Trump’s Pardoning of War Criminals & Support for Terrorists in Iran, Proof of US State Terrorism

By: Kayhan Int’l 

A criminal always defends criminals and their unpardonable crimes against nations.
That was the message of Donald Trump’s pardoning of US army officers involved in war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The White House said in a statement last Friday that the US President granted full pardons to First Lieutenant Clint Lorance and Major Mathew Golsteyn, and ordered that the rank Edward Gallagher held before he was convicted in a military trial this year be restored.
For us in the Islamic Republic of Iran this is not surprising when we recall the criminal action of President George Bush Sr. in awarding in 1990 the cowardly captain of the USS Vincennes the ‘Legion of Merit’ decoration for his act of unpardonable terrorism on July 3 1989, in shooting down in Iran’s territorial waters an Iran Air passenger plane with 290 persons on board, including 66 children, on its regular 4-days a week flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai.

For the past forty years, Iran is the victim of Washington’s crimes and various acts of terrorism. The latest in this regard are the criminal statements of support uttered last Saturday by Donald the Dotard and his gangster-like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for vandals and urban terrorists who torched banks, busses, private cars, shops, and public property in some Iranian towns and cities, by infiltrating the peaceful public protests on petroleum hike.
Our enemies are indeed a bunch of crazy criminals who in their hatred of Iran, cannot differentiate between the masses and the miscreants.
As a matter of fact, crimes and terrorism are ingrained in the nature of the US, beginning with the genocide of the native Amerindians in the 19th century, followed by the enslavement of the black people brought in chains from Africa.
On the international scene, the Americans whose savagery horrified the people of Europe in World War First, committed more war crimes during World War 2 than the German Nazis or for that matter the Japanese imperialist army in Southeast Asia.
This is borne out not just by the criminal atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a field test upon civilians and urban centres when the war was almost over with Japanese troops on full retreat from all fronts, but by the brutal bombing of Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg, Potsdam, and other Germany cities that resulted in the killing of almost half-a-million civilians.
Waves upon waves of US bombers reduced many German cities to virtual debris, and when the American ground forces advanced towards Berlin, Dresden etc., there were mass massacres, coupled with wide scale rape of German women.
Yet, the victorious allied powers hailed the savage American soldiers as liberators of Europe by totally whitewashing their crimes against humanity. Not a single Yankee faced accusations, let alone trial or punishment for war crimes.
In Northern Korea in 1950, the US war crimes pounded almost seventy percent of towns and cities, killing over a million men, women, and children, for no apparent fault, and remained scot free.
Vietnam is a living example of American war crimes, where the internationally banned chemical weapons were used to bomb towns, cities and farmlands. There were mass massacres of villagers by the frustrated US soldiers unable to break the heroic resistance of the Vietcong. Besides, thousands of children were born as a result of the systematic rape of Vietnamese women by the criminal Yankees.
If there was justice, the soldiers and commanders, along with the US presidents and their cabinets should have faced war crime charges and punished, but nothing of this sort happened.
Afghanistan happens to be a hapless country where US soldiers have continued to commit war crimes at will, and the two pardoned last Friday by Trump the Chief Terrorist, were mere examples of Washington’s mockery of international laws.
In Iraq, over a million people were killed, either directly or indirectly, by the US occupation forces and their agents. Then there is the mayhem carried out in Iraq by the Daesh terrorists, which were armed and encouraged by the Americans.
In Syria, the illegal presence of American troops is proof of war crimes as well as the destruction of towns and cities, coupled with the death of some half-a-million people and the displacement of millions of others. For the past 8 years, Washington has destabilized Syria through dangerously armed terrorist outfits which have used chemical weapons as well.
The list of US terrorism and crimes against humanity is long, and includes the 5-year Saudi war in Yemen, but the most glaring proof of Washington’s war crimes is the illegal Zionist entity, which is engaged in genocide against the Palestinians.

Trump’s embrace of white supremacy is poisoning America’s soul

In the first 216 days of this year, 251 mass shootings took place in the US—killing over 520 people and injuring at least 2,000. Is it just a coincidence that of the ten worst mass shootings in American history, five took place since 2016?

Can anyone suggest that incumbent US President Donald Trump has nothing to do with it? Leave it of course to Trump to blame the press, mental illness, and even video games of being behind the frequency of mass shootings.

What follows is an article by Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, shedding light on this under the heading: “Trump’s embrace of white supremacy is poisoning America’s soul.”

Within 13 hours, two mass shooting took place — in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio—killing 31 innocent people and injuring twice as many. American people normally hear about these horrifying incidents, express sorrow and bewilderment, talk about gun control, and move on. Politicians, including President Trump, dispatch their old and tired expressions of condolences and offer prayers to console the bereaved families of the victims. But then Americans go about their daily routine, knowing that the next mass shooting looms as if it were a natural phenomenon like a thunderstorm, in the face of which they can do nothing. And tragically, the vicious cycle continues.

This time, however, something far more sinister and profoundly troubling is at play. Race, guns, and immigration were so artfully combined by a racist president who is sworn not to pass meaningful gun control laws to please his base, promotes racism to divide the country, and calls Hispanic immigrants “invaders” to make them targets. During the past few months, Trump spent over a million dollars on Facebook ads with the word “invasion” in big letters to spread fear among his constituents and create an atmosphere ripe for violence against people of color.

In the first 216 days of this year, 251 mass shootings took place in the US—killing over 520 people and injuring at least 2,000. Is it just a coincidence that of the ten worst mass shootings in American history, five took place since 2016? Can anyone suggest that Trump has nothing to do with it? Leave it of course to Trump to blame the press, mental illness, and even video games of being behind the frequency of mass shootings.

Darker and more ominous days await American people. Mass shootings cannot be addressed in isolation but in the context of the general environment in which they are living. The country is politically divided, Americans’ values are being stomped on, racism is consuming their social fabric, white supremacists parade their bigotry with pride, and the president contributes to the epidemic of gun violence by spreading hate to promote his political agenda.

When a president makes racism and bigotry the order of the day, and Republican leaders condone it by virtue of their silence, it poisons Americans’ social and political organs and defies the very premise on which this country was founded.

The mass shooting in El Paso was explicitly motivated by hate, claiming there is a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. It was a hate crime targeting Hispanics, whom Trump sees as alien, rapists and criminals, taking away jobs, sapping public resources, and above all changing the color of the US. This is the message that Trump is conveying to his white supremacist followers, that America is becoming ‘browner’ and something must be done to prevent that from happening, all while pointing the finger at Hispanic immigrants as the culprits.

True, mass shootings have occurred before and may continue for years after Trump leaves office. The degree to which mass shootings slow or escalate, however, depends not only on the passage of strict gun control laws but on the action or inaction from Trump and the Republican Party, because they must bear the full responsibility for the sorry state of affairs in which Americans find themselves. They do not hold their breath waiting for their racist-in-chief to do anything about it.

In fact, the precise opposite will happen. At a time of looming elections, Trump will continue to drum up his racism and dehumanizing of immigrants, and use toxic language against anybody who looks Hispanic. He believes that fomenting social division is a brilliant strategy to nurture his white supremacist base which listens to him and follows his preaching. The shooter in El Paso echoed precisely Trump’s sentiment. And while Trump is talking about some gun control legislation, neither he nor his submissive Republican Senate will consider or debate any such laws that may alienate any segment of his followers.

While the Democratic candidates for president continue to bicker about healthcare, taxes, and climate change, however important these issues maybe, they have not only ignored the need for gun control laws, but more important failed to address where the country is headed under Trump’s watch. While they labeled Trump as a racist, they have not focused on the implications of his racist utterances and how devastatingly that impacts America’s social cohesiveness and tolerance, which is the moral glue that keeps the country together.

The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to have totally abdicated their moral responsibility and resolved to enable Trump and use him to promote their socio-political and economic agenda. The fact that America’s international standing is at an all-time low and domestic social disintegration is alarmingly unfolding does not seem to bother the Republicans, who put their personal and party interest above the nation’s.

Just imagine what might happen if Trump loses the next election? Having polarized the country politically to the degree that he has, his poisonous rhetoric against people of color, concoction of a Hispanic invasion, alignment with white supremacists, and catering to his base has created an extraordinarily ominous environment that invites extremism and violence.

Although at this juncture enacting gun control laws remains critically important, they are not enough to remedy the damage that Trump has done to America. Under his watch, America has lost its soul. He has sown hatred, nurtured divisiveness, and pitted one segment of the American people against the other. Anti-Semitism has reached a new high, people of color are targets of disdain and discrimination, corruption and obstruction of justice is at the top, and alas, mass shootings are further escalating.

Trump will be damned by history for tearing the country apart, and as long as he is in power, Americans should expect that America’s values and its moral standing will continue to degrade potentially to a point of no return.

Trump is dangerous, and the American public must unseat him to save America’s soul before it’s too late.

Murderous MBS Doing ‘Excellent Job’

 

By: Kayhan Int’l 

Recently at the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, when the quixotic US president, Donald Trump – an avowed terrorist dreaming to become a mass murderer – met the murderous Mohamed bin Salman (MBS, the self-imposed Heir Apparent of Saudi Arabia), he was all praise for the notorious Najdi for "doing excellent job”.

Trump didn’t elaborate what excellent work MBS was doing in the fiefdom created by Britain in 1932 for the minority Wahhabi cult, whose heretical founder of the late 18th century, Mohamed bin Abdul-Wahhab, was also a British agent who championed sedition, plunder, torture, murder, and desecration of Islamic sanctities – in the guise of Islam, of course – for satisfying the devilish nature of uncivilized desert dwellers (and later of primitive mountain tribes in other lands), into believing that whatever they did was for religion and as ‘devout’ Muslims.

Since the hot topic coinciding with the G20 meeting was the well-researched report of Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions, who found "credible evidence” of MBS’ involvement in the brutal dismemberment of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoqchi last October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, the US president, in his usual hypocrisy, said some seemingly sympathetic words for The Washington Post columnist, but absolved Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler of any guilt.

It is the habit of hardened criminals not to criticize each other. And irrespective of the veracity of the UN report, why would Trump blame MBS when the latter is indeed doing "excellent job” in whatever Washington has entrusted him with. 

First and foremost is the steady flow of hundreds of billions of dollars into US coffers of the ill-accumulated oil wealth (in fact, looted), of the Saudi clan in the name of arms purchases, technology and etc. – with generous percentage pouring into the personal accounts of Trump and family, including Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner for his drafting of the ‘deal of the century’ for the sellout of Palestine to the Zionist regime.

Then there is MBS’ avowed enmity with the Islamic Republic, and the funding of macabrely murderous terrorist outfits, known as Takfiris, to strike at Iranian interests and at Iranian allies anywhere in the region, including in Iran, where mercenaries based in Pakistan or Iraq come in handy for a fistful of dollars for cross-border acts of terrorism in the frontier provinces.

That is the reason the Riyadh regime, which is the principal financier for the MKO terrorists, carries out frequent bouts of massacres in the predominantly Shi’a Muslim oil-rich eastern region of the Arabian Peninsula and backs the repressive Aal-e Khalifa minority regime to crush the democratic aspirations of the long suppressed majority of Bahrain, where the US has based its 5th Fleet to fleece the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms on the pretext of providing protection to them by projecting Iran as the bogeyman.

Next is the genocidal war MBS has imposed upon Yemen over the past five years, massacring almost a hundred thousand men, women, and children so far, in addition to destroying the infrastructure and starving millions of others through blockade of that country’s land, sea and air corridors, because the Yemeni people strive to be independent of Saudi-American-Zionist hegemony.

The continued Najdi occupation of Hijaz, the Land of Divine Revelation (since the bloodbaths the Wahhabi hordes unleashed in 1925 in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina), and manipulation of the annual Hajj is also an "excellent job” that MBS carries out in the interests of the Americans and the Zionists by posing as "Custodian of the Two Holy Shrines” in order to hoodwink naïve Muslims into believing that the rite of "disavowal of disbelievers” with denunciation of the US and Israel, is tantamount to politicizing the pilgrimage and thereby irreligious – although in the opening ayahs of Surah Towba the Holy Qur’an commands the fulfillment of this ritual against the enemies of humanity.
MBS has delivered Egypt and Sudan to the US, is backing the CIA agent Khalifa Haftar’s bid to takeover Libya, and has endorsed the US recognition of Islam’s third holiest city, Bayt al-Moqaddas, as the capital of Israel.

All this means that he is doing an "excellent job”. So why would Trump and his team of thugs take cudgels on behalf of a dead journalist, whose bodily parts cruelly cut to pieces through a chainsaw while still alive and either burned or fed to animals, brings no benefit to the US?

"All is fair in crime and terrorism”, is the motto of megalomaniacs of our times, whether it is Trump, Netanyahu or MBS.

In other words, there are no takers, even at the UN headquarters in New York, for Agnes Callamard’s meticulous report on Khashoqchi’s murder despite the fact it is based on a six-month investigation, including access to recordings of events inside the consulate provided by the Turkish government.

We offer our condolences to the macabrely murdered journalist’s bereaved family, whether his sons Salah and Abdullah who unable to speak freely are living in an atmosphere of fear in Saudi Arabia, or whether his Turkish fiancée, Khadija Chengiz, who waited in vain outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for his return with permission for marriage, and through whom the whole world learned of the sadistic killing, which MBS had plotted to conceal forever.

Trump On Iran: A Lie That May Lead To War

by Paul R. Pillar

On the first work day of the new year, President Trump held a cabinet meeting that was open to the press and consisted mostly of a rambling monologue by the president about border walls and assorted other topics. Toward the end of the proceedings, Trump castigated anew the “horrible Iran nuclear deal” and asserted that the agreement “in eight years, gives Iran the legal right to have nuclear weapons.”

No analysis or research by fact checkers is needed to see the bald-faced nature of that lie. The text of the nuclear deal—formally, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—explicitly says the opposite. It’s right up front in paragraph iii of the preamble: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” This obligation is permanent. It reaffirms Iran’s prior obligation as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty not to acquire nukes. The JCPOA strengthens this obligation by coupling it with the most intrusive international nuclear monitoring and inspection regime any state has every voluntarily imposed on itself, along with the other severe restrictions that the JCPOA placed on Iranian nuclear activities.

Trump’s falsehood continues a long campaign of misrepresentation by those who have opposed the JCPOA for reasons unrelated to nuclear proliferation. These reasons have to do with denying domestic political opponents any achievements and aligning with certain regional rivals of Iran who would like to keep it ostracized. Much of the misrepresentation has been less bald-faced than Trump’s lie. Much of it has used fuzzier language to create the impression that the JCPOA gave Iran something in the nuclear area rather than taking something away. By inculcating that impression in a broader audience, the opponents of the JCPOA disguise the fundamental illogic of their position. They claim that they want to prevent an Iranian bomb, and yet they work to destroy the one agreement that has effectively closed all possible paths to such a bomb.

Responses to Donald Trump’s lying on a wide range of topics over the past two years have demonstrated his ability to get a substantial proportion of the American public to believe his lies. This latest lie about the JCPOA may become part of a widely shared misperception that affects American opinion about policy toward Iran, even if no administration statement repeats it formally and officially. In that respect, the dynamics of public opinion would resemble those exhibited during the sales campaign for the offensive war against Iraq in 2003. That campaign emitted so many innuendoes about Iraq and al-Qaeda that a substantial proportion of Americans came to believe that the Iraqi regime had instigated the 9/11 terrorist attack, even when the Bush administration was not specifically asserting that it had.

The danger of Trump’s falsehood about the JCPOA is that the resulting misperception may form the backdrop for a sales campaign by the current administration to launch an offensive war against Iran. Other misperceptions the administration is cultivating complement Trump’s lie about the JCPOA. Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, states, “we have little doubt that Iran’s leadership is still strategically committed to achieving deliverable nuclear weapons.” That assertion is contrary to the U.S. intelligence community’s judgment but Bolton has never hesitated to ignore intelligence judgments that do not support his objectives.

The assertion also is contrary to the history of Iran’s nuclear activities. The Iranian regime clearly did have an interest in nuclear weapons and did technical work to that possible end a couple of decades ago. As a pariah state, the regime kept the nuclear weapons option open for several more years. When given the opportunity, however, to get out from under nuclear-related sanctions and lose some of the pariahdom if it accepted restrictions and scrutiny that would keep it a non-nuclear weapons state, the Iranian regime took that opportunity by negotiating and signing the JCPOA. If that bargain collapses, and especially if the Iranians face the threat or reality of military attack and seek a strong deterrent against such attack, then their earlier interest in nuclear weapons may return. But if so, they would be responding directly to actions of the Trump administration, not to any “strategic commitment” of Iran itself.

Bolton recently added to the administration’s upside-down portrayal, in which it describes the knocking down of barriers to an Iranian bomb as if it were a blow against such a bomb rather than a stimulus for one, by appointing an anti-JCPOA hardliner as his “Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction.” It is easy to see how the pieces of misrepresentation now fit together. Iran is portrayed as “strategically committed” to acquire nuclear weapons, which after just a few years the JCPOA gives it the “legal right” to do, but which the Trump administration is ardently working to “counter.” All that is needed is some triggering incident—perhaps an accidental naval encounter in the Persian Gulf or a Shia militia somewhere firing ordnance at a U.S. facility—to make this mélange of nuclear misperception the core of a public case for launching a new war.

This danger was underscored the other day by a report that Bolton had asked the Pentagon to provide options for a military attack on Iran. Bolton has made clear for a long time that he would love a war with Iran. So would Trump’s biggest political bankroller, Sheldon Adelson, who even would like to escalate the conflict right away to the nuclear level. Trump himself, who is no second fiddle to his backers and subordinates in exuding hostility to Iran, probably feels the need to exude even more after taking some lumps from hardline supporters about his confusing policy on Syria and his remark at that same early January cabinet meeting that the Iranians “can do what they want in Syria.”

Then there are all the other reasons why in 2019 the distracting and rallying effects of a new foreign war may seem all the more attractive to Trump, including his sliding poll numbers, the scrutiny of a Democratic-majority House of Representatives, and the upcoming conclusion of the Mueller investigation amid more evidence of campaign collusion with Russia.

Trump’s rampant mendacity poses many serious problems for the republic and will need to be addressed for a long time, even after Trump leaves office. But for now, priority attention should be given to the lies that are most apt to lead to something as disastrous for the United States as becoming entangled in a new Middle Eastern war.

Could Pyongyang Trust Washington?

By: Kayhan Int’l 

The US, especially its Chief Executive, is talking of the possibility of another summit with the Leader of North Korea, while the American press continues its propaganda of portraying Pyongyang as a threat to Washington’s security – diabolical policies indeed which raise questions about the sincerity of the White House.

North Korean leaders are well aware of the fact that they cannot trust the United States. Having been deceived once before during Bill Clinton’s presidency regarding its nuclear projects, Pyongyang ought to be extra cautious of the feelers and intentions of Washington.

How could North Korea scale down its atomic nuclear weapons capability when the US shows no signs of reducing its own stockpile of doomsday weapons? 

Is the US prepared to practically dismantle part of its own weapons of mass destruction in order to prove its sincerity for peace, which requires withdrawal of its occupation troops from South Korea and other provocative acts of unwarranted military presence in East Asia.

In other words, the US is an unreliable partner, and it has long been one, even before Donald Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Paris agreement on climate change, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action) with Iran, and the 1955 Treaty of Amity with Iran (following the recent decision of the International Court of Justice against its illegal sanctions). 

Trump has also ended the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, and eventually a preliminary deal was reached out. The new name for the agreement will be the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

History is witness to the treaties that the US has signed but not ratified; signed and then unsigned, and even refused to sign after pushing everyone else to sign.

The Dotard in the White House thinks he is clever – all fools do – and might not realize the lasting damage he is causing to the US and to world peace, as villain of the piece in every matter.

Kim Jong-un knows better than to trust the US. The US has violated every treaty, every agreement, every accord, every pact, and every commitment it has made. In fact, it was the US that first nuclearized the Korean Peninsula in 1957 in violation of the 1953 Armistice Agreement.
If not for American meddling and greed to grab the lands of others, the Korean Peninsula would neither have witnessed war of 1950 nor its unnatural and illegal division in two parts at the 38th parallel – factors that are cause of the tension of the past seven decades.
Korea needs peace, and people on either side of the border, fed up with American mischief, are yearning for reunion, which the US doesn’t want.
North Korean Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol paid a rare visit to Washington and met with Trump and other top US officials on Friday. Later on it was announced by White House that Trump will meet with leader Kim in February for the second time after they held their first summit in Singapore last June.
Over six months have lapsed since then and nothing concrete has come out. Diplomacy is a necessity in international relations but deceit is deplorable. All said and done, Pyongyang needs to be on full alert while negotiating with either Trump or his team.     

President Rouhani Dismisses Trump’s Claim of Meeting Request

Crescent International

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran rejected claims by Donald Trump that he or any of his officials had ever sought a meeting with the US president. Such a meeting, said the Iranian President, would not be “appropriate”.

President Rouhani made the remarks during an interview with Christiane Amanpour of CNN on September 25 in New York. On his visit to attend the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, the Iranian president has met with or will meet other world leaders but not Trump.

On Tuesday (September 25), resorting to pronouncements by tweets, Trump wrote on his twitter account: @realDonaldTrump:

Despite requests, I have no plans to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Maybe someday in the future. I am sure he is an absolutely lovely man. 6:53 am, Sep. 25.

This was an utter lie but Trump is a habitual liar. It is in his genes. He lies, he cheats and is totally unreliable. Why would the president of Iran waste time with a moron whose mental capacity, according to his own Defence Secretary James Mattis is that of a “fifth or sixth grader”?

To make sure his point was properly understood, President Rouhani said the Islamic Republic had not requested a meeting between the two leaders.

“Not this year, nor last year,” he told Amanpour of CNN. “We have never made such a request for a meeting with the president of the United States.”

Exposing what had really transpired, President Rouhani said that Iran had received eight requests from US officials for a meeting last year. All of them were turned down because he did not think talks between the two sides were “appropriate,” then or now.

The Iranian president was being polite when he said such a meeting would not be “appropriate”. He should have said it would be a complete waste of time.

The Rahbar of the Islamic Republic, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamene’i has ruled out any talks with US officials since Trump unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA (aka the Iran nuclear deal) in May. The agreement was hammered over years of negotiations and signed by six countries and Iran. The UN also endorsed this through Security Council resolution no: 2231. Despite this, Trump just walked away!

Trump is desperate for a meeting with Iranian officials. This is his style; he first tries to bully others by making outlandish allegations (supporting terrorism when Iran is the victim of US-Saudi-Zionist backed terrorism as was witnessed most recently in Ahvaz on September 22) and imposing illegal sanctions and then seeks a meeting to present himself as statesman. This is what he did with Kim Jung un of North Korea.

What Trump fails to realize—and he will never understand given his mental limitations—is that Iran is not North Korea. The leadership of the Islamic Republic does not play games. They are sophisticated people with a history dating several thousand years.

America has no history. As Oscar Wilde said: “America has gone from barbarism to decadence without going through civilization.” Trump is a typical specimen of this reality: uncouth, unreliable and vulgar.

Trump does not deserve to be honored with a handshake with the President or any other official of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

Crescent International