Kurds in Fateful Triangle as US Moves to Redeploy IS Terror Groups

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM

Kurdish fighters have been used by the US to ostensibly defeat the remaining Islamic State holdouts in eastern Syria. But what is emerging is not a final defeat of the terrorists, more a redeployment to further destabilize the Arab country.

Potentially, the Kurds could wind up not with the regional autonomy they desire, but as part of a rebranded American dirty war army whose ranks include the very terrorist the Kurdish militias have been successfully battling against.

President Donald Trump has been lately crowing about how US-backed Kurdish forces have wiped out the IS self-proclaimed caliphate around Baghouz in eastern Syria. “They’re losers… they’re gone tonight,” he boasted about supposedly vanquishing the jihadists.

However, things are not that clear-cut. Syria’s envoy to the United Nations Bashar al Jaafari dismissed Trump’s victory celebrations as a “bluff”. He said that IS was not defeated in areas under US control, but rather were being shunted off to various camps for retraining.

There are credible reports that thousands of jihadists who surrendered or were captured in the fighting around Baghouz have since been relocated by US forces to its military base at al Tanf near the border with Iraq and Jordan, as well as to nearby refugee camps such as Rukban, where some 40,000 detainees are held. Suspiciously, the Americans are refusing international access to these camps, even for UN humanitarian relief agencies. As Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed out recently, the detention centers are being used by the Americans as a pretext for illegally occupying Syrian territory.

We can also add the purpose of clandestine military recruitment for US proxies.

Despite Trump’s announcement four months ago that US military was pulling out of Syria, there seems no sign that his plan is being implemented. That’s why Moscow reacted angrily to Washington’s demand for Russian troops to leave Venezuela. The Kremlin responded testily that the US should first deliver on its promise to withdraw from Syria, where its forces are illegally present unlike Russian personnel in Venezuela under bilateral agreement.

In Syria’s supposedly post-war scenario what seems to be happening is the US seeking to find a way to reconfigure its destabilizing intervention in the Arab country. The past eight years of US-sponsored covert war has failed in its objective for regime change against President Bashar al Assad, who is allied with Russia and Iran. What the US is aiming to do now is keep military footprints in the country, effectively annexing swathes of territory, especially in the oil and gas-rich eastern region around the Euphrates River.

That accounts for why supposedly defeated enemy terrorists are being retrained by US special forces at al Tanf. They are reportedly being tasked with capturing the oil and gas fields in Deir ez-Zor province as well as production infrastructure in Homs province.

This puts the Kurdish forces in an invidious position. There is little doubting the courage and fighting ability of the Kurdish men and women who make up the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its spearhead YPG militias. The Kurds have managed to liberate up to 30 per cent of Syria’s territory in the northeast and east from the IS jihadists. They have dealt a decisive blow to the residual caliphate at Baghouz. American air power augmented the Kurds in their offensive.

But what the US is maneuvering to do is to combine the defeated jihadists with the Kurds in order to push its agenda for breaking up Syria and controlling its eastern mineral-rich resources.

The Special Monitoring Mission to Syria reports that IS militants captured by the SDF are being redeployed by the Americans for seizing oil and gas production facilities.

Still another crucial objective for Washington is to control the Deir ez-Zor east-west corridor from Iraq to Damascus so as to contain Iranian presence in Syria.

This is the context for Trump’s brazen declaration recognizing Israel’s annexation of Syria’s southern Golan Heights. Washington’s game plan is to keep Syria destabilized and fragmented, partly to appease Israel and partly for the US’s own imperial designs for dominance in the region.

In this insidious US maneuvering, the Kurds face a potentially treacherous situation. They have been well armed and supported by Washington, but are finding they are being used like a disposable asset. The Kurds may have calculated that accepting Washington’s patronage in recent years was a way to earn political capital for building a future separate independent Kurdish state. What seems to be emerging, however, is that the Americans only intend to exploit the Kurds as a fighting force to do its dirty work of breaking up Syria – in the same way that the Americans have covertly used jihadist terror groups in other parts of Syria.

The Kurds have been very effective in routing IS in the latter’s remaining strongholds in eastern Syria. But the result is the Kurds are being used as a recruitment agency for the Americans to redeploy the “defeated” terrorists in its ongoing covert war against the Syrian state.

There are signs, though, that the Kurds are well aware of the treacherous danger in dealing with Washington. When Trump made is troop withdrawal announcement, there were palpable concerns among the Kurds about being betrayed to the mercy of Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to send his military forces into Syria to crush the SDF and YPG militia whom Ankara views as “terrorist” affiliates of its own separatist Kurdish movement, the PKK.

It’s not clear if the US will implement a withdrawal of its estimated 2,000 troops in Syria. There are indications it won’t happen, despite Trump’s claims. Nevertheless, the surprise announcement was enough to undermine Kurdish confidence its patron. With the result that Kurdish leaders have begun reaching out to the Assad government in Damascus in the hope of dialogue producing a future federal arrangement.

The Kurds have reportedly requested Russia to mediate with the Syrian government.

Kurdish forces have not heretofore been at war with the Syrian Arab Army. They share the same common enemy of IS and assorted jihadist terror groups.

In the past, President Assad has rebuffed Kurdish aspirations for regional autonomy. But apparently, Damascus has shifted to be more open on forming a new federal constitution for Syria in which the Kurds would gain important regional independence – in a way analogous to the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq.

In this fateful political triangle that the Syrian Kurds find themselves, they would be advised to throw their lot in with the Damascus government. If a mutual pact could be established that would bring the two major chunks of Syria’s territory back into territorial integrity.

If, on other hand, the Kurds accede to Washington’s nefarious agenda, they run the risk of losing independence and being eviscerated from exploitation in endless dirty-war machinations by the Americans. An ominous sign is that after bravely fighting to rout IS, the Kurdish militia are being set up to form a devil’s bargain with the same terrorists – to satisfy Washington’s geopolitical interests.

The Kurds would do well to remember a cynical maxim in Washington, whereby the US “does not have allies, only interests”.

Blinded by Anti-Trumpism

By Finian Cunningham

December 22, 2018 "Information Clearing House" -     As the old saying goes, even a broken clock gets the time right twice a day. It could apply to US President Donald Trump. For all his flaws - and they are abundant - the White House occupant can surely get at least one or two things correct.

But the way critics of The Donald tell it, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, redeemable about the 45th president. The Democrats and their supportive news media outlets never give him a break.

Watching the likes of CNN is insufferable. It is so predictable. Bash Trump, slam Trump, carp, carp, carp. There is relentless negativity, to the point where his critics lose any credibility because they are coming from a doctrinaire anti-Trumpism. There is no interaction with facts or objective conditions. It's relentless prejudice and limpet-like adherence to a preconceived agenda.

Take Trump's latest order to pull US troops out of Syria. The president's decision this week was lambasted by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Democrats and Republicans were in unison, decrying the withdrawal of US forces from the Arab country as a "strategic blunder". It was said to be a "gift" to adversaries, either the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad, or Russian President Vladimir Putin, or Iran, or to ISIS terrorists.

Admittedly, Trump's declaration of "victory" over ISIS [Daesh*] in Syria and his celebratory news via Twitter of "our boys coming home" was cheesy grandstanding for his electoral supporters. Only days before Christmas, Trump was posing as Santa Claus with a shiny big present for the nation.

Nevertheless, the pullout of US forces from Syria has to be seen as a good and proper thing. For a start, the 2,000 American troops and squadrons of warplanes have been illegally present in that country for the past four years. They are an occupying army in violation of Syria's sovereignty since the US neither has a UN Security Council mandate for its operations nor of course authorization from the Syrian government.

Moreover, tens of thousands of Syrian civilians have been killed by US forces. The destruction of the city of Raqqa last year with thousands of women and children obliterated by US air strikes stands out as a monumental war crime.

Washington's claims of "fighting terrorists" in Syria does not justify the de facto invasion of the country. Besides, anyone who has honestly researched the conflict, instead of relying on Western news media, knows that the "war on terror" claim is a cynical cover for US forces to destabilize Syria and foment regime change against the Assad government. Assad's alliance with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, and his staunch anti-Israeli, anti-US imperialism is why Washington targeted his nation.

Tragically, before the war erupted in March 2011, Syrians had a proud and ancient history of peaceful coexistence between religious faiths.

Far from combating terrorism in Syria, the US has systematically weaponized and covertly directed the jihadists as proxies for its criminal regime-change objective. The supposed "popular uprising" in Syria against Assad was always a carefully contrived Western propaganda narrative to conceal the real agenda of regime change that Washington and its NATO allies and regional client regimes wanted.

In moments of clarity, Trump knows that. During his 2016 election campaign, he stated correctly that the Obama administration "created ISIS". And he said the war in Syria was pointless. That's not Trump being "conspiratorial" and "making stuff up". There is ample documented evidence that the American CIA and other NATO military intelligence orchestrated the jihadist proxies, along with billions of dollars from the Saudis and other Gulf Arab dictatorships.

Trump's self-congratulations this week for "winning the war against ISIS" are, to be sure, laughable. It was the Syrian army and its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies that defeated ISIS and the US-sponsored covert war for regime change.

Nevertheless, Trump's decision to pull troops and warplanes out of Syria — regardless of his spurious claims — is the right decision. The anti-government militants have largely been defeated. Withdrawing US forces from Syria can only expedite the eradication by the Syrian army and its allies of remnant terrorist holdouts.

Critics of Trump say there are up to 30,000 terrorist fighters scattered over Syria. These domestic critics, as well as European allies, have castigated Trump for walking away from the mission to destroy terror groups in Syria, and therefore allegedly putting the security of Western states at risk from future attacks. That view is ignorant or deluded about the real heroes in Syria — the Syrian army and its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies. Those forces are more than capable of continuing to finally eliminate the terrorists. The presence of the US and other NATO forces is only an impediment to that task.

The US-backed war for regime change in Syria has been defeated. It took eight years, but the Syrian people have won a historic war.

It is indeed time to get US military out of Syria as well as all NATO forces, which are illegally present in the country. American, British and French military and their political leaders should be indicted for war crimes due to their covert aggression and violation of Syria's sovereignty.

Strangely, politicians, pundits and Hollywood celebrities who claim to be "liberal" or "leftwing" — and who therefore might be expected to be anti-war — are queuing up to pillory Trump for his order to withdraw from Syria. Ironically, these critics are in effect endorsing war, illegal occupation and war crimes.

That curious contradiction tends to prove the superficiality and meaninglessness of Western "liberals". The seemingly only principle such people have is being "anti-Trump" no matter what the issue is.

Trump certainly deserves censure and opposition over his racist dog-whistling politics, his fascistic tendencies and his pro-rich oligarchic policies. But the mainstream US and European "liberals" never seem to oppose Trump on those issues. They are too concerned with irrelevant nonsense about "Russian collusion" and "Russian interference".

When the anti-Trump "liberals" can't see that ending American militarism overseas is the right thing to do, then you know their moral and political compass is defunct. Unlike Trump's broken clock which gets the time right twice a day, the anti-Trump brigade are too blind to see any viable direction at all.

*Daesh, also known as ISIS, ISIL, IS — a terrorist group banned in numerous countries, including Russia

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

From Palestine to Rohingya – talking points at Islamic unity conference

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

TEHRAN _ During the three-day International Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran this week, many brainstorming discussions were held as part of various commissions on some of the most pressing and significant issues facing the Muslim world today.

Many distinguished scholars, authors, cultural experts, diplomats, and politicians took part in these discussions and threw light on various issues.

In one of the commissions, former Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki spoke about the plight of Rohingya refugees and their impoverished conditions in Bangladesh’s refugee camps. He said the commission, which comprises foreign ministers of Jordon, Syria, Iraq, and Mauritania, will work to aid Rohingya refugees and highlight their issues in the media.

It has been one year since Rohingya Muslims were forced to leave Myanmar following a brutal crackdown by Myanmar military with support from the government. As per conservative estimates, there are around 905,000 Rohingya refugees presently in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar.

The savagery in Rakhine was described by the United Nations as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. The atrocities were widely documented by human rights bodies, including gang rapes, cold-blooded killings, torture and destruction of properties belonging to Rohingya Muslims.

In another commission, Palestinian resistance movement Hamas leader Ismail Radwan expressed anguish over growing proximity between some Arab states and the Zionist regime of Israel. He said the Palestinians with their unflinching resistance and continued struggle for the liberation of occupied territories would never allow any such “deal” from taking place.

Noted Islamic luminary Ayatollah Taskhiri, speaking in one of the commissions, also denounced Zionist regime’s war crimes in Palestine and called for the boycott of regime.

The unrelenting injustices perpetrated against the Palestinian people have stirred the conscience of people worldwide, transcending the religious divide. On the other hand, some Arab regimes, having ties with Israel and U.S., have been siding with the oppressors because of business interests.

U.S. President Donald Trump created a flutter last week when he remarked that Israel would be in “big trouble” without Saudi Arabia. “The fact is that Saudi Arabia is tremendously helpful in the Middle East, if we didn’t have Saudi Arabia we wouldn’t have a big base, we wouldn’t have any reason probably,” Trump told reporters, while defending Saudi crown prince over Jamal Khashoggi murder.

Mesbahi Moghadam, a senior Iranian politician and former lawmaker, speaking at the conference said one of the methods of forging unity and foiling the enemy plots was to reduce our dependence on dollar. If Muslim countries eliminate the use of dollar, he affirmed, the dollar will be lost and that would deal a body blow to the enemy.

Faisal Mostafa, a scholar from Algeria, in his talk accused Saudi Arabia of providing a launch pad to ISIS terrorists, who have wreaked havoc in many Muslim countries in recent years. He said a trial should be conducted for those Muslim rulers who betray fellow Muslims.
A delegation of students from Philippines said the role of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei in forging unity in the Muslim world should serve as a source of inspiration. They said the Leader has kept all sections of society in Iran, Shia and Sunni, in tandem and prevented major troubles.  

Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, the General Secretary of World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought, which organizes the conference, in his keynote address said Muslims should excel in cultural, economic, scientific, political and military fields. He said the Muslim world owns 70 percent of the world’s energy, water, and has significant population that utilizes these capacities to blend Islamic countries with the Islamic world.

Ayatollah Araki reiterated that supporting the oppressed people of Yemen was a “religious obligation” for all conscientious Muslims. The victory of the people of Yemen, he said, will expose the ‘enemies of Islam’.

Adnan Kafla, the representative of Ansarullah Yemen, highlighted the horrors of Saudi-led war and blockade in Yemen, quoting UNHCR figures, he said 24 million people needed immediate medical aid and 10 million people needed drinking water.

Pertinently, a much-anticipated UN Security Council resolution calling for a cessation of Saudi-led war in Yemen and for the humanitarian aid to be allowed to reach millions of starving people was “stalled” last week after British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who had moved the resolution, met with Saudi crown prince in Riyadh.

On the sidelines of the conference, the participants visited the shrine of Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution, on Sunday where they interacted with his grandson Syed Hassan Khomeini.

In his brief talk, Khomeini said the idea of ‘unity’ was not about abrogating one’s own beliefs, but respecting each other’s beliefs. He said the disintegration of Muslims gives the enemy an upper-hand. However, he added that Shias and Sunnis have opened channels of communication and dialogue to make their relationship better and stronger.

It is pertinent to note that Holy Qur’an considers all Muslims ‘brothers’ as stipulated in Surah Hujurat: “The faithful are indeed brothers. Therefore make peace between your brothers and be wary of Allah, so that you may receive His mercy.” This verse calls Muslims brothers in faith and makes unity and brotherhood between them a precondition for receiving God’s mercy.

The element of ‘mercy’ is extremely important in the Islamic discourse and in this conference, speakers put a lot of emphasis on ‘mercy’ and how the Holy Prophet (pbuh) was sent as a ‘mercy’ to mankind.

Dangerous Confrontation in The Middle East

by Dr Elias Akleh 

The Zionist Khazarian mafia; the shadow government, has been gradually taking control of the American government system since the mid-1940s until it gained total control in our present day. Presidency has been a bought commodity granted to the presidential candidate, who would play as the complete puppet in their hands following their sinister agendas. President Donald Trump represents the ultimate Zionist Khazarian puppet. The ultimate Zionist goal is the establishment of the Greater Israel Project in the heart of the Middle East after destroying every possible rival state in the region.

To protect the Israeli colony, successive American administrations had adopted foreign policies of dividing the Arab World into smaller states, creating chaos and rivalries among them, creating religious and sectarian conflicts, and destroying some strong states while neutralizing and crippling others. One state in the region; Iran, was able to renew itself and stood strong as a major stumbling block to the Zionist project. Israel and the US have recently refocused their aggression on Iran again. Thus, we witness the recent escalating confrontation that could devastate the whole world, not just the region, if it develops into a military action.

The focus on Iran started with the discovery of its vast oil fields in 1908. During WWII an Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran led to the installation of puppet Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the shah and the Iranian oil was used to power the Allied forces. After the war, Soviet Union withdrew from Iran but British forces remained. In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected as prime minister. He nationalized Iranian oil fields. This action led the US and Britain to orchestrate a coup (Operation Ajax) in 1953 to remove him from power and to reinstate the Shah, who brutally ruled the country for the next 25 years. In 1955 the US and Iran signed the Treaty of Amity to regulate the economic relations between the two countries. The US helped Iran build its first nuclear reactor and provided Iran with weapons grade enriched uranium as part of the Atom for Peace program.

In 1979 the Iranian revolution kicked the Shah out, closed the American embassy taking 53 Americans hostage, and regained control of oil fields. After the failure of Operation Eagle Claw to rescue the hostages the US and Iran signed the 1981 Accord in Algiers according to which Iran released the hostages and the US agreed not to intervene politically or militarily in Iranian affairs. The US, then, pushed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein into eight years war against Iran. Although the war devastated the country, the Iranians used the oil revenue to later rebuild and to modernize their country.

Iran continued to pursue its nuclear program with the help of the Soviet Union. The US then led a western economic sanction on Iran accusing the Iranian government of violating the NPT and demanding to open the nuclear facilities for inspection. After almost 13 years of negotiations the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015 and the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 2231 approving the deal. The Iranian nuclear facilities were opened for IAEA inspectors, who verified 11 times so far that Iran has been complying with the nuclear deal.

Yet the Zionist Khazars were not satisfied with the deal and Israel never stopped lying about the alleged secret Iranian nuclear bomb program. Trump’s administration joined in expressing its dissatisfaction with the Iran nuclear deal stating that it was horrible, one sided and had failed to protect American national security, and eventually unilaterally withdrew from the deal in violation of the UNSC resolution.  Trump wanted to draft what he called a more comprehensive deal that would address the full range of Iran’s activities, including its ballistic missile program and its alleged destabilizing military interventions in the region especially in Syria threatening Israel’s security, and its alleged sponsor of terrorist groups; Lebanese Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas and Yemeni Houthis; all labeled as terrorist groups by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE. Claiming a policy to modify Iranian regime behavior, not a regime change, Trump’s administration demanded that Iran capitulate to a dozen tough demands otherwise suffer the “strongest sanctions in history” as emphatically stated by the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Iran’s sin, as perceived by the American administrations, was its opposition to the Zionist Project of Greater Israel in support for the Arab resistance axis, and its help to Lebanese Hezbollah to liberate Lebanon from the 18 years Israeli occupation (1982-2000). Iran had again armed Hezbollah with weapons and missiles to inflict heavy casualties upon the Israeli army during the 2006 Israeli aggression against south Lebanon. The greatest Iranian sin was its help to Iraq and particularly to Syria to defeat the American/Israeli/Saudi/Qatari created and armed ISIS terrorists.  American Israeli need to curtail and contain Iran became critical especially after the Iran’s nuclear deal opening Iran to the global market.

We cannot stress the following facts enough times. Iran has never initiated a war of aggression against any other country during the last 400 years. The US on the other hand had initiated 222 wars of aggression (by 2017) all around the whole world throughout its 239 years of history or 93% of the time. The US had attacked many countries virtually on every continent using all types of weapons including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Since the end of WWII, the US had killed between 20 – 30 million people. American administrations had used lies, fake news, false flag attacks, and manufactured terrorist groups to justify its own many wars.

Israel had initiated 12 wars of aggression against its Arab neighbors throughout its short history of 70 years since its illegal occupation of Palestine, not mentioning its continuous sporadic aggressive bombings against its neighbors; Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria provoking further conflicts.

Iran does not have any military bases outside of its own borders. The US has approximately 800 formal military bases in 80 countries, many of which are surrounding and threatening Iran. Although Israel does not have any military base in other countries, yet its embassies act as its military bases, out of which Mossad’s assassins target whom they consider anti-Israel political and media activists. It is also an open secret exposed by Seymour Hersh’s book “The Samson Option”that these Israeli embassies store tactical nuclear bombs targeting capitals of states and threatening to take down the world if its policies are opposed.

Although Iran has harnessed nuclear energy for peaceful usage as verified many times by IAEA inspectors it does not have any nuclear bomb building program. Iran is a party in the NPT and had opened its nuclear facilities for IAEA inspectors. Although the US is a member in the NPT, yet IAEA inspectors have never published any report of their inspections of any American nuclear facility. It is well known that the US has the largest number of nuclear bombs and although US has committed to taking thousands of warheads offline since 2010 as part of the New START treaty the Trump administration plans to overhaul America’s nuclear bombs and develop new type of low-yield tactical nukes as proposed by Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review. Trump wants to update American nuclear weapons to become “… so strong and so powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression by any other nation or anyone else.”

General Jack Weinstein, deputy chief of staff of the US Air Force had announced that the US is in the final stages of a nuclear program of the production of 500 B61-12 tactical nuclear bombs for the cost of over $10 billion. Weinstein stated “we’ve already conducted 26 engineering, development and guided flight tests … the program’s doing extremely well.”

Trump signed Monday August 13th the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act with a record-setting $716 billion military spending bill that includes over $21 billion for nuclear weapons programs. Major news outlets neglected to mention nuclear weapons program, rather stressed the trivial fact that Trump did not mention Senator McCain in his speech.  The US allows itself to build nuclear bombs in violation of the NPT but sanctions other countries who allegedly do the same thing.

It is no secret that Israel is a nuclear country. The plight of the Israeli nuclear technician whistleblower; Mordechai Vanunu, is very well known.  Israel started its nuclear program in 1949 with the help of France building Dimona nuclear plant and with stolen American and Belgian nuclear material and technology. Israel had stolen uranium and nuclear technology from the US in what is known as NUMEC Affair (Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) known also as Apollo Affair. In 1968 Israel had also illegally obtained and smuggled 200 tons of yellowcake from Belgian mining company Union Miniere, in what is known as Operation Plumbat.

It is Israel, not Iran, that has a secret nuclear weapons program as accused by courageous Jill Stein; the 2016 nominee for the American presidency. Israel seemed to have upgraded its nuclear arsenal with smaller tactical bombs and had used them at least twice to bomb its Arab neighbors; once in Yemen and another in Syria. In May 20th 2015 two Israeli F-15 fighter planes painted with Saudi insignia (Saudi Arabia does not have F-15 planes) dropped what is believed to be a neutron bomb on Yemen. It was revealed by Russians that analysis of videos taken of the attack revealed proton bombardment from a neutron bomb. Receiving no international condemnation of this crime, Israel was emboldened and dropped another tactical neutron bomb on Hama, Syria, on Saturday night of 28th April 2018, whose tremor recorded a magnitude of 2.6 earthquake on European seismic monitoring stations. Israel is a rogue nuclear state that is not a party in, and refuses to sign the NPT.

Iran has never created, trained, financed, or armed any terrorist groups to destroy its neighboring countries, but has been fighting them on its own borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and in Iraq and Syria.  Yet Trump’s administration is accusing Iran of terrorism. Trump accused “no matter where you go in the Middle East, you find the finger prints of Iran.” Actually, it is the Israeli/American terrorist finger prints that could be detected in every Middle Eastern country. The US created, trained, and armed terrorist groups such as ISIS and its sister shoots. When terrorists got defeated in Deir Ezzor American helicopters evacuated their leaders. US and UK had also helped terrorists move back to Europe as reported by BBC. After the liberation of terrorists controlled areas in Syria, such as Ghouta, the Syrian army found large underground storages of American and Israeli weapons, including chemical weapons and American equipment to manufacture chemical weapons (here, and here).

Israel has been supporting terrorist groups in Syria; providing them with weapons, intelligence and even treating injured terrorist fighters in Israeli hospitals. Watch Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visiting these terrorists and inciting against Iran. Even the Wall Street Journal has reported that Israel routinely gives secret aid to “Syrian rebels.” Many Israeli weapons were discovered in terrorist underground warehouses. Lately, Israel had rescued many members of the White Helmets terrorist group and their families, and shipped them to Jordan, from where they will be resettled in Europe and Canada as refugees.  The group was reportedly founded by former British army officer and military contractor James Le Mesurier in 2014.

The Zionist plan to destroy Arab states has met strong hurdles due to Russian and Iranian interference. Arab states such as Lebanon, Iraq and Syria entered into alliances with Iran and Russia to protect their citizens from terrorism. Iran’s security lies into the security of the whole region. Russia has military and economic interests in the region.

Since the American/Israeli military wars in the Middle East had failed to produce the sought for results, Trump’s administration is waging now economic wars to push the people to force regime change. The US has re-imposed sanctions against Iran, imposed unfair trade tariffs on China, Russia, Canada, Turkey, and European Union in the hope to impose American will. To protect their economies these countries had retaliated and imposed counter tariffs on the US. To protect its companies doing business with Iran the EU had updated its 1996 Blocking Statute forbidding its companies from complying with the American sanctions legislation unless authorized by the European Commission. China decided to drop the Dollar and use its Yuan in its trade with Iran, which will boost the global value of the Yuan. Germany promised to improve its economic trade with Turkey while Qatar’s prince Tamim bin Hamad promised to invest $15 billion in Turkey.

Iranian president; Hassan Rouhani, responded to Trump’s threat of sanctioning Iranian oil with a warning that also carries what could be a peace offering. “… America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.” Rouhani stated.  War against Iran would involve at least all American military bases in the Gulf, all the Gulf states, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Turkey, Russia and China may somehow get involved. Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz; the entrance to the Persian Gulf, against all oil exports. Yemeni Houthis also threatened to close Bab al-Mandab Strait; the entrance to the Red Sea, against all marine traffic. These closures would cause great economic impact on the whole world. In Trump’s trade war the US seems to stand alone and isolated. American economy, although the world’s largest, would suffer greatly.

Will Trump’s administration choose “the mother of all wars” or the “mother of all peace” is the question.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine, after the 1948 Nakba when the Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after the Zionist, again, occupied the rest of Palestine.