25th Jan 2024

Biden Is Planning to Invade Iran

By C. Rice, PPEmpire

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TheTelegraph: Iran is now a “legitimate target” for Israeli missile strikes, one of the country’s most senior ministers has told the Telegraph, raising the prospect of an all out war with Tehran.

In a wide-ranging interview, Nir Barkat, Israel’s economy minister, also said Palestinians from the West Bank would never be allowed to work in the country again and will be replaced by more than a quarter of a million imported foreign workers.

He also complained that the war in Gaza had not been fought aggressively enough.

Mr Barkat, who is favorite to succeed Benjamin Netanyahu as leader of the ruling Likud party, said Israel can afford to keep fighting and open up a new front with Lebanon.

JNS: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to threaten Tehran with nuclear weapons in his address at the U.N. General Assembly.

“Iran must face a credible, nuclear threat. As long as I am prime minister of Israel, I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said. 

A senior adviser to the prime minister told JNS that the original text of the speech called for “a credible military threat” against Iran’s nuclear program.

“It was misread as a credible nuclear threat,” the adviser told JNS. “The prime minister stands by the original text of the speech.”

According to a 2014 report by the Federation of American Scientists, however, the Jewish state is believed to possess between 80 and 400 nuclear weapons.

NBCNews: Anxiety in Lebanon is focused on one wild card: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s political insecurity brought on by the crisis in Gaza and deepening unpopularity at home have many fearing that he could fire up the cross-border war to a full boil, spilling it into Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen and even scalding American naval assets in the Mediterranean Sea.

Many among Lebanon’s officialdom — NBC News spoke to a dozen diplomats, military chiefs and leaders of militant organizations for this article — fear that Netanyahu may turn his personal troubles into a regional nightmare.

Protests against Netanyahu that were put on hold in the wake of Oct. 7 have restarted amid growing criticism within Israel over failure to secure the release of hostages, the conduct of the war, and the failures that allowed Hamas to attack in the first place.

IsraelToday: Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen called on Washington to take steps to convince Tehran that the United States is not bluffing when it comes to the possibility of the use of force.

“If the United States does not establish a credible military threat immediately, either Israel will attack, or Iran will have a nuclear weapon, which we will not allow under any circumstance,” the foreign minister said.

US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides, speaking to the Conference of Presidents, said that “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with Iran.

“As President [Joe] Biden has said, we will not stand by and watch Iran get a nuclear weapon,” added Nides.

JNS: “If we cannot stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon by other means, we shall have to do it militarily,” Israel Defense Forces Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told JNS.

Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), goes still further, saying that the Abraham Accords will disintegrate if Israel doesn’t act against Iran.

“The Abraham Accords are basically a deal between Israel and the Gulf States. They will give us peace—a warm peace. They will accept us as partners [under U.S.] Central Command. And we will take care of Iran. They didn’t come for technology or for money. They can buy everything they want,” he said.

The dilemma for Israel is whether to strike soon and do some damage or wait to develop better plans, Inbar said. In the meantime, Iran will strengthen the defenses around its nuclear sites.

Kuperwasser agreed: “The Iranians are going to use this time to increase considerably their air defense systems; their ability to strike back. Every day that passes makes it more difficult and more costly.”

According to a report by The Times of Israel, an Israeli defense official claimed to have received “good hints” with regards to the US having a functional offensive plan against Iran. The Israeli official did not provide specifics, but claimed that this offensive plan could make Iran become more flexible throughout the negotiation process of the nuclear agreement.

If Iran does not yield, the Israeli official claimed that the US would be prepared to join Israel in taking military action against Iran.

AP: Israel's foreign minister said that the Gulf Arab state of Oman has decided to allow Israeli planes to fly through its airspace. The announcement was another sign of closer ties between Israel and some Arab countries.

The move comes on the heels last year of a similar step by Saudi Arabia, and would shorten the flying distance between Israel and Asia.

The sultanate has long had a low-key role in fostering negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. Oman, which sits on the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, with Saudi Arabia to its north and Iran to its east, also has a long record of being a quiet broker in the region, opting to stay on the sidelines of the rivalry between the two regional powerhouses.

According to the official, Iran’s nuclear program has grown significantly since 2018 when the administration of former President Donald Trump exited the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The official believes that Trump’s decision to exit the deal was a mistake.

Now, the official maintains that Israel faces the following two scenarios:

No agreement, allowing Iran to gradually expand its nuclear program further, or a bad deal that does not serve Israel’s interests.

InternationalBusinessTimes: Iran could make enough material for a nuclear device in less than two weeks, Colin Kahl, the under secretary for policy of the Department of Defense said, down from the estimated one year it would have taken while the Iran nuclear deal was in effect.

"Back in 2018, when the previous administration decided to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it would have taken Iran about 12 months to produce one bomb's worth of fissile material. Now it would take about 12 days," he added of Iran's "breakout time."

Iran has produced uranium particles enriched to up to 83.7% purity, Reuters reported, citing a confidential report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seen by the outlet. It means the country is very close to producing weapons-grade uranium with 90% purity.

WDVM: Tensions are rising between the U.S. and Iran. Defense officials say American ships shot down more than a dozen drones and missiles in the Red Sea following a drone attack on a U.S. air base in Iraq on Christmas day that follows a retaliatory strike by the U.S. on Iranian-backed terrorist groups in Iraq.

The back-and-forth strikes undercut efforts by the U.S. and others to keep the Israel-Hamas war from spilling into a wider regional conflict.

NYPost: The US, which has imposed tough sanctions on Iran, confiscated the Iranian oil cargo on the Iranian-flagged Pegas that Greece impounded off its coast in April. Tehran retaliated by seizing two Greek ships on May 27.

While media from around the world accused Iran of piracy, Khamenei responded: “Who is the pirate here? You stole our oil. We took it back from you. Taking back a stolen good is no theft.”

TheTelegraph: Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea unless Israel stops bombing Gaza, as the US warned Tehran was “deeply involved” in attacks on shipping.

“They shall soon await the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, [the Strait of] Gibraltar and other waterways,” Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, a senior member of the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said today.

Wired: Newt Gingrich foresaw an economic nightmare if the Iranians follow through on their threat to close a waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil flows. "If they close the Straits of Hormuz, you have an industrial depression across the planet within 48 hours," Gingrich said.

The military may think otherwise. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said Iran can only close the strait for "a period of time" before the Navy "can defeat that" effort.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian blasted what he called the West’s double standards on Gaza, accusing the US and its allies of caring more about disruptions to global trade than civilians being killed in Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinian enclave. Israel says its aim is to destroy Hamas, which attacked on Oct. 7 and is designated a terrorist group by the US.

Gaza, with a population roughly the same size as Houston, Texas, has been bombarded from land, sea, and air since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack killed 1,200 people in Israel. At least 24,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza since then, in what has become one of the worst assaults on a civilian population in living memory. Some 1.9 of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced.

Not all Israelis support Netanyahu and his scorched-earth Gaza massacre, but they seem powerless to stop it. The U.S. is failing to seriously limit the carnage as we continue to provide weapons to Israel.

Hamas has no excuse for its Oct. 7 attack, and Israel has no excuse for obliterating civilian Gaza.

THEY LITERALLY LAID OUT THE FUTURE MAP OF THE ENTIRE REGION...

Obama (Syria, Libya), Trump (Iran) and now Biden have all followed Bush and Dick Cheney's deep state plans to destroy the entire Middle East and then re-build the United States of Israel from the rubble.

Both Trump and Biden are the military industrial complex's bitch. Both allowed a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, to be hacked up to protect big oil and the sale of WMD. That's a fact! Both are prosecuting Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, for telling the truth. Again, to protect big oil and the military industrial complex. For more information visit www.dontextraditeassange.com.

Biden is responsible for the destruction of Yugoslavia and Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and part of Syria. Biden has enabled Saudi Arabia's attack on Yemen. Ukranie's attack on its former Russian provinces and Israel's destruction of Palestine.

Although an affluent country, Israel is our largest foreign aid beneficiary and spends its U.S. taxpayer allowance indulging the gargantuan financial appetites of our weapons industry and colluding with our imperial war machine.

Israel has repeatedly attacked and invaded all its contiguous neighbors, ever-protected from international sanctions by U.S. vetoes in the U.N. Security Council. Under the U.N. Charter armed aggression is permissible only for self-defense and Israel has never been invaded. Menachim Begin admitted in 1982 that Israel’s 1967 war was pre-emptive. The 1973 war was fought in the Sinai and Golan Heights, not in Israel, when Egypt and Syria attempted to regain their lands seized in 1967.

Three recordings show Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak discussing their plans to invade Iran. 

BEHIND ISRAEL'S ‘END GAME’ FOR GAZA: THEFT OF OFFSHORE GAS RESERVES 

Much of Russia’s power comes from established pipelines used to transport gas to Europe cheaply. But other countries are now trying to get around Russia and provide new sources of gas to Europe.

The US also wants to use its own natural gas supply, recently developed through fracking, to undercut Russian supply. But it will be years before the US will be in a position to ship this overseas.

IAC: Renewed interest in pursuing development of the Gaza Marine field surfaced in early 2022 following the war between Russia and Ukraine, the destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline, and the sanctions placed on Russia that caused a global energy crisis. Joint meetings were held between Israeli, U.S., Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian Authority officials to discuss the project, which was given the go-ahead by Netanyahu following his reelection. In particular, President Joe Biden and Egyptian government officials pressured Israel to pursue the project. (al-monitor.com, June 19)

On June 18, Israel gave preliminary approval for the development of a gas field off the coast of Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming progress would hinge on “preserving the State of Israel’s security and diplomatic needs” and coordination with the Palestinian Authority and neighboring Egypt. At the same time, Hamas official Ismail Rudwan told Reuters: “We reaffirm that our people in Gaza have the rights to their natural resources.” (June 18)

Two months before Oct. 7, the Pentagon began building a $35.8 million troop facility in Israel’s Negev desert, 20 miles from Gaza, allegedly as a radar site to monitor for missile attacks on Israel. The base is part of a “secret” U.S. military presence in Israel. (The Intercept, Oct. 27)

Since Oct. 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel intends to kill as many Palestinians as possible in order to pressure others to leave the Gaza Strip and move to the Sinai in Egypt. Netanyahu has been adamant in refusing to order a cease-fire to let in aid to stop the horrific genocide being carried out in Gaza.

The people of Gaza are well aware, as their grandparents experienced with the 1948 Nakba, that once Israelis forcefully remove Palestinians from Palestinian land, returning is a near impossibility.

Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians has not stopped the Israeli regime’s plans for further oil and gas exploration. On Oct. 29, Israel announced that it awarded 12 licenses for exploring additional offshore natural gas fields to six companies, including British Petroleum and Italian energy giant Eni. These awards show that Israel has no intention of letting the genocide it is carrying out against Gaza’s people interfere with its ongoing theft of Palestinian resources.

Major Rob Taylor, an instructor at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College wrote in the Armed Forces Journal last year that the rival pipelines could be influencing the conflict in Syria.

“Viewed through a geopolitical and economic lens, the conflict in Syria is not a civil war, but the result of larger international players positioning themselves on the geopolitical chessboard in preparation for the opening of the pipeline,” he noted.

It wasn’t even a secret plan. It was published on the internet and in political journals as the Project for the New American Century, and in books such as The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski. 

The Yinon Plan refers to an article published in February 1982 in the Hebrew journal Kivunim ("Directions") entitled 'A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s'. The article was penned by Oded Yinon, reputedly a former advisor to Ariel Sharon, a former senior official with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and journalist for The Jerusalem Post.

It is cited as an early example of characterizing political projects in the Middle East in terms of a logic of sectarian divisions. It has played a role in both conflict resolution analysis by scholars who regard it as having influenced the formulation of policies adopted by the American administration under George W. Bush, and also in conspiracy theories according to which the article either predicted or planned major political events in the Middle East since the 1980s, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein, the Syrian Civil War and the rise of the Islamic State. Conspiracy theories further claim that the plan was introduced to the US by members of the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in administration and that it was adopted by the Bush administration following 9/11 (claimed to be a Mossad false flag) with the goal of furthering US interests in the region, while simultaneously advancing the alleged Jewish dream of Greater Israel "from the Nile to the Euphrates".

Israel Shahak in the foreword to his translation interpreted the plan as both a fantasy and a faithful reflection of the strategy being developed by Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan, and drew parallels with both the geopolitical ideas that flourished in Germany from 1890 to 1933, later adopted by Hitler and applied to Eastern Europe, and modern American neoconservative thinking, which influenced Yinon, to gather from the sources cited in his notes.

In 2017, Ted Becker, former Walter Meyer Professor of Law at New York University and Brian Polkinghorn, distinguished professor of Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution at Salisbury University, argued that Yinon's plan was adopted and refined in a 1996 policy document entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, written by a research group at the Israeli-affiliated Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in Washington. The group was directed by Richard Perle, who, some years later, became one of the key figures in the formulation of the Iraq War strategy adopted during the administration of George W. Bush in 2003.

Both Becker and Polkinhorn admit that avowed enemies of Israel in the Middle East take the sequence of events—Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, its encirclement of Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon, its bombing of Iraq, airstrikes in Syria and its attempts at containing Iran's nuclear capacities—when read in the light of the Yinon Plan and the Clean break analysis, to be proof that Israel is engaged in a modern version of The Great Game, with the backing of Zionist currents in the American neoconservative and Christian fundamentalist movements. They also conclude that Likud Party appears to have implemented both plans.

It may be recalled that on May 1, 2006, Biden had co-authored an op-ed piece for the NY Times with his guru, Leslie Gelb, a former Times columnist and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, that called for Iraq to be divided into three confessional states. It was starkly similar to what had been written in a policy paper back in 1982 by Oded Yinon, a senior Israeli foreign affairs official, in which he wrote that, “To dissolve Iraq is even more important for us than dissolving Syria. In the short term, it’s Iraqi power that constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.” Gelb had first raised the issue in an op-ed in the Times in November, 2003.

It was exactly what Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address as president:

“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.”

To get us to go along with their self-serving and sociopathic agendas, they lied to us, took hundreds of billions — trillions — of our tax dollars under completely false pretenses, then wasted our money buying military junk we don’t need to fight wars that never had to have happened.

If the United States continues its high-risk policy of military brinkmanship with Russia and China, the outcome, however unthinkable, might be an Armageddon that results in the end of our nation.

And now, the last remaining arms treaty between the world’s two largest nuclear powers has collapsed and there will be no limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces for the first time since the 1970s. The risks of a nuclear launch – intentional or otherwise – will rise.

“A world without nuclear arms control is a far more dangerous and unstable one,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Without arms control, the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals could double in size, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Each nation could dramatically and quickly increase the number of nuclear weapons ready to launch on short notice, said Hans M. Kristensen, director of the federation’s Nuclear Information Project.

“Such an increase would be extraordinarily destabilizing and dangerous, especially with a full-scale war raging in Europe and Russia buckling under the strain of unprecedented sanctions,” Kristensen wrote last year.

Top Biden administration officials warned this week they have intelligence suggesting China is considering providing lethal support to Russia. READ MORE: Air Force general predicts war with China in 2025

Express: All this volatility is raising the spectre of "nuclear war", former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Matt Shoemaker has warned.

He explained: "The threat of nuclear war currently remains unlikely but has become a plausible threat in this crisis.

"Not only because of Iran’s nuclear weapons program but because Israel is a nuclear power."

However, the threat of nuclear war is not just coming from Iran, he warns.

"Not far off in Tartus, Syria, Russia has a well-established naval presence and has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world," he said.

Mr Shoemaker makes the point that Russia has backed pro-Palestinian and Iranian causes.

"To make matters even more complicated, China, another nuclear power, has extensive economic and financial interests in the region," he added.

JARED KUSHNER'S DEAL WITH SAUDI ARABIA IS CORRUPT 

Sources have told DailyMail.com that the prince – known by his initials MBS – has been boasting about his close relationship with the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, and the intelligence which he has told his circle Kushner passed to him.

MBS bragged to his closest regional ally, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed – the de facto joint ruler of the United Arab Emirates - and others that Kushner was 'in his pocket,' a source told The Intercept.

The Washington Post reported this week that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster “expressed early concern that Kushner was freelancing U.S. foreign policy.”

The Times said Trump's son-in-law also "helped broker $110 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia over 10 years," and protected the Saudi regime from congressional outrage over the murder of Khashoggi and the war on Yemen.

MSNBC: A Saudi sovereign wealth fund led by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, often referred to as MBS, invested $2 billion in Kushner’s fledgling private equity firm six months after Trump left office. And it’s blisteringly clear from the details that while MBS’s expenditure did not make financial sense, it made political sense as payback for favorable treatment.

The newly reported deal looks quite a lot like MBS wanted to return the favor for all the political back-scratching. Here’s what makes it feel so obvious: It’s a bad deal for MBS financially. Kushner is inexperienced in private equity (and had a middling record in real estate), and the seriousness of his new outfit was questionable. So questionable, in fact, that when MBS’s vetted the funds tied to Kushner’s firm, a screening panel expressed concerns about the wisdom of such an investment after finding a bunch of major problems.

But MBS overruled the screening panel and went ahead with the investment anyway, and it appears to be the main source of investment for Kushner’s outfit, according to the Times. Strikingly, it’s twice the amount that was invested in the fund of another Trump official, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, around the same time, despite the fact that Mnuchin is a highly successful investor.

One cannot rule out that MBS views it as a down payment as well. If Trump were to return to the White House, MBS has proven a willingness to pay handsomely for cushy treatment.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, believes it very likely that Kushner was "paid off" for warning the Saudi royals about MBN. The view has been shared by other intelligence community sources according to the investigative journalist.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is investing billions to aid Donald Trump's 2024 political comeback according to a new editorial by The Washington Post.

American diplomacy is on sale to the highest bidder.

If you think that you have a right to know about actions carried out in your name, then make your voice heard now. Make some noise!!

For more information visit www.dontextraditeassange.com.

Written by freelance investigative journalist Christopher Rice who's Vote Strike movement helped to spawn the Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, People's Party and Black Lives Matter movements. READ MORE: Call for a General Strike Gaining Huge Momentum (Op Ed News)

And in 2011 and again in 2013, Christopher Rice helped to coordinate hunger strikes in protest of inhuman and degrading conditions of confinement in California's state run prison system.The hunger strikes also spurred successful litigation that would ultimately end the use of long-term solitary confinement in California.

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