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.  

U.S. ‘deep state’ and Trump’s anti-Iran rhetoric

By Mudasir Sheikh

TEHRAN - The U.S. deep state refers to a shadowy government consisting of an integration of Wall Street controlled U.S. intelligence community, Washington think tanks and the military-industrial complex that yields absolute control over popular governments and propagate the agenda of deep politics.

Deep state as referred to by Tom Hayden is a state within the state whose evidences of foreign interference dates back to 1962 CIA’s “Operation Northwoods” against Cuba.

CIA has also been instrumental in orchestrating ‘false flag attacks’ in addition to toppling democratically elected leaders like Guatemala’s president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973, Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

The deep state overshadowed U.S. government during Obama’s tenure in 2009 when the coup in Honduras was orchestrated by CIA.

The foreign powers like Israel and Gulf monarchies are strongly tied with the U.S. deep state. According to the former Italian president Francesco Cossiga who also revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, the 9/11 tragedy was perpetuated by CIA and Mossad.

If we even accept the mainstream narrative that al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11, it again justifies the role of CIA behind 9/11 as al-Qaida itself was the creation of CIA and Bin Laden was a CIA intelligence asset.

The Saudi regime also yields huge influence over the U.S. intelligence community as the complex milieu of Safari Club, BCCI and Adnan Khashoggi helped to consolidate CIA.

Iran and its allies are perceived as common enemies by Saudi monarchy and the Israeli regime thus it is quite obvious that they will use their influence of the U.S. deep in countering Iran. That is why Mike Pompeo in 2017 said that Saudi Arabia and Israel are working together to confront Iran and its allies and they are about to set up their joint military headquarters.

According to Yaakov Nagel, the former security advisor to Netanyahu and energy minister of Israel, Saudi Arabia is even ready to sacrifice the demands of Palestinian people for strengthening its ties with Israel. And recent events and statements by Saudi’s crown prince have proved that right.

The former Israeli Defense chief of army staff Gadi Eisenkot in an  interview to Sunday Times said that Israel has been directly engaged in supporting Syrian rebels with weapons and in 2018 Foreign Policy magazine reported that Israel is supporting at least 12 rebel groups in Syria with weapons and cash.

According to former U.S. vice president Joe Biden, hundreds of millions of dollars and a huge cache of military hardware was poured by Saudi Arabia to topple Assad government and the close cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel is meant to counter the Iranian influence in the region.

The US involvement and the common interests of Saudi Arabia and Israel are all set to implement their continuity of government procedures by repeating their anti-Soviet strategy into Syria as explained by Helena Cobban.

When the U.S. and its allies are on the verge of defeat in Syria, then a statement from John Bolton in which he said “we now have the best U.S.-Israeli relationship in our history, and the U.S. will remain committed to support Israel and its other allies in the region” and the statement from Mike Pompeo regarding Trump’s Syria withdrawal in which he said that the U.S. withdrawal from Syria is merely a "tactical change" and U.S. will not change its military capacity to fight ISIS or Iran clearly indicates the intentions of the U.S. officials and their friends in the Middle East to overrule Trump’s decision of Syrian withdrawal that just needs a lame excuse which may have already come in the form of January 16, 2019 attack by ISIS terrorists in northern Syrian town of Manbij.

The protection of Kurdish population as a condition for U.S. withdrawal from Syria as proposed by John Bolton after his meeting with Netanyahu in Israel is in coherence with the interests of Israel. The Kurdish rebels were blocking the so-called Iranian corridor by Israel into Syria and additionally the statement of Bolton is favoring the interests of military industrial complex as Bolton himself has been part of a project of council for national policy under the name of New American century in 2006 that is meant promote corporate interests in Honduras and elsewhere.

On the other hand, Black Water founder Erik Prince in an interview with Fox business proposed to replace U.S. troops with private military contractors to defend the interests of US and its allies in Syria and according to him without their help, US allies would be “smashed by Iranian and Syrian forces.”

So it is easy to conclude that Trump's decision of Syrian withdrawal is negatively perceived by the U.S. deep state and the private military interests are well prepared to reap profits from the blood of Syrian people.

So keeping in view the continuity of government procedures, the deep politics of deep state, Israeli-Saudi war machine and the intentions of warmongers like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, there are extremely slim chances of a long-lasting peace agreement in Syria and even if it happens they may open a new front under different pretexts as they have done in the past thus undermining any wise decisions from the US president.

Additionally the dire warning of Eisenhower about military industrial complex which he described as a threat to democratic government, the role of Allen Dulles in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and a strong pro-Israeli-Saudi lobby poses a serious question about the authority of Donald Trump to control the pro-war elements within U.S. establishment and the anti-Iran policies of White House.

The writer is a student and independent researcher based in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Iran’s key role in fight against America’s economic terrorism

By: Mudasir Sheikh

TEHRAN - The America’s economic terrorism against the Islamic Republic of Iran has assumed alarming proportions lately. But Iran stands unfazed. On August 20, 2018, Iran’s central bank-affiliated website took off U.S. dollar as a standard of measuring the average rate of Iran’s most tradable currencies. In February, Iran had switched from US dollar to Euro as the official reporting currency of the nation.

Recently President Hassan Rouhani announced a ‘secondary currency market’ and other comprehensive measures to tackle the devaluation of Rial. According to experts, Trump's hostile stance towards Iran is a major contributing factor for the devaluation of Rial, but President Rouhani’s recently announced policies are going to effectively counter this economic warfare.

The monopoly of US dollar in global trade has been effectively exploited by Washington to unleash its terror on sovereign states and to feed its unlimited deficits as beautifully explained by F. William Engdahl in his book ‘A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics.’
It is easy to picture that Iran is not alone in this battle against American economic terrorism but it is on the forefront. China’s objective is also to push the global economy away from the slavery of petrodollar into the levers of real influence. This century has witnessed a ten-fold growth in Chinese economy thus claiming the status of world’s second-largest economy but Beijing is highly annoyed by dollar’s hegemony in the global financial system.

So China has now agreed on bilateral trade agreements with other victims of American economic terrorism like Pakistan, Turkey, Russia, and Iran. The People’s Bank of China and European Central Bank have agreed on a currency swap to facilitate bilateral trade between EU and China, thereby dumping about 500 million Euros worth of U.S. dollars to add Yuan in their reserves. China has also developed a Yuan-based oil future contract bypassing the U.S. Dollar dominated Brent and West Texas Intermediate benchmark.

Recently German foreign minister Heiko Maas proposed an alternative to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication system, aka the SWIFT code, in response to the unilateral withdrawal of U.S. from Iran nuclear deal and to facilitate the operations of EU companies into Iran as some companies such as Total and Maersk have suspended their Iranian operations due to the fear of reprisal from the U.S.

EU is not only challenging the SWIFT but back in 2017 Brussels proposed European Monetary Fund (EMF) in order to provide emergency financial assistance to member countries and to initiate a radical transformation into the financial institution of EU so that they can cope with the petrodollar hegemony.

According to a Wall Street Journal analyst, Gerald F. Seib, the use of petrodollar as a political weapon may cause its demise as obvious from the developments within Iran, Russia, and China, which are constantly exploring options to develop a parallel mechanism to facilitate global trade. Turkey’s changing stance and the establishment of New Development Bank (NDB) by BRICS member countries are also nails in the coffin of U.S. dollar standard.

According to a report by Forbes, Russia is also trying to develop an alternative to the SWIFT in an attempt to break the backbone of the western financial system. So Russia in consultation with China is about to introduce BRICS SWIFT. In addition to this BRICS countries have established their own bank by the name of New Development Bank (NDB), with similar functions as that of the World Bank.

China’s front to bring down the petrodollar has started with the launch of RMB priced crude oil Benchmark backed by gold which is a direct threat to current Brent and WTI benchmarks. Russia has also introduced its own payment gateway Mir to counter the U.S. based VISA and MasterCard companies. According to Russian National System of Payment Cards (NSPK), Mir has issued more than 13.9 million cards covering 10% of Russia in 2017.

Now as we have observed, Iran and a large number of other countries are facing the same problem of petrodollar hegemony and a lot of progress has been made to eliminate it. Iran has always been known for its consistent stand against the American hegemony and imperialism. Once again the world is looking at the leadership of Iran to consider the experience from monetary history and the cutting edge development into the field of technology like blockchain and hashgraph to design a much needed transparent and just economic system for the oppressed people across the world.

Technologies like blockchain and hashgraph based money, if fully redeemable in gold, can deliver a new global paradigm of financial freedom and a complete independence from U.S. dollar-based predatory international monetary system.  Blockchain and hashgraph are immune to manipulation and Gold is indestructible and resistant to inflation as obvious from the monetary history of last 5000 years. Additionally, blockchain based crypto currencies constitute the most efficient medium of exchange and gold is an unmatched commodity as for as the store of value is concerned and thus a combination of these two entities is a way forward for attaining the financial freedom.

Additionally BRICS, Iran, and other countries can develop a common financial institution that will look after the business transactions within these countries and with the rest of the world. A common crypto-currency redeemable in gold and a transparent financial institution can prevent concentration of power in a single entity so that the petrodollar like catastrophe can be avoided in the future.

Writer is a student and independent researcher based in Indian controlled Kashmir.