Saudi-U.S. nuclear hypocrisy exposed

By Mudasir Sheikh

KASHMIR - According to author and radio host, Harvey Wasserman, U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent decision to infuse $3.7 billion dollars into Vogtle nuclear power plants is a criminal act. 

The U.S. nuclear industry is facing stiff competition from cheap natural gas and renewable energy, so financial assistance is critical for the survival of the industry. Trump administration is not only infusing money into the troubled U.S. nuclear energy sector but strongly advocating the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to the regime in Riyadh. It has adopted a well-coordinated strategy to guarantee the survival of the U.S. nuclear industry.

The unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from JCPOA, malign interests of the U.S. military-industrial complex and a comprehensive plan to contain Iranian influence in the Middle East are some important links that can explain the Saudi-U.S. nuclear hypocrisy. 

At the superficial level, Saudi regime considers itself a strong advocate of weapons of mass destruction free zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East but by praising the unilateral withdrawal of U.S. from JCPOA and an open admission to acquire nuclear weapons in case Iran undertakes a nuclear program is a testament to Saudi hypocrisy. 

It seems logical to put deterrence against a rival but Saudi intentions to acquire nuclear weapons date back to the inception of Pakistan’s nuclear program.

The justification for deterrence against Iran is a fabricated story as we analyze the Iran nuclear deal which reduced the enriched uranium stockpile of Iran by 98% and the number of gas centrifuges reduced to two-thirds for 13 years. 

Iran even agreed to halt building new heavy water facilities and enrich uranium up to 3.67%. Further it agreed on regular inspection of its nuclear program by international Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In this context, the statement of former UK ambassador to UN and IAEA, Peter Jenkins that “as long as Iran is complying with the JCPOA, the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia are deprived of any basis for claiming that Iran presents a nuclear threat which must be eliminated by use of force” sufficiently explains the Saudi nuclear hypocrisy.

Saudi criticism of Iran’s civilian nuclear program highlights its double standard as according to Abdul Hameed Nayyer, a Pakistani nuclear physicist, Saudi Arabia can demand nuclear weapons from Pakistan due to its generous investment in the country. 

Additionally, Brigadier Feroz Hassan Khan in his book “Eating Grass: The Making Of the Pakistani Bomb” also explains the Saudi ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons.

Considering the nuclear option from Pakistan and potentially a huge space to exploit solar energy for clean power renders the establishment of nuclear infrastructure by Saudi regime useless. But the report from investigative journalist Kim Kleppin has revealed how Saudi lobby is pushing Trump administration to transfer the sensitive nuclear technology to the regime. According to the report a U.S. law firm linked to Trump vigorously lobbied the U.S. administration for nuclear technology transfer and received half a million dollars within one month of its establishment.

The vested business interests in Saudi nuclear program were revealed on February 19, 2019, in a report by the ‘house oversight and reform committee’ that disclosed Trump administration’s plan to bypass U.S. Congress for nuclear technology transfer to Saudi Arabia.
The report of the committee highlights intentions of IP3 international, a consortium of nuclear power producers. IP3 was founded by retired army general Jack Keane and its proposal was presented to White House officials by Thomas Barrack. Barrack is a close friend of Trump who raised $107 million for Trump’s inaugural committee. Michael Flynn is another central figure to the report who has worked as a paid advisor to a subsidiary of IP3 while serving in Trump's presidential campaign. Flynn promoted IP3’s intention to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia to white house officials.

McFarlane, the former national security advisor to the U.S. and currently an advisor to IP3, compared the transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia to the Marshall plan for the Middle East. According to the report, the founders of the IP3, McFarlane, and CEOs of Toshiba energy, GE power, Exelon Corporation Bechtel Corp and Siemens have promoted the plan to sell nuclear technology to Riyadh.

The retired generals who founded IP3 have always portrayed Iran as a nuclear threat but now their intentions to transfer such technology to Saudi regime is meant to serve their monetary interests. The house oversight committee quoting a senior Trumps official said “the proposal of IP3 is not a business plan but rather a scheme for these generals to make some money.”

In an interview with Sputnik, Tom Sauer of the University of Antwerp Belgium said the Saudi proposal to build about 40 nuclear reactors is a great business opportunity for troubled the U.S. nuclear industry and the Wall Street perceives peaceful Middle East as a nightmare for its military-industrial complex.

According to some experts, the nuclear technology transfer to Saudi Arabia will initiate an arms race in the Middle East that is what U.S. military-industrial complex wants. 

According to Tom Collin, policy director at Ploughshares Fund, Saudis don’t require nuclear power and if the U.S. transfers such technology to the kingdom it will force Iran to restart its nuclear program. 

The arms race will serve both the U.S. military industrial complex and the Saudi regime because Saudi regime wants to derail Iranian economy by draining its resources through arms race as they are frustrated by Iran’s influence and progress in the region. 

It is similar to U.S. strategy to contain Russian influence by initiating arms race as the U.S. economy has an unlimited supply of petrodollars but Russian economy has limited options to finance its military and civilian projects.

IAEA has denied any military vector of Iran’s nuclear program but Saudi-U.S. hypocrisy to portray Iran as is a nuclear threat is meant to serve their vested interests. They consider nuclear arms race as a tool to serve private business interest and simultaneously a counterweight against Iran’s axis of resistance that consists of Iran, Assad government, Hezbollah and the alliance of Russia and China.

Mudasir Sheikh is a student and researcher based in Indian controlled Kashmir.  

Russia commends Iran’s patience in JCPOA’s implementation after US exit

Russia praises Iran’s “patience” in fulfilling its commitments under a 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement following Washington’s much-criticized exit from the landmark deal, saying Tehran’s “responsible approach” merits respect.

The comments were made by Moscow’s delegation to the Third Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the UN headquarters in New York, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Moscow further said Iran chose to exercise “patience” and “restraint” and adopt a “responsible approach to fulfilling its obligations, despite constant provocations and blackmail,” adding that Tehran’s stance deserves to be “commended and respected,” the statement added.

It also emphasized that Iran’s “successful” implementation of the deal’s nuclear provisions is a “crucial contribution” to strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Elsewhere in the statement, Russia welcomed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s “professional and impartial” approach in carrying out inspections of Iranian nuclear sites as part of the implementation of the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Action (JCPOA).

Since the JCPOA’s conclusion almost four years ago, the IAEA regularly verified that Iran has continued to strictly comply with the restrictions on its nuclear activities under the nuclear deal, including by proactively providing the UN nuclear agency’s inspectors with access to all nuclear facilities, it added.

In a quarterly report in February, the IAEA once again reaffirmed Iran's compliance with its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA, even as the United States re-imposed sanctions against Tehran.

National Persian Gulf Day with a memory of father of Persian Gulf studies

Ahmad Eqtedari who was known as the Father of Persian Gulf Studies died at the age of 94. His works are mainly in the field of the Persian Gulf and the culture of southern Iran and that is why he was given this title.

10th of Ordibehesht in the Iranian calendar (April 10) is known as the Persian Gulf Day in Iran. It is the anniversary of the expulsion of the Portuguese from the Strait of Hurmuz and the Persian Gulf. April 30 was named as the National Persian Gulf Day in 2005. 

Persian Gulf has been of very great importance through history both regionally and globally. The unique geographic location and the connection of this waterway with the Indian Ocean and the free waters are among the features that have given the Persian Gulf a very significant position in terms of trade and military. In addition, the giant energy reserves and rich mineral resources make it a prominent spot on planet earth.

Master Ahmad Eqtedari, whose name is inseparably linked with the Persian Gulf, is an outstanding figure in the studies related to the region as he conducted broad research on the Persian Gulf and adjacent areas. Thus, it would be appropriate to make a memory of this renowned researcher, who died on April 16 at the age of 94.

Ahmad Eqtedari was born in 1925 in the small town of Gerash, Fars province in southern Iran. He did his elementary and high school in Lar and then he started academic studies in Shiraz. After graduating from law faculty of Tehran University, he taught at high schools in Tehran. In addition to 30 years teaching, he served at a law office for 40 years.

During the period when he chaired the Culture of Southern Ports, he set up 236 schools in Larestan region of Fars province and the southern ports and islands. Administration of the affairs of southern ports and islands was bequeathed to him from his ancestor namely Imam Qoli Khan during the Safavid period.

In 1949, he was elected by the people as the representative of Larestan at the parliament, but he was jailed and replaced by another man.

He had walked all along the coastlines of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman for his research work, and started mapping the entire region from a young age. Famous Iranian novelist, Jalal Al-Ahmad, described Eqtedari and two of his colleagues "Iraj Afshar" and "Manouchehr Sotoodeh" as "Three Musketeers", as they introduced many historical documents and ancient monuments of Iran in collaboration with each other.

The book "Persian Gulf Pearl" has been written on his studies about Iran and the documentary "To Iran I Owe My Eternity" has been made on his life. The Persian Gulf Pearl has been awarded the UNESCO Special Prize in Iran, and has been republished several times. This book covers the Persian Gulf customs, trade and navigation, the name of the Persian Gulf in various texts and maps, the British and Russian interventions in the Persian Gulf, the effects of the Constitutional Revolution on the Persian Gulf, and so on.

A large part of researches in the field of linguistics and the history of Larestan and people of Gerash is the result of the relentless efforts of Ahmad Eqtedrari. The Divan "Sheiday-e Gerashi", the book "Baghestan" and the interpretation "Flower and Leaf" are among the sources that had been corrected for the first time by Eqtedari. The book "Developments of Constitutional Revolution in Larestan and Ports" is one of Eqtedari's most important works that mainly deals with the southern cities and towns of Fars province during the Qajar era.

Ahmed Eqtedari started his studies on the Persian Gulf and its history in 1962. In 1964, Roman Girshman, Russian-born French archaeologist, was reminded by Eqtedari that he had used the Gulf instead of Persian Gulf during a speech at a seminar. This led to Girshman's to apologize the audience and all Iranians for his mistake.

Dr. Ahmad Eqtedari's research trips in the years 1966-1977 on the southern coasts of Iran helped him author and compile books such as "Diyar-e Shahryaran" (Land of Kings) and the preparation of 4,000 photographs of historical monuments which greatly contributes to recognition of the history and culture of the southern regions of Iran and the Persian Gulf coasts.

Eqtedari's works are not limited to a particular field. He has several works in the fields of geography, folklore, linguistics, old Iranian literature, and so on. Ahmad Eqtedari published nearly 40 books and more than 100 scientific articles. He ably corrected and published some neglected poems of the past, translated the works of non-Iranian researchers and published the stories of Masnavi of Mowlana, Manteq at-Tair of Attar and One Thousand and One Nights. Moreover, he conducted scientific research on the dialect, language and culture of different regions of the country.

Eqtedari received an honorary PhD from Tehran University for his studies on the recognition of Iran and introducing it to others.

In the book, "Persian Gulf from Old to Present" he has used two definitions of the "Iranian Adventurous Sea" and "Cradle of Civilization" for the Persian Gulf. He believes that the Persian Gulf is adventurous because it has been the battlefield of military forces through its history. He further maintains that the Persian Gulf has been the birthplace of Elamites and that is why it is referred to as the cradle of civilization.

According to Dr. Eqtedari, a detailed study of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman reveals that even the names of the islands now belonging to Arabia, Kuwait, Oman UAE, Qatar and Bahrain are often rooted in Farsi, such as Yas, Red, Camilo Deraz, Barbar Khoshab, Dara, Tarut and Farsi. He believes that the cause of the disputes between Arabs and Iranians over some islands are British interventions.

Ahmad Eqtedari considered the separation of Bahrain from Iran as a "totally spurious and superficial referendum", and till the end of his life called it an "unpardonable sin of the Shah and the Iranian parliament."

Among the works of Eqtedari in the field of the Persian Gulf are "the Persian Gulf from Old to Present", "Bandar Abbas Port and the Persian Gulf", "Catching Pearls in the Persian Gulf", "History of Muscat, Oman and Bahrain and Their Relations with Iran", "The Story of Iran Shipping". In 2012, Dr. Afshar's Special Endowment Center Prize was awarded to him as Dr. Mahmoud Afshar's Historical and Literary Award for Farsi Language and National Unity of Iran.

The author and researcher, Mohammad Reza Shafiee Kadkani said: "The Persian Gulf is the heart of Iran, and Dr. Ahmad Eqtedari is the heart of the Persian Gulf."

In the book Persian Gulf, published in 1966, Ahmad Eqtedari emphasized the name of the "The Sea of Pars", stating: "In an inscription from Achaemenid Darius in the Suez Strait, the name of this Gulf has been referred to as "the sea that comes from Persia." In the first chapter, he describes the beauty of the Persian Gulf and writes: "At night, the Persian Gulf has a special beauty, the turbulence of the sea, and the collision of radiating waves jump with the moonlit brightness of the birds' color. They will rise and thousands will bounce playfully, and they will emit white light from their body. The expanse of this magnificent sea brightens up like a starry sky that has been surrounded by fire. This perspective urged Ben-Shahriar the great, the Ramhormozi captain from Khuzestan, to bring such a pleasant description of the Persian Gulf in his book."

Regarding the history of the name of Persian Gulf in the Achaemenid and Sassanid inscriptions, Ahmad Eqtedari writes: "This sea, that because of low depth and the existence of ups and downs at the seabed, is better than other seas and joins the Indian Ocean; and engulfs the entire Southwest, South, and Southeast of our country, is called the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea. The name "The Sea of Pars" was given to the Persian Gulf since the Achaemenid era. In an inscription belonging to Darius at the Suez Strait (of Egypt, which had belonged to the kingdom 2400 years ago), this Gulf has been named "The Sea that comes from Persia". During the Sassanid era, the Gulf was also called the Sea of Pars. "

Ahmad Eqtedari also refers to inscriptions on the name of the Persian Gulf, and continues: "There is no document or stone available to recognize the existence of Arabs in the Persian Gulf before the early Sassanid era. During the Ashkanid era, the Iranian white Aryan element was able to expel the native blacks from the coasts of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, pushing them as far as the Island of Serendipity. Perhaps, at the same time, the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula, who were under the blacks' pressure, were receiving the help of Iranians to push the blacks from the Arabian Peninsula to Africa."

Ahmad Eqtedari passed away in Tehran on April 16. The funeral and burial of this outstanding scholar, based on his will, was held in his hometown of Gerash. Ahmad Eqtedari spent his life on broad studies and conducted broad research on the history of Persian Gulf. 

The EU is obliged to participate in US wars

Thierry Meyssan

The European Union has already turned into a vassal and hanger-on of the US in most of the wars and genocides that Washington wages around the globe. Thierry Meyssan -Political consultant, Founder of the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network) has addressed this topic in a piece titled, "The European Union Is Obliged to Participate in US Wars".

Since the Treaty of Maastricht, all the members of the European Union (including the neutral countries) have placed their defences under the suzerainty of NATO, which is directed exclusively by the United States. This is why, when the Pentagon delegates the economic headquarters of the countries it wishes to destroy to the US Department of the Treasury (USDT), all members of the European Union and NATO are obliged to apply US sanctions.

After having lost his majority in the House of Representatives during the mid-term elections, President Trump has found new allies in exchange for his discharge by prosecutor Mueller of the accusation of high treason. He now supports the objectives of his generals. US imperialism is back.

In less than six months, the foundations of international relations have been «rebooted». The war that Hillary Clinton promised to start has been declared, but not only by military force.

This transformation of the rules of the game, without equivalent since the end of the Second World War, immediately forced all actors to rethink their strategy, and therefore all the plans for alliance upon which they were based. Those who turn up late will pay for it.

Wars will always be mortal and cruel, but for Donald Trump, who was a businessman before becoming the US President, it is best that they cost as little as possible. It is thus preferable to kill with economic means rather than by the use of arms. Given that the US no longer shares trade agreements with most of the countries it attacks, the real «economic» cost of these wars, is in effect supported by third-party countries rather than by the Pentagon.

Thus the US has just decided to lay economic siege to Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. In order to mask real killing wars, these actions are presented by the media apparatus as «sanctions», without giving us any idea of what law Washington is basing them on.

They are deployed with explicit reference to the «Monroe Doctrine» of 1823, according to which no foreign power shall intervene on the American continent, while in exchange, the US will refrain from intervening in Western Europe. Only China, which felt targeted, pointed out that the Americas are not the private property of the US. However, everyone is aware that this doctrine has evolved rapidly to justify Yankee imperialism in the South of the continent.

Today, US sanctions concern at least twenty countries - Belarus, Myanmar, Burundi, North Korea, Cuba, the Russian Federation, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen and Zimbabwe. That gives us a very precise map of the conflicts led by the Pentagon, assisted by the US Department of the Treasury.

These targets are never in Western Europe (as specified by the «Monroe Doctrine»), but exclusively in West Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean Basin and Africa. All these regions were listed as early as 1991 by President George Bush senior in his National Security Strategy as being flagged to join the «New World Order». Considering that they had been unable or unwilling to do so, they were sanctioned in 2001 by Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his advisor for the transformation of the armed forces, Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, and doomed to chaos.

The expression «economic war» was waved about for decades to indicate heightened competition. This is no longer true today – we are now talking about a real killing war.

The Syrians, who have just won an eight-year military war against NATO’s terrorist mercenaries, are destabilized by this economic war, which imposes strict rationing of electricity, gas and oil, and provokes the closing of factories which had only just been reopened. At best, they can be relieved that the Empire did not inflict these two forms of war at the same time.

The Venezuelans are now discovering with horror what economic war actually means, and are realizing that with the tinhorn Juan Guiado as much as with President Nicolas Maduro, they are going to have to fight to maintain their state.

The strategies of the targeted states are themselves plunged into confusion. For example, since they are no longer able to import medicines for its hospitals, Venezuela has signed an agreement with Syria, which was, before the war of 2011, a very important producer and exporter in this sector. Factories which had been destroyed by Turkey and terrorists were rebuilt in Aleppo. But although they had just been reopened, they now had to close again, since they had no available supply of electricity.

The multiplication of theatres of war–and therefore of the pretended «sanctions» - began to cause serious problems for the US allies, including the EU. The EU did not appreciate the threats of seizure aimed at companies which had invested in Cuba, and, remembering the actions engaged to forbid them access to the Iranian market, reacted by threatening in their turn to seize the Arbitration Committee of the World Trade Organization (WTO). And yet, as we shall see, this revolt by the EU is doomed to failure, since it was anticipated 25 years ago by Washington.

Anticipating the current reaction of the EU, worried about not being able to trade with whomever it saw fit, the administration of Bush senior elaborated the «Wolfowitz Doctrine», which was concerned with making sure that the Western and Central Europeans would never have an independent defence system, but only a system which was autonomous. This is why Washington castrated the European Union at its birth by imposing a clause to be inserted in the Treaty of Maastricht – the suzerainty of NATO.

We should remember the total support offered by the EU to all of the Pentagon’s illegal wars, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. In all these cases, without exception, the EU marched along in step with its suzerain, NATO.

This vassal condition is in fact the only reason that the Western EU was dissolved, and it is also why President Trump gave up the idea of dissolving the Atlantic Alliance’s permanent military organisation – without NATO, the European Union would gain its independence, since it is only to NATO - and not the US - that these treaties refer. Of course, the treaties stipulate that all this must be implemented in conformity with the UN Charter.  But, for example, on March 2019, the United States questioned the resolutions it had approved concerning the sovereignty of Golan. Without warning, they changed their minds, provoking the de facto collapse of International Law.  Another example - the United States recently took position in Libya for General Khalifa Haftar, with whom President Trump shared a telephone call to assure his support against the government created by the UN, and we are now seeing the EU members, one by one, following his lead.

Because of the consecutive treaties, it would be impossible for the EU to free itself from NATO, (which means the US), and declare itself a power in its own right. Protests against the pseudo-sanctions which were yesterday decided against Iran and today against Cuba are doomed to failure in advance.

Contrary to a commonly-held belief, NATO is not governed by the North Atlantic Council, in other words the states which are members of the Atlantic Alliance. When, in 2011, the Council, which had approved an action intended to protect the Libyan population against the crimes of Muamar Gaddafi, declared itself in opposition to a «regime change», NATO attacked without consultation.

The EU members, which formed a single bloc with the US during the Cold War, discovered with stupefaction that they do not have anything like the same culture as their trans-Atlantic ally. During this parenthesis, they had forgotten both their own European culture and the «exceptionalism» of the USA, and believed wrongly that they were all in agreement with one another.

Whether they like it or not, they are today co-responsible for Washington’s wars, including for example the famine in Yemen, consecutive to the military operations by the Saudi Coalition and to US sanctions. They now have to choose either to assume these crimes and participate in them, or to leave the European treaties.

International commerce is beginning to decline. This is not a passing crisis, but a deep-rooted phenomenon. The process of globalization which defined the world from the dissolution of the USSR to the mid-term elections of 2018 is now ended. It is no longer possible to export freely all over the world.

Only China still has this capacity, but the US State Department is currently developing methods forbidding it access to the Latin-American market.

In these conditions, debates on the respective advantages of free-exchange and protectionism are no longer pertinent, because we are no longer at peace and we no longer have a choice.

If they want to avoid being dragged by the US into wars which are not their own, its members will have to free themselves from the European treaties and the integrated command of NATO.

Therefore, it is completely off-subject to look at the European elections as opposing progressives and nationalists. This is not the point at all. The progressives affirm their desire to build a world governed by International Law, which their godfather, the US wants to eradicate, while certain nationalists, like the Polish Andrzej Duda, are preparing to serve the US against their partners in the EU.

Only certain British subjects have sensed the current storm. They have attempted to leave the Union, but without managing to convince their parliamentary representatives. It’s said that «to govern is to foresee», but most members of the European Union have foreseen nothing.

Voices from inside the besieged Venezuelan embassy

“If the US invades the Venezuelan Embassy tomorrow, it will send a message to the world that no embassy is safe in the United States… it’s a message that ‘if you don’t bow down to us, do what we tell you, put in the government that we’d like, we will take your embassy.”

These were the remarks of Kevin Zeese, American lawyer and political activist, who currently serves as co-director of Popular Resistance.

MintPress correspondent Alexander Rubinstein teamed up Wyatt Reed to compile a report in this regard, titled: “Voices from inside the besieged Venezuelan embassy.”

A group of activists banding together as the “Embassy Protection Collective,” in defense of the sovereignty of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, defied orders by the U.S. government to vacate the premises by the 25th of April. Later in the morning, the Trump administration’s special envoy to Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, condemned the activists, saying that they would “have to leave.”

The activists, Abrams argues, are “clearly breaking the law.”

In interviews with MintPress News, Embassy Collective protesters argued the opposite: that an invasion of the Venezuelan Embassy by U.S. authorities would be illegal under international law as defined by Article 22 of the Vienna Convention. The article states: Article 22 confirms the inviolability of mission premises – barring any right of entry by law enforcement officers of the receiving State and imposing on the receiving State a special duty to protect the premises against intrusion, damage, disturbance of the peace or infringement of dignity. Even in response to abuse of this inviolability or emergency, the premises may not be entered without the consent of the head of mission.”

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and member of the Embassy Protection Collective, told MintPress News: “Today is the last day that Venezuelan diplomats in the United States have to leave the country. There were a few diplomats left that work with the Organization of American States (OAS) and today they said they had to be out. So tomorrow there are no diplomats left in the embassy, which opens the way for the Guaido folks to come in.”

After the OAS recognized the representatives of Venezuela’s self-appointed president, Juan Guaido, in violation of its own charter, the State Department issued the Venezuelan diplomats a two-week ultimatum to vacate the embassy.

Meanwhile, the elected government of Venezuela has turned over the keys to the activists in hopes they may be able to safeguard the building. For the past two weeks, members of the collective have been protecting the building.

Speaking via live stream, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza repeatedly thanked the group: “We are very honored because you are protecting the Venezuelan territory… And please, keep on doing it. It’s important, it’s really important for the Venezuelan people. You are an example to us, to all the Venezuelan people. You are an example to the American people as well.”

Last Thursday morning, Embassy Protection Collective activists interrupted an address by Elliot Abrams, Trump’s point man for regime change in Venezuela, hosted by the Atlantic Council. The think tank is among the most powerful foreign policy influence shops in Washington and lobbies on behalf of NATO, Persian Gulf State monarchies, and oil conglomerates.

Bearing a sign reading “No coup in Venezuela,” CODEPINK activist Ariel Elyse Gold shouted over Abrams as he attempted to speak.

Speaking to MintPress immediately after she was removed by security from the premises, Gold said: “Elliot Abrams is a war criminal and responsible for the destabilization of entire regions. I spoke out while he was addressing the Atlantic Council and told him: ‘How dare you orchestrate a coup in Venezuela? How dare you impose sanctions that harm the people?’

My government has no right to overthrow the government of another country. This is undermining the basic principle of democracy. Maduro was elected by 6 million people in Venezuela. Whether anybody likes Maduro or not, we need to respect the election.”

Medea Benjamin, one of the lead organizers of the movement to protect the embassy, explained the motivations of the collective to MintPress News, saying they are “people who came together to say we cannot allow the fake, illegal quote ‘government’ of Juan Guaido to come in and take over this embassy.” She added:

You can’t have an international community that doesn’t recognize real governments, that starts creating parallel governments, fake governments, and concedes them to take over embassies. It just can’t work like that. It’s against international law. So we’re the citizens that are protecting this embassy against a takeover that is part of a coup that is orchestrated by our government to get rid of a government that it doesn’t like in Venezuela.”

Benjamin explained how the U.S. demand that all Venezuelan diplomats leave the country by April 24th was a move designed to open the embassy to occupation by opposition squatters. In response, the collective has been living and working in the embassy 24/7 and hosting teach-ins and concerts every evening. They aim to hold the space for as long as possible, she says –“and we will not go out easily.”

After reaching out to the Venezuelan government in late March, Benjamin says they were invited to hold the space when the Venezuelans realized the U.S. government was “egging on” the opposition to take it. They gave the collective keys to the building and, she says, their full support.

Though many embassy protectors admire the accomplishments of socialist Venezuela, Benjamin says they aren’t there just to show support for the Venezuelan government. Instead, they want to reject another coup and the attempted social engineering of their leaders. She says the failure by coup plotters to turn the Venezuelan military against the government has done little to stop their U.S. handlers from plotting further aggression.

She notes the hypocrisy of a U.S. establishment that has spent the past few years hyper-fixating on a supposed Russian interference threat now “overtly trying to overthrow governments.” Benjamin was adamant that international law was on the side of the collective even if the Trump administration “doesn’t care” about such formalities.

Max Blumenthal, founder of the Grayzone, visited Caracas in February and described to MintPress News a profound disconnect between Western perceptions of Venezuela and the reality on the ground.

I was prepared to see something, to see an economic collapse, to even see a humanitarian crisis. And at least in Caracas, I didn’t see anything approaching that… it wasn’t a war situation. It wasn’t a conflict zone.”

Amidst ongoing economic warfare, life in Venezuela continues with relative normalcy, with residents taking full advantage of the free public gyms, salsa nights, and basketball courts, Blumenthal observed.

He described a “sort of utopian” experience visiting a public housing development in Caracas. It’s one of many such projects that comprise 2,500,000 total housing units provided by the socialist government to working Venezuelans free of charge, Blumenthal told MintPress.

He recounted that Venezuelan journalists he met with explained that they never could have become reporters without the socialist government, as prior to the Bolivarian revolution dark-skinned people weren’t allowed to go to college. “Now they have a place in their society.”

By contrast, Blumenthal says the opposition strongholds were like a “bubble of affluence.” Despite repeated accusations of a supposed humanitarian crisis, the largely white, wealthy opposition is still enjoying yoga classes and sushi dinners.  “They seem very comfortable, but at the same time feigning this humanitarian crisis.”

Still, Blumenthal notes that there are of course real economic problems, but stresses the many ways they’re exacerbated by capitalist forces and “speculation.”

Recently, the Grayzone exposed an off-the-record meeting in which 40-odd coup plotters discussed their plans for a military attack on Venezuela. Attendees included representatives from the U.S. State Department, the former commander of the United States Southern Command, Colombian diplomats, and emissaries of Brazil’s fascist government.

With that context, their plan to invade the Venezuelan Embassy is par for the course, Blumenthal argued.

As the property was purchased by the Venezuelan government, anyone occupying it without permission would be squatting, he said, joking that it is perhaps for that reason that “Juan Guaidó says he has so much in common with Israel – because they like squatting on other people’s property.”

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who blew the whistle on the agency’s torture program, was also on hand to give a talk on ‘an insider’s perspective on CIA coups.’ Afterwards, he spoke exclusively to MintPress News, saying that he also came to “show support for the sanctity of the Venezuelan Embassy.” It’s a world he’s intimately familiar with; as the executive assistant to the CIA’s deputy director for operations, Kiriakou had access to “literally everything that the CIA was doing around the world operationally.” After signing a number of secrecy agreements, he was finally informed what the job he’d agreed to was: “to assist in the overthrow of the Iraqi government.”

He describes a specific intelligence office that oversees CIA coup operations — one so shrouded in secrecy that even its name is classified. Indeed, should Kiriakou reveal it, he would risk being sent back to prison for once again blowing the whistle on the agency.

Kiriakou told MintPress that whenever a CIA agent expresses a desire to overthrow a government, the office creates a plan that is generally rubber-stamped by the Department of Justice and approved by the National Security Council. Once the president signs off, Kiriakou says the officer is given a blank check to carry out their sabotage and subterfuge.

He goes on to describe an agency so arrogant that even before it finished destroying Iraq, when he once walked into the office of a senior officer in the unnamed coup department, that officer had already set about designing the new flag with colored markers. “Don’t you think the Iraqis should design the new Iraqi flag?” Kiriakou asked. The officer paused. “No.”

The depth of their imperial hubris is matched by the depth of their pockets, Kiriakou argued: “Their budgets are secret. Nobody knows what the CIA budget is. It’s been a secret since the founding of the CIA…. It’s just impossible to know what the CIA has to spend. I can tell you that it’s a lot.”

Kiriakou continued, “We’ve got this unwritten policy that if we don’t like the politics of a foreign leader, we just take him out and we put in our own guy.” It’s a policy that he says operates independently of long-term U.S. interests or human-rights considerations.

Do the countries targeted by the CIA have something in common? “Natural resources,” he says. “It’s always been frowned up to say ‘we went into Kuwait for the oil. We went into Iraq for the oil. We went into Libya for the oil.’ But we did!”

Kiriakou recounted the words of a friend of his in Kuwait, who asked him, if the country “had gravel instead of oil, do you think we would have cared about these people?”

“Venezuela has oil, and Iran has oil, and Afghanistan has rare-earth metals, and we’re in all of those countries as well,” Kiriakou noted.

This implicit threat to anyone who refuses to toe the State Department line is clear to Kevin Zeese as well. The peace activist, lawyer and co-director of Popular Resistance was similarly disturbed by the U.S. government’s threats to invade the sovereign territory of Venezuela:

If they do this tomorrow, it will send a message to the world that no embassy is safe in the United States… it’s a message that ‘if you don’t bow down to us, do what we tell you, put in the government that we’d like, we will take your embassy.’”

Though he’s skeptical that any international court could enforce a ruling against the U.S., Zeese insists that these actions render the U.S. a “renegade nation” in the eyes of the public and the international community.

These rogue, aggressive actions characterize a nation whose once-hegemonic economic and military influence is waning, but which still has little trouble convincing its European and Latin American partners to go along with its imperialist agenda. “They all want to steal Venezuela’s wealth, and Venezuela’s very wealthy,” Zeese says. Aside from the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela also boasts the largest gold and diamond reserves, the fifth largest gas reserves, and many other extremely valuable mineral deposits, Zeese said.

For its own sake, Zeese says, he seriously hopes the U.S. ruling class will reject the temptation to bring them under their control. Given the Chinese and Russian support for Venezuela, and a U.S. military still reeling from its failures in Iraq, he argues that an invasion of the Bolivarian Republic could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. “The US Empire will be crumbling.”

MintPress News will continue to keep a reporter at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C. in anticipation of a raid by U.S. authorities.

War by other means: US/EU sanctions aimed at crippling Syria

Jean Shaoul

Just recently, there has seen massive queues in Syria’s capital Damascus outside petrol (gas) stations. The fuel shortage has become far worse than during the war—bringing commercial life almost to a standstill.

Jean Shaoul, professor of public accountability at the University of Manchester, UK, has the answer behind shortages in Syria in his article titled “War by other means: US/EU sanctions aimed at crippling Syria.”

With domestic oil production down as a result of war damage and disruption to only 24,000 barrels per day (BPD), far less than the 136,000 bpd it needs, the government has rationed petrol. Private cars are allowed 20 litres every five days and taxis 20 litres every 48 hours. Before the war, Syria enjoyed relative energy autonomy.

This follows in part due to US sanctions against Iran and Syria that have intensified since US President Donald Trump’s declared “the final defeat” of the Daesh.

Damascus sought to replace earlier supplies via private sector importers, but this met with little success as ships have been prevented from reaching Syria after entering regional waters. In November, the US Treasury issued a warning, threatening anyone involved in shipping petroleum to the Syrian government with sanctions.

The aim is to cut off the Syrian government and its supporters from the global financial and trade systems. The Pentagon has also made it clear that despite Trump’s plan to withdraw US troops from Syria, the illegal US military presence in Syria will continue indefinitely with a “residual force.”

The US wants to preclude any reunification and reconstruction of the war-ravaged country, by carving out its own sphere of influence in Syria’s northeast. This would seize control over the country’s main oil and gas-producing region, using Syria as a base for other adventurism and bullying in the region, while encouraging the usurper, savage regime of Israel to play a major role in military operations against Syria.

Washington is seeking to create the conditions for a rebellion against the elected government of President Bashar al-Assad, as it is in Iran and Venezuela, by crashing its economy and exacerbating the country’s social and economic problems and thereby impose a pro-US regime in Damascus. However, all attempts have come to nowhere and been in vain so far.

The Assad government is compelled to maneuver between the threats from an increasingly rapacious US imperialism, the unrelenting support from its backers in Moscow and Tehran, and the mounting anger of an impoverished nation against the western war profiteers, and also those benefiting from ballyhoo of what little “reconstruction” is taking place.
Washington’s eight-year-long proxy war against Syria—along with its more than four years of intense aerial bombing—has devastated the country, causing immense human suffering.

Nearly half a million people have died. There are 3 million people living with permanent disabilities. Around 11 million people, nearly half the population, have fled their homes. Some 5.6 million are living in neighboring countries, including 3.6 million living in Turkey, while there are 6.2 million internally displaced, creating the world’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.

The war, involving hundreds of foreign-backed militias fighting the Syrian government and each other, has laid waste to industrial cities and infrastructure. Water, sanitation and electrical systems barely function in the former militants-held areas. Schools and hospitals have been flattened. Some 2 million children are not in school.

US bombing has reduced cities and towns such as Raqqa to rubble, while in rural areas irrigation channels no longer function and grain silos have been destroyed, leading to a 40 percent reduction in food production, particularly wheat.

More than 80 percent of Syrians are living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.90 per day, in what was a middle-income country. According to a World Bank survey, 56 percent of the country’s businesses have either closed or relocated outside the country since 2009, while unemployment rose from less than 10 percent in 2010 to over 50 percent in 2015. It estimates that the cumulative loss in GDP between 2011 and 2016 was $226 billion, around four times Syria’s 2010 GDP. A third of those losses were in the oil and gas sector.

Soaring inflation, a depreciating currency that has plummeted from a pre-war exchange rate of 50 Syrian pounds to 550 pounds to the dollar, stagnant wages and plummeting purchasing power means that even the basics are unaffordable. The ever-deepening poverty is causing endless privation, compounded by frequent and lengthy water and electricity shutoffs and fuel shortages.

Many are dependent on remittances from Syrians abroad, estimated by the World Bank to be about $1.62 billion in 2016, higher than the total from salaries and wages, as well as unofficial transfers through unlicensed offices, individuals and traffickers.

The wealthy are insulated from all of this, with cafes and restaurants in the upscale neighborhoods busy, in stark contrast to the long queues to buy subsidized bread and replace empty gas canisters for cooking.

The hardships of the war have been compounded by the sanctions imposed since 2011 by the United States, the European Union (EU) and the UN on imports such as some fuels, as well as Syrian individuals accused of financially supporting the Syrian government. Last January, after Trump said he was bringing US troops in Syria “back home,” the EU issued sanctions against a further 11 businessmen and five associated companies, while the US Congress passed legislation, the Orwellian Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, broadening existing sanctions to include non-US citizens who deal with the Syrian government, so-called secondary sanctions.
These sanctions could hit anyone—including Persian Gulf-based companies involved in Syria’s reconstruction, variously estimated at between $250 billion (about four times Syria’s pre-war GDP) and $400 billion.

The banks block transfers from Syria, making it impossible to source European parts without using prohibitively expensive informal financial networks.

Syria has indicated that Russia and Iran will both have “first priority” in the allotment of any reconstruction funds that it receives, particularly in the energy and construction sectors. In January 2018, Damascus gave Moscow exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from areas under its direct control, and later “the restoration of oil fields and the development of new deposits.” Moscow also won a 50-year deal to run Syria’s phosphate industry.

The US and major European powers have refused any noticeable aid while President Assad remains in power, in a bid to force his main international and domestic supporters to withdraw their backing, but again to no avail.

Last March, international donors at an EU-hosted conference in Brussels pledged almost $7 billion, including $397 million from the US, for civilians affected by the conflict—far less than the EU said was needed. Last year, only 65 percent of the $3.4 billion required for the inside-Syria plan last year was received, while its regional refugee and resilience plan costing $5.6 billion was only 62 percent funded.

The focus was not on reconstruction, but on measures to encourage refugees to return home. The EU fears an influx of refugees to Europe unless aid for both Syria and the countries hosting the refugees is forthcoming.

The US drive to crash Syria’s economy is bound up with its campaign to re-impose neo-colonial bondage over the entire region and to continue the series of ruinous wars Washington has sparked in West Asia since 1991 in a bid to exercise unfettered dominance of the world’s most important oil and gas-exporting region. That is among the key answers to the US animosity towards Iran; an independent country that is standing against such a bullying while insisting national sovereignty and territorial integrity for all regional nations.

Everything hushed up: No probe into US war crimes

by Vijay Prashad

The American military which has a bleak, black and bloody record of committing state terrorism, wherever it intrudes, has again pressured world agencies to drop cases against it by hiding all relevant evidence.

Now we have an article in this regard for ‘Globetrotter’ by Vijay Prashad, Indian historian, editor and journalist, titled: “Everything hushed up: No probe into US war crimes”.

On April 12, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it would not pursue a war-crimes investigation against the US military for its actions in Afghanistan. A very thick file was closed in The Hague.

Almost a decade ago, on February 12, 2010, US Special Operations Forces arrived at the home of Haji Sharafuddin in Khataba, Paktia province, Afghanistan. The Sharafuddin family was celebrating the birth of a grandson. Inside the home were close family members (including a police investigator and a government prosecutor) as well as the vice-chancellor of Gardez University, Sayed Mohammed Mal.

At 3am, the family says, US forces attacked the home, killing five members of the family including Sharafuddin’s son Mohammed Dawood, who was the police investigator. After the killings, the soldiers carried the bodies into the house and removed the bullets with a knife. They did not want to leave evidence of their actions. They then ransacked the home – including stealing money – and left.

The US military said those they killed were insurgents. Both the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Criminal Investigations Department of the Afghan Ministry of the Interior found this allegation to be false. A war crime had been committed here.

The recent ICC withdrawal, however, means that this crime – and hundreds of others – will neither be properly documented nor will there be justice for the victims and survivors. Thousands of family members, who know very well what happened in little villages like Khataba and Nangalam, will have no recourse either to an admission of guilt or punishment for the killers. The killing in Nangalam was by a US helicopter on March 1, 2011. The pilots fired on nine boys, killing them all. “My son Wahidullah’s head was missing,” said Haji Bismillah. “I only recognized him from his clothes.”

One village or town after another has families with stories of such violent and senseless deaths. This US war on Afghanistan, which has been ongoing since 2001, has produced an unknown death count with unknown numbers of war crimes (by US troops, by the Afghan armed forces and by the Taliban). Afghanistan remains an open sore of crime and impunity.

It was for good reason that the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai became a member of the International Criminal Court in 2003. There was pressure on Karzai from the US government not to join the ICC, but he prevailed.

It was hardly a victory. The ICC came out of the Rome Statute, which was drafted in 1998 and came into force in 2002. The United States signed the original treaty but then refused to ratify it. Worse, the US Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act of 2002 to discourage any cooperation with the ICC if the behavior of US soldiers came under scrutiny. US senator Jesse Helms referred to the ICC as the International Kangaroo Court. Even if Afghanistan became a member of the ICC, no one in the US establishment thought that this would have any consequences.

But prosecutors in the court had other ideas. In 2006, ICC investigators opened a “preliminary investigation” into war crimes in Afghanistan. They were interested in war crimes committed by the US forces, by Afghan forces and by the Taliban. An investigator, a few years later, told me that they had found “captivating evidence” of war crimes, mostly related to the torture centers run by the Central Intelligence Agency and by US military intelligence. They sought more material evidence not only by interviewing former prisoners but also through access – which they did not get – to US official documents.

In 2007, the Afghan parliament – a parliament of warlords – passed a law that gave immunity to all for war crimes committed in the country. This was a blanket – and shameful – immunity that was only in May 2017 amended to allow the country to be in compliance with the Rome Statute.

In 2010, WikiLeaks provided some of this evidence in the Afghan war logs, in whose 90,000 pages there was some – but not sufficient – documentation of various operations run by US forces. This did not shape the ICC investigation, which proceeded with deliberate intent with interviews and with scrutiny of whatever documentation was available.

On November 20, 2017, with almost a decade of careful investigation behind it, the ICC released a report with a bland title: “Situation in Afghanistan: Summary of the Prosecutor’s Request for Authorization of an Investigation Pursuant to Article 15.”

The significant sentence of the brief report is the following: “Finally, the information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that members of the United States of America … armed forces and members of the Central Intelligence Agency … committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence against conflict-related detainees in Afghanistan and other locations, principally in the 2003-2004 period.”

This did not mean that the crimes of 2010 and 2011 would not be investigated, only that the focus was on this early period and would later expand to include the entire span of the ongoing war.

The ICC’s special prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, asked the court to allow a full investigation of war crimes in Afghanistan. She received a green light.

A year later, on September 10, 2018, US national security adviser John Bolton said that if the ICC continued with its work on the US war-crimes docket, the US government would place sanctions on the ICC and even criminally prosecute ICC officials in US courts. This was not just for the ICC investigation of US war crimes in Afghanistan, but also if the ICC persisted in its work on Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians.

Investigators at the ICC said at that time that gloom descended on their department. The sense was that the investigation would not be allowed to proceed. But, for the time being, there was no immediate attempt within the ICC to shut down the investigation. The process continued, with Bensouda’s team building up the case against the United States – and others – for war crimes in Afghanistan.

It is important to bear in mind that the evidence was in the plain light of day. In 2005, The New York Times published a 2,000-page US army investigation of the killing of Habibullah and Dilawar at Bagram in December 2002. None of the soldiers charged with the murder of these two men were convicted. All charges were dropped. But the evidence against them was clear in the army report.

ICC special prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who was in charge of this file, visited the UN Security Council in New York City to deliver her report to the member states of the UN. For this, Bensouda – like other foreign nationals who work in the UN – must get a US visa. On March 15 of this year, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States would deny a visa to ICC personnel if they continued to investigate US war crimes. A few weeks later, on April 5, the United States revoked Bensouda’s visa. This was an act of immense hostility, little remarked on in the press.

The pressure on the ICC from US President Donald Trump’s men rose. It would have taken international outcry to prevent them from getting their way. But the revocation of Bensouda’s visa was met with silence. The UN said nothing, nor did the member states.

It was this silence that had a chilling effect on the ICC. On April 12, a three-judge panel rejected Bensouda’s request for the investigation. This pretrial chamber comprised Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua of the Congo, Tomoko Akane of Japan and Rosario Salvatore Aitala of Italy. They decided that an investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan “would not serve the interests of justice.”

So it goes.