America’s staunchest allies are sleeping with the enemy.

Countries which have borders with Iran including Turkey and Pakistan have military cooperation agreements with Iran. While this in itself excludes the possibility of a ground war, it also affects the planning of US and allied naval and air operations.

Until recently both Turkey (NATO heavyweight) and Pakistan were among America’s faithful allies, hosting US military bases.

From a broader military standpoint, Turkey is actively cooperating with both Iran and Russia. Moreover, Ankara will be acquiring in 2020 Russia’s state of the art S-400 air defense system while de facto opting out from the integrated US-NATO-Israel air defense system.

Needless to say the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is in crisis. Turkey’s exit from NATO is almost de facto. America can no longer rely on its staunchest allies. Moreover, US and Turkish supported militia are fighting one another in Syria.

Iraq has also indicated that it will not cooperate with the US in the case of a ground war against Iran.

Under present conditions, none of Iran’s neigbouring states including Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia would allow US-Allied ground forces to transit through their territory.

In recent developments, Azerbaijan which in the wake of the Cold War became a US ally as well as a member of NATO’s partnership for peace has changed sides. The earlier US-Azeri military cooperation agreements are virtually defunct including the post-Soviet GUAM military alliance (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova).

Bilateral military and intelligence agreements between Iran and Azerbaijan were signed in December 2018. In turn, Iran collaborates extensively with Turkmenistan. With regard to Afghanistan, the internal situation with the Taliban controlling a large part of Afghan territory, would not favor a large scale deployment of US and allied ground forces on the Iran-Afghan border.

The Gulf of Oman

With the 2017 split up of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Oman appears to be aligned with Iran. Under these circumstances, the transit of US war ships to the headquarters of the US Fifth fleet in Bahrain not to mention the conduct of naval operations in the Persian Gulf are potentially in jeopardy.

Visibly, the policy of strategic encirclement against Iran formulated in the wake of the Iraq war (2003) is no longer functional. Iran has friendly relations with neighbouring countries, which previously were within the US sphere of influence.

Under these conditions, a major conventional theater war by the US involving the deployment of ground forces would be suicide.

This does not mean, however, that war will not take place. In some regards, with the advances in military technologies, an Iraq-style war is obsolete.

We are nonetheless at a dangerous crossroads. Other diabolical forms of military intervention directed against Iran are currently on the drawing board of the Pentagon. These include:

• various forms of “limited warfare”, ie. targeted missile attacks,
• US and Allied support of terrorist paramilitary groups
• so-called “bloody nose operations” (including the use of tactical nuclear weapons),
• acts of political destabilization and color revolutions
• false flag attacks and military threats,
• sabotage, confiscation of financial assets, extensive economic sanctions,
• electromagnetic and climatic warfare, environmental modification techniques (ENMOD)
• cyberwarfare
• chemical and biological warfare.

US Central Command Forward Headquarters Located in Enemy Territory

Another consideration has to do with the crisis within the US Command structure.

USCENTCOM is the theater-level Combatant Command for all operations in the broader Middle East region extending from Afghanistan to North Africa. It is the most important Combat Command of the Unified Command structure. It has led and coordinated several major Middle East war theaters including Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003). It is also involved in Syria.

In the case of a war with Iran, operations in the Middle East would be coordinated by US Central Command with headquarters in Tampa, Florida in permanent liaison with its forward command headquarters in Qatar.

In late June 2019, after Iran shot down a U.S. drone President Trump “called off the swiftly planned military strikes on Iran” while intimating in his tweet that “any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force.”

US Central Command (CENTCOM), confirmed the deployment of the US Air Force F-22 stealth fighters to the al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, intended to “defend American forces and interests” in the region against Iran. (See Michael Welch, Persian Peril, Global Research, June 30, 2019). Sounds scary?

“The base is technically Qatari property playing host to the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command.” With 11,000 US military personnel, it is described as “one of the U.S. military’s most enduring and most strategically positioned operations on the planet” (Washington Times). Al-Udeid also hosts the US Air Force’s 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, considered to be “America’s most vital overseas air command”.

What both the media and military analysts fail to acknowledge is that US CENTCOM’s forward Middle East headquarters at the al-Udeid military base close to Doha de facto “lies in enemy territory”

Since the May 2017 split of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Qatar has become a staunch ally of both Iran and Turkey (which is also an ally of Iran). While they have no “official” military cooperation agreement with Iran, they share in joint ownership with Iran the largest Worldwide maritime gas fields.

The split of the GCC has led to a shift in military alliances: In May 2017 Saudi Arabia blocked Qatar’s only land border. In turn Saudi Arabia as well as the UAE have blocked air transportation as well as commercial maritime shipments to Doha.

What is unfolding since May 2017 is a shift in Qatar’s trade routes with the establishment of bilateral agreements with Iran, Turkey as well as Pakistan. In this regard, Russia, Iran, and Qatar provide over half of the world’s known gas reserves.

The Al-Udeid base near Doha is America’s largest military base in the Middle East. In turn, Turkey has now established its own military facility in Qatar. Turkey is no longer an ally of the US. Their proxy forces in Syria are fighting US supported militia. Turkey is now aligned with Russia and Iran. Ankara has now confirmed that it will be acquiring Russia’s S-400 missile air defense system which requires military cooperation with Moscow.

Qatar is swarming with Iranian businessmen, security personnel and experts in the oil and gas industry (with possible links to Iran intelligence?), not to mention the presence of Russian and Chinese personnel.

Question. How on earth can you launch a war on Iran from the territory of a close ally of Iran?

From a strategic point of view it does not make sense. And this is but the tip of the iceberg.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric underlying the official US-Qatar military relationship, The Atlantic Council, a think tank with close ties to both the Pentagon and NATO, confirms that Qatar is now a firm ally of both Iran and Turkey:

Put simply, for Qatar to maintain its independence, Doha will have essentially no choice but to maintain its strong partnership with Turkey, which has been an important ally from the perspective of military support and food security, as well as Iran. The odds are good that Iranian-Qatari ties will continue to strengthen even if Tehran and Doha agree to disagree on certain issues … On June 15 [2019], President Hassan Rouhani emphasizedthat improving relations with Qatar is a high priority for Iranian policymakers. … Rouhani told the Qatari emir that “stability and security of regional countries are intertwined” and Qatar’s head of state, in turn, stressed that Doha seeks a stronger partnership with the Islamic Republic. (Atlantic Council, June 2019, emphasis added)

What this latest statement by the Atlantic Council suggests is while Qatar hosts USCENTCOM’s forward headquarters, Iran and Qatar are (unofficially) collaborating in the area of “security” (i e. intelligence and military cooperation).

Sloppy military planning, sloppy US foreign policy? sloppy intelligence?

Trump’s statement confirms that they are planning to launch the war against Iran from their forward US Centcom headquarters at the Al Udeid military base, located in enemy territory. Is it rhetoric or sheer stupidity?

The Split of the GCC

The split of the GCC has resulted in the creation of a so-called Iran-Turkey-Qatar axis which has contributed to weakening US hegemony in the Middle East. While Turkey has entered into a military cooperation with Russia, Pakistan is allied with China. And Pakistan has become a major partner of Qatar.

Following the rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is in disarray with Qatar siding with Iran and Turkey against Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Qatar is of utmost strategic significance because it shares with Iran the world’s largest maritime gas fields in the Persian Gulf. (see map above). Moreover, since the GCC split-up Kuwait is no longer aligned Saudi Arabia. It nonetheless maintains a close relationship with Washington. Kuwait hosts seven active US military facilities, the most important of which is Camp Doha.

Needless to say, the May 2017 split of the GCC has undermined Trump’s resolve to create an “Arab NATO” (overseen by Saudi Arabia) directed against Iran. This project is virtually defunct, following Egypt’s withdrawal in April 2019.

The Gulf of Oman

In the case of a war with Iran, naval operations would in part be conducted by the US Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain. The Fifth Fleet is under the command of US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT). (NAVCENT’s area of responsibility consists of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea).

With the split up of the GCC, Oman is now firmly aligned with Iran. Under these circumstances, the transit of US war ships to the headquarters of the US Fifth fleet in Bahrain not to mention the conduct of naval operations in the Persian Gulf would potentially be in jeopardy.

The strait of Hormuz which constitutes the entry point to the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman is controlled by Iran and the Sultanate of Oman. The width of the strait at one point is of the order of 39km. All major vessels must transit through Iran and/or Oman territorial waters, under so-called customary transit passage provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

More generally, the structure of alliances is in jeopardy. The US cannot reasonably wage a full-fledged conventional theatre war on Iran without the support of its longstanding allies which are now “sleeping with the enemy”.

Trump’s Fractured “Arab NATO”. History of the Split up of the GCC.

Amidst the collapse of America’s sphere of influence in the Middle East, Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) consisted at the outset of his presidency in an improvised attempt to rebuild the structure of military alliances. What the Trump administration had in mind was the formation of a Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), or “Arab NATO”. This US-sponsored blueprint was slated to include Egypt and Jordan together with the six member states of the GCC.

The draft of the MESA Alliance had been prepared in Washington prior to Trump’s historic May 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia, meeting up with King Salman, leaders of the GCC as well as “more than 50 high-ranking officials from the Arab and Islamic worlds in an unprecedented US-Islamic summit.”

The Riyadh Declaration, issued at the conclusion of the summit on May 21, 2017, announced the intention to establish MESA in Riyadh.” (Arab News, February 19, 2019). The stated mandate of the “Arab NATO” was to “to combat Iranian hegemony” in the Middle East.

Two days later on May 23, 2017 following this historic meeting, Saudi Arabia ordered the blockade of Qatar, called for an embargo and suspension of diplomatic relations with Doha, on the grounds that The Emir of Qatar was allegedly collaborating with Tehran.

What was the hidden agenda? No doubt it had already been decided upon in Riyadh on April 21 with the tacit approval of US officials.

The plan was to exclude Qatar from the proposed MESA Alliance and the GCC, while maintaining the GCC intact.

What happened was that the Saudi embargo imposed on Qatar (with the unofficial approval of Washington) was conducive to the fracture of the GCC with Oman and Kuwait siding with Qatar. In other words, the GCC was split down the middle. Saudi Arabia was weakened and the “Arab NATO” blueprint was defunct from the very outset.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

May 21, 2017: US-Islamic Summit in Riyadh

May 23, 2017: The blockade and embargo of Qatar

June 5, 2019: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt sever diplomatic relations, cut off land, air and sea transportation with Qatar accusing it of supporting Iran.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Flash forward to mid-April 2019: Trump is back in Riyadh: This time the Saudi Monarchy was entrusted by Washington to formally launching the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) (first formulated in 2017) despite the fact that three of the invited GCC member states, namely Kuwait, Oman and Qatar are committed to the normalization of relations with Iran. In turn, the Egyptian government of President Sisi decided to boycott the Riyadh summit and withdraw from the “Arab NATO” proposal. Cairo also clarified its position vis a vis Iran. Egypt firmly objected to Trump’s plan because it “would increase tensions with Iran”.

Trump’s objective was to create an “Arab Block”. What he got in return was a truncated MESA “Arab Block” made up of a fractured GCC with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Jordan, without Egypt. Kuwait and Oman officially took a neutral stance, whereas Qatar sided with the enemy, thereby further jeopardizing America’s sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf.

An utter geopolitical failure. What kind of alliance is that.

And US Central Command’s Forward headquarters is still located in Qatar despite the fact that two years earlier on May 23, 2017, the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, was accused of collaborating with Iran.

It is unclear who gave the order to impose the embargo on Qatar. Saudi Arabia would not have taken that decision without consulting Washington. Visibly, Washington’s intent was to create an Arab NATO Alliance (An Arab Block) directed against Iran to do the dirty work for us.

Trump and the Emir of Qatar, UN General Assembly, October 2017, White House photo

The rest is history, the Pentagon decided to maintain US Central Command’s forward headquarters in Qatar, which happens to be Iran’s closest ally and partner.

A foreign policy blunder? Establishing your “official” headquarters in enemy territory, while “unofficially” redeploying part of the war planes, military personnel and command functions to other locations (e.g. in Saudi Arabia).

No press reports, no questions in the US Congress. Nobody seemed to have noticed that Trump’s war on Iran, if it were to be carried out, would be conducted from the territory of Iran’s closest ally.

An impossibility?

***

Part II of this essay focuses on the history and contradictions of US war preparations directed against Iran starting in 1995 as well as the evolution of military alliances.

8 July 2019

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Richard Falk

6 Jul 2019 – Is There an ‘After’ after the Kushner Show in Bahrain?

This interview was published by Tasmin New Agency on 2 Jul 2019 conducted by Mohammad Hassani. The text below has been somewhat modified.

Q1: Bahrain hosted the so-called “Peace to Prosperity” conference to discuss what the US has described as the economic part of President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century”, a plan which aims to consign the Palestinian cause to oblivion. The Palestinian leadership boycotted the meeting on June 25 and 26 in Manama, leading critics to question the credibility of the event. In your opinion, what goals are the US and Israel pursuing by holding the conference? Would they reach their goals?

The ‘workshop’ in Bahrain should never have been evaluated without considering the overall approach taken by the Trump presidency to Israel and Palestine. The relationship to Israel pre-Trump had been one of leaning toward Israel while purporting to be ‘an honest broker,’ a thinly disguised partisanship. Since Trump became president the U.S. has dispensed with thin disguise, and become the avowed partner of Israel and adversary of Palestinian goals. It manifested this shift in several concrete unprovoked policy shifts that were deliberately punitive toward the Palestinians. Such behavior was a strange prelude to a proclaimed ‘diplomatic’ initiative hyperbolically called ‘the deal of the century.’ Washington’s behavior clearly signaled an end to diplomacy based on agreement and consent of the parties, substituting coercion on behalf of the favored party and seeking submission by its adversary.

From such a perspective it should be understood that the purpose of ‘Peace to Prosperity’ is neither peace nor prosperity, but securing an Israeli ‘victory’ and a Palestinian surrender with respect to the political agenda of achieving basic national rights, especially the right of self-determination. Thus, the Manama meeting is a success to the extent it made the proposed bargain of economic normalization in exchange for political defeat seem of material benefit to the governments of the region and had some attraction for the Palestinian Authority and segments of the Palestinian people. The reactions to the event seem very subdued suggesting that the Kushner/Trump initiative has had very little, if any, political impact so far. The secondary objective is one of public relations, being able to blame the anticipated failure to achieve ‘the deal of the century’ on the Palestinians. I fear the Western mainstream media will lend some support to this outrageous claim, which confuses the rejection of American ultimatum, preceded by a series of pro-Israel policy moves (Jerusalem, settlements, UNRWA funding, closing the PLO information office Washington, endorsing Golan and West Bank annexations) hostile to the Palestinians as signaling this Trump shift from pro-Israeli partisanship of the Obama era to pro-Israeli coercive diplomacy currently practices by Washington.

Against this background, it is disingenuous for Israeli apologists such as Dershowitz and others to urge the Palestinians to listen with an open mind to what the Trump ‘peace initiative’ is proposing. To lend legitimacy to such coercive diplomacy would be a sign of weakness and an expression of illegitimacy by representatives of the Palestinian people. It would have been seen as an expression of Palestinian hopelessness. Instead, if their refusal to participate in such a macabre charade is linked to the resistance struggle in Gaza embodied in the Great March of Return, it is a moment for those of us in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle to lend greater support to nonviolent initiatives, including the BDS campaign.

Q2: Some analysts say that the Trump administration’s focus on an economic plan, led by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, is a strategic mistake that could stymie the peace negotiations even before they begin. What is your assessment of the US approach to the conflict and the future of the plan? Is it practical at all?

The Trump/Kushner ‘plan’ is not looking toward genuine diplomatic negotiations. It is trying to impose a one-sided Israeli victory, and treat the conflict as resolved. This overlooks the robustness of Palestinian resistance, dramatized by the Great March of Return in Gaza, and by the growing global solidarity movement, as featuring the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) Campaign. It should be appreciated that such a campaign managed over time delegitimized South Africa’s apartheid regime to such an extent that it collapsed. Such a soft power Palestinian victory can still be expected if this combination of resistance, solidarity, and patience persist in a manner that imposes sufficient costs on Israel for its reliance on an apartheid structure to achieve its ‘security’ at the expense of Palestinian basic rights. The hope of most activists is that Israeli leaders and citizens will recalculate their interests so as to accept a political compromise based on the equality of rights of the two peoples coexisting with mutual respect in historic Palestine. Remember that all of the anti-colonial victories of the 20th century were achieved by the weaker side militarily and geopolitically.

Q3: Israeli occupation forces have killed 84 Palestinians during the first half of 2019, including eight women and 19 children, according to local media reports. On Friday, Israeli forces once again opened fire on Palestinians taking part in the peaceful “Great March of Return” protests, along the separation fence between the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied territories. According to media reports, more than 270 people, including 52 children, have been killed since the demonstrations began in March 2018. Most of the dead and the thousands wounded were unarmed civilians against whom Israel was using excessive force. Why has the international community, particularly the Western mainstream media, made a muted response to the Tel Aviv regime’s crimes against Palestinians so far?

Israel reliance on excessive force and collective punishment to deal with the Great March of Return, and its grievances and lawful demands, should be treated as violations of international humanitarian law of a severity that amounts to crimes against humanity. It is a shocking reflection of media bias that it accords massive attention to human rights violations in Turkey of a relatively lesser character, while ignoring and even rationalizing much more serious violations by Israel. Although Western liberals have counseled Palestinians to rely on nonviolence in their opposition to Israel, such reliance as in the Great March has been consistently met with brutal force by Israel and by virtual silence in the world media, by the governments of the world, and even by the United Nations. It is a case of geopolitics eclipsing moral and legal accountability exposing the lack of political will to protect the innocent and vulnerable from abuse by the vindictive and militarily powerful.

The growing movement of global solidarity as reinforced by Palestinian acts of resistance to apartheid structures of oppression is the sole basis for a peaceful future for both peoples, Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Distinguished Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies, UCSB, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.

8 July 2019

Source: www.transcend.org