The Triumph of Evil

By Paul Craig Roberts 

President Donald Trump walks with Mohammed bin Salman bin
Abdulaziz Al Saud, Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of
Defense of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along the West Colonnade of
the White House, Tuesday, March 14, 2017.

Evil has achieved dominance over good so that avarice and lawlessness will escalate their destruction of truth, peoples, and life on earth.

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey is unprecedented in its audacity. The response from Washington and the Canadian government is to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia, weapons that are being used by the Saudis in their destruction of the Yemeni population. The Russian response, if the report I saw was not fake news, is to sell the Saudis the S-400 air defense system.

All we can conclude from this is that armament profits take precedence over murder and genocide.

Genocide is what is going on in Yemen. I heard a report today on NPR that Yemeni are dying from starvation and from a cholera epidemic that has resulted from the Saudi destruction of the infrastructure in Yemen. The aid worker giving the report was obviously sincere and upset, but had difficulty connecting the high death rate to the Washington-sponsored war, blaming instead a 20% devaluation of the Yemen currency that raised food prices out of the reach of most Yemeni. She said that the solution to the crisis was to stabilize the currency!

It is difficult to understand why in the Western media and among Western politicians there is so much demonization of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, China, and Russia. It is not these demonized countries that are murdering people in their embassies, conducting wars of aggression (war crimes under the Nuremburg Standard), and embargoing food and medical supplies to the populations that are being bombed. These crimes are being done by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States and its NATO vassals.

Obviously, the Yemeni, like the Palestinians, don’t count. Their slaughter doesn’t cause a moral ripple in the West.

Putin might be giving Washington tit for tat by honing in on Washington’s armaments customers, but the decision to sell the Saudis the S-400 is a strategic blunder. Saudi Arabia is a sponsor of the war against Syria, in whose defense Russian lives and treasure have been spent. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is an enemy of Iran. Iran is an ally of Russia in the defense of Syria, and a country whose stability is essential to Russia’s stability. Perhaps even more important, the minute the Saudis get their hands on the S-400 they will hand it over to Washington, and experts will figure out how to defeat it, thus negating Russia’s investment in the weapon and its advantage. The decision to sell the S-400 to the Saudis convinces Washington that Putin and his government are clueless, babes in the woods to be easily run over.

In my opinion, the worst aspect of the S-400 sale is that it erases the moral edge that Putin has gained for Russia over the murderous and ever-threatening West. Now we have Russia putting profits above the Russian government’s professed respect for the rule of law and moral behavior.

An even more immoral and irresponsible development is President Trump’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty. The only reason for Trump’s Zionist Neoconservative National Security Adviser to orchestrate this withdrawal is to threaten Russia. Intermediate range missiles cannot reach the US. Russian ones could reach Europe, and US ones placed in Europe on Russia’s border can comprise a first-strike nuclear attack on Russia that has no warning and is indefensible.

President Putin has complained for years, and warned of the consequences, of Washington establishing ABM missile sites in Poland and Romania under cover that their purpose is to protect Europe from Iranian missile attack. Putin has pointed out repeatedly that these missile sites can easily, without anyone knowing, be converted into a nuclear cruise missile attack posture against Russia. Yet, the crazed US National Security Adviser claims, illogically, that it is the Russians, who have nothing to gain from violating the treaty, who are cheating.

Europe has no capability whatsoever of being a military threat to Russia except as launching posts for Washington. If it were not for Washington’s aggression toward Russia, Europe would face no Russian threat.

The reason President Reagan negotiated the INF Treaty with Gorbachev was to reduce the Soviet perception of the US as a threat. Reagan wanted the end of the Cold War and nuclear disarmament. Reagan hated nuclear weapons. By Reagan’s time in office, no one with any intelligence any longer believed that the Red Army intended to overrun Europe. The problem was different. The problem was to get rid of nuclear weapons that are capable, if used, of winning no war but of destroying life on planet Earth. Reagan understood this completely.

Unfortunately, this understanding has been lost in Washington.

If the INF Treaty is abandoned, it is impossible for Russia to tolerate any missile bases near its borders as these bases could be first-strike nuclear weapons against which Russia has no defense. The European countries sufficiently stupid to host these bases will be on a hair-trigger with the Russian military. Just one false signal and nuclear war begins.

Trump’s intention to normalize relations with Russia has been defeated by CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, the Democratic Party, the US liberal/progressive/left, and the presstitute media—CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Fox News, BBC, Washington Post, etc.

We will all die, because the American Establishment lied through it teeth nonstop.

We can conclude from the acceptance of Saudi crimes and Western indifference to Washington’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty that morality takes a back seat to material interest. We can also conclude that evil has achieved dominance over good, with the consequences that avarice and lawlessness will escalate their destruction of truth, peoples, and life on earth.

Afghanistan’s bloody mystery: Little progress in war or peace talks

By Ameen Izzadeen

That the United States has still not been able to defeat an enemy much weaker in terms of military resources in a war that is continuing for 17 long years in Afghanistan does not bode well for its image as the world’s mightiest military power.

Armed with nuclear weapons, mother-of-all bombs, precision-guided missiles and the advanced satellite technology, it can surely eliminate the Taliban and the ISIS in a matter of days or weeks even without the use of a single nuclear weapon. Then why has the US failed to defeat the Taliban? It is not that the US has no will power to end the war. The answer is rather linked to its strategy.

Landlocked Afghanistan provides the US a strategic base to keep watch on a host of hostile or not-so-friendly nations. In the west of Afghanistan is Iran, a US enemy. Sharing a 2,430km-long border with Afghanistan in the south and the east is Pakistan which now gives more importance to close defence ties with China than to ties with the often unreliable and ‘ungrateful’ US. Unreliable, because history shows the US uses Pakistan only to ditch it once its objectives are achieved. Ungrateful, because the Pakistanis feel the US has not appreciated the heavy price their country has been forced to pay for joining the US war on terror. In the north, Afghanistan shares a 76km border with China, with which the US is locked in a trade war and military competition befitting a fully-fledged cold war. Afghanistan also shares a 2,300km-long border with Central Asia, where the US has no military presence now after Kyrgyzstan closed down the US airbase in 2014 following pressure from Russia.

The US is not naïve to withdraw from Afghanistan and thereby squander the strategic advantage it enjoys. Its presence in Afghanistan is legalised and legitimised through a controversial Strategic Partnership Agreement the two nations signed in 2012. The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, after the Taliban rulers refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda which carried out the 9/11 attacks, although some analysts believed the invasion had more to do with a pipeline project to enable US oil companies to exploit Central Asia’s oil and gas.

President Donald Trump, surrounded by hardline advisors, is for an indefinite prolonged war in Afghanistan. Trump has said he has become convinced that the only thing worse than staying in Afghanistan is pulling out. In the context of this large picture, Afghanistan finds it difficult to extricate itself from the superpower power games. Afghanistan is being bled to a slow death, with none of the peace efforts undertaken by various interested parties moving beyond the preliminary stages. In 2013, Qatar facilitated a Pakistan brokered peace initiative between the Afghan government and the Taliban, only to see its early collapse after Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in a US operation. Recently, Qatar launched fresh attempts, facilitating secret contacts between the warring parties, including the US. However, it appears that after every step taken in the direction of peace, there comes a blow pushing the process two steps backwards.

There were also China-brokered peace initiatives. China sees Afghanistan peace as a crucial factor for the success of its Belt-and-Road project. Even these talks could not make much progress, because the US was left out.

In the aftermath of intense clashes for the control of the city of Ghazni last week, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani made a ceasefire offer to the Taliban, but it was met with Taliban rocket attacks on Kabul’s high security zone housing the presidential palace and the US embassy.

Russia, a country badly hit by narcotics drugs produced in Afghanistan, is also working out a multilateral peace initiative, but this is also likely to end as a non-event. On Wednesday, adding to the bloody mystery, the Kabul government indicated it would not attend the Moscow conference, although the Taliban said it would.

Not only peace talks, even war appears to be going nowhere. The Taliban control large chunks of the country’s territory. In addition, since last year, following the crushing defeats in Iraq and Syria, the ISIS has also been making its presence felt in Afghanistan. Probably carrying out a foreign power’s agenda, the ISIS largely targets the Shiite population. Two weeks ago, the ISIS carried out a massacre at an Afghan school, killing some 34 Shiite students. As if this bloodshed was not enough, the US-based war mercenary company Blackwater, notorious for massacres and human rights violations in Iraq, wants the Trump administration to privatise the Afghan war. In a recent interview with MSNBC, Blackwater founder Erik Prince said the privatisation of the war would be a big saving for the US government. He said his plan would see US troops replaced with private military contractors who would report to the President through a special envoy. Although the Pentagon is opposed to the Blackwater proposal, Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton is receptive.

The proposal takes us to the warning the then US President Dwight Eisenhower issued 57 years ago about private defence contractors. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist,” he warned.

Adding to the conundrum is Pakistan’s new government headed by cricket hero-turned politician Imran Khan, who has said his foreign policy priority will be peace with India and Afghanistan. However, he is scoffed as ‘Taliban Khan’ for his comments which critics interpret as supportive of the Pakistan Taliban. A virulent opponent of US drone attacks that have killed many civilians, Khan has lambasted Trump, calling him “ignorant and ungrateful” after Trump had commented that the US got nothing from Pakistan in the fight against terrorists, though US had given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid. After his election victory last month, Khan, striking a conciliatory note, said, “With the US, we want to have a mutually beneficial relationship ... up until now, that has been one way, the US thinks it gives us aid to fight its war ... we want both countries to benefit, we want a balanced relationship.”

It is too early to say whether it is the military or the elected government which will decide Pakistan’s Afghan policy. However, for the US military to remain in Afghanistan, the support of Pakistan is crucial, because it is the only nation, through which the US could send supplies to its 15,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan. Occasionally, Pakistan has shut down the supply route to soothe public anger after US drone attacks killed civilians.

Even democracy has not provided an answer to Afghanistan’s conflict. Next year, there will be a presidential election, but as usual, the Taliban would not only take part, but also violently disrupt the process, thus offering the US a justification to continue its military presence in the country. When war becomes a daily routine, for Afghans, peace is, probably, anathema and suffering fait accompli. For the rest of the world, after 17 long years, Afghanistan is now the least spoken about war.

Ameen Izzadeen

Trump’s Criminal Tweet Exposes His Suicide-Seeking Disturbed Mind

It should not come as a surprise if Donald Trump were to suffer brain hemorrhage.

The symptoms have been there for some time, and on Sunday midnight they became quite clear when in a sudden surge of blood to his head, the US president, or dotard as he is known, thundered a terroristic tweet at the Islamic Republic of Iran, which means he kicked the ball in his own goalpost thereby giving Tehran another plus point in the psychological war his administration has started.

Having failed to grasp the diplomatic finesse of President Hojjat al-Islam Hassan Rouhani’s remarks earlier on Sunday to a gathering of Iranian diplomats abroad, of the "dangers for the US in trying to play with the lion’s tail”, since "peace with Iran is the Mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars,” Trump made a mad rush to fall in the trap of his own making by tweeting:

"Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.”

Boastful words indeed from a maniac aspiring be a modern Pharaoh, little knowing that his wealth and his weapons are useless the moment Divine Wrath strikes him for threatening a country whose laws are based on the commandments of God Almighty.

Trump’s self-defeatist threat, along with the statement of Rouhani, ought to be preserved as a reminder for posterity of how a deranged president of what used to be the United States of America did irreparable damage to his brain cells, and not just hastened towards his own doom but speeded up the process of the downfall of his country.

Anyone with an iota of commonsense could perceive that Rouhani’s remarks contained a gem of an advice to Trump that meant to say: treat your traumatic mind and salvage your country’s prestige, while it is still not too late, by giving up the senseless animosity towards Iran and the delusion of American hegemony in our region.

Trump, however, facing intense bipartisan criticism after his humiliation in Helsinki a week earlier at the summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and under relentless pressure from the official inquiry into the 2016 election campaign collusion with Russia, was obviously looking for what he deemed an easy target on which to vent his pent-up frustration, and without the least premeditation exposed the self-destructive thoughts that constantly flash across his disturbed mind.

He blundered for the umpteenth time, and thus proved the sagacity of the latest statement of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, of the futility of talks with the US, since the US cannot be trusted.

The Leader had told a gathering of foreign ministry staff and Iranian diplomats serving abroad on Saturday, July 21 in Tehran: "I have been reiterating this point for a long time that you cannot count on the words or even signatures of the Americans; therefore, negotiations with the US is useless.”
Of course, Trump is not more than a passing blip, and so is the team of thugs he has assembled in the White House, such as the gangster Mike Pompeo, the mustachioed bozo John Bolton and the hag Nikki Haley placed in the UN, but the civilized world, including Europe, ought to be on guard against the damage these crooks might do to world peace.

It is interesting to note that on 10th July in the Viewpoint Column of Kayhan International we had rightly said "The US State Department, which is presently looking more like headquarters of mafia dons”, under "Italian origin Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose appearance and mannerism resemble those of an underworld character rather than a diplomat.”

The harebrained Pompeo, whose Roman ancestors had never succeeded in conquering Iran’s Parthian and Sassanid Empires in the 700 years of warfare in the Levant, Mesopotamia and Anatolia, unwittingly borrowed the word "mafia” from us and made a laughing stock of himself by using it against the government of the Islamic Republic – to vociferous boos from the gathering he was addressing in California which demanded that he give up the delusion of changing the system of government of Iran and instead explain his administration’s cruelty in separating aggrieved immigrant parents from their crying children.

In conclusion, it could be said that we are at a historical juncture of history, where the illegal Zionist entity and its Arab reactionary friends, shivering at the prospects of a strong Syria, having defeated the terrorists, thanks to timely help from the Islamic Republic of Iran, will sooner than later, in alliance with tens of thousands of popular mobilization Muslim forces, start the campaign to liberate the entire Golan Heights and possible freedom for Bayt al-Moqaddas.

Thus, in a desperate bid to avert the inevitable, the Zionist-Wahhabi duo, in a vain bid to prolong their precarious existence, are egging the blockhead Trump to browbeat Iran into submission – a suicidal step which Insha Allah (God Willing) result in the total defeat of the unholy trinity.

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Kayhan Int’l

US Terrorism Against Iran Must Not Be Left Unpunished

Donald Trump and his clique of criminals in Washington, frustrated at the failure of their sanctions threat to cripple Iran’s economy and force it to cave in to their demands to curtail its legitimate missile defence technology and principled support for friendly governments and popular mobilization units in the region, have ordered terrorists to attack border posts.

The latest act of terrorism at Iran’s western border by terrorists operating from Iraqi Kurdistan that resulted in the martyrdom of ten Iranian security personnel, was neither an isolated incident nor was it unconnected to a similar terrorist attack from across the Pakistani border in southeastern Iran a few days earlier.

These acts of terrorism, whether carried out by the cowardly PJAK in Kurdistan Province or by the equally dastardly terrorist outfits that target Sistan-Baluchestan Province, are without the least doubt the dirty work of the US.

Over the past four decades the US has spared no efforts to undermine the peace and stability of Iran, although without success, as is evident by the failures of the direct and indirect American acts of state terrorism against the Islamic Republic, beginning with the Tabas invasion of April 1980 and last May’s violation of the 7-nation JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action) by Trump against the letter and spirit of this international accord.

In between is a long list of criminal behaviour by the US, such as the 8-year war it had imposed in the 1980s through Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad, the organized assassination of senior Iranian officials and innocent civilians by the MKO terrorists, the downing of the Iranian passenger plane in the Persian Gulf with some 300 passengers and crew on board, the target-killing of Iranian nuclear scientists by Zionist agents, and the thuggish blocking of Iran’s oil revenues.
Outside the political-geographical borders of Iran as well, the US has continued to meet failure after disastrous failure in its vain bid to prevent the growing clout of the Islamic Republic.

Examples in this regard include the resounding victory of Lebanon’s legendry anti-terrorist movement, the Hezbollah, over the illegal Zionist entity in the 33-day war of 2006; the humiliating defeat of the macabre Daesh terrorists in Syria and Iraq; and the gross inability of the well-equipped Saudi-UAE invasion force to dislodge the popular Ansarallah government and place a puppet as president of Yemen.

This is the reason Trump and his team of thugs are making a last desperate move against Iran and the Iranian people by threatening world countries with sanctions on doing business with the Islamic Republic.

Since there is no chance of success in this American act of international terrorism in view of Iran’s strategic geo-political location, its trade ties to Asia and Europe, and its ability to make sure that no Persian Gulf crude will be available on the market its oil exports are targeted, the crooks in Washington have ordered their stooges in the region to indulge in cross-border terrorism against Iran. 

Of course, these cowardly terrorists, whether in the east or the west, will be obliterated sooner or later when Iran decides to strike at their roots with vengeance in coordination with its friends in the neighbourhood, but these unabated criminal acts by Washington, warrant the government of the Islamic Republic Iran to make a detailed study and rule the entire US administration as a terrorist clique, along with American armed forces that have no right to be present in the region around us.

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Kayhan Int’l