From Syria back to Libya, Lebanon, Iraq and .. Iran

Posted on by Sven

Or how you should not start a new year …

Before the end of 2019, there where already some foreshadowing signs related to the protests in Iraq. Actually quite some protests and uproars were launched in multiple countries towards the end of 2019 – see Civil Unrest Is Erupting All Over The World, But Just Wait Until America Joins The Party… | Zero Hedge

While I focus more on closer events like the misery the U.S. and EU brought to Ukraine, Syria & the middle east, it should not get unnoticed that Christians are under severe attack in mostly ISIS or other Wahhabi extremists  ruled countries these days. Christians are even protected by Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and many other so called bad countries (by the west). As the birthplace of Christianity is the middle east, mostly around Syria and Lebanon – this might be quite related and very much under-reported. While the west was sponsoring the Wahhabi terrorism (White Helmets (another article), moderate-ISIS-rebels, ..) in an attempt to topple Assad and take over Syria, the west financed the murder of many Christians in this region as well. Syrian Christians are usually supporting the legitimate Syrian president – see how I have not used the word regime here? As the Syrian puzzle is about to be resolved, I would like to see how the actors can apologize for all these war crimes.

But let me get back to the point – the protests and how all this might have played a role to today’s situation.
We had France for some while, Hong Kong of course, Lebanon protests (at least the Lebanese PM w/ roots in Saudi Arabia resigned) and its link to the new Iraq protests (or U.S. led coup attempt) didn’t get unnoticed.

Now just before the U.S. did it, they heated up the situation with strikes against the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) which were founded and trained by Iran to stop and defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) when it occupied nearly a third of Iraq and Syria.

Hours later the U.S. has murdered Qassim Soleimani and related leaders and probably bystanders. They even tried to defame him, painting him a terrorist.

You will read it over Trump’s and other U.S. officials tweets how they paint him a terrorist as they officially declared Quds Force a terrorist organization. Interesting to read a much more leveled presentation of Soleimani from the U.S. mil.. Soleimani & Quds Force usually supported the underdog side losing against the empire. One could say the empire had a difficult relationship with him and Iran, but that questionable pleasure surely was also on Iran’s side. Calling Iran a terrorist organization while ignoring the empire’s own activities is surely schizophrenic, but important to receive support. A nice interview with Joe Cortina (ex Green Beret) also gives quite a balanced view on the situation and names the termination of Soleimani what it is: murder. Joe details the discrepancy of Soleimani’s representation by the U.S. as he was even an important ally to the U.S..

Soleimani was at the forefront of the US led coalition to eradicate ISIS from Northern Iraq in March 2015.

Soleimani also, as a commander of the Iranian Quds Force, was part of the American-led coalition under US General Tommy Franks fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan in the October 2001 Battle of Herat.

Moreover, Soleimani worked to protect Eastern Christians against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq, and empowered them to defend themselves as best they could.

As for the flunkie at State, Pompeo put up a clip of a few Iraqis celebrating the death of Soleimani while parroting Trump’s own lies that Iranians “hated and feared him.”

However, Pompass didn’t show the millions mourning Soleimani in Iran, Iraq, and Syria, including the minorities in Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

That’s not “hate and fear,” that’s “honor and respect.”

Well, Europe’s Germany, the appendix of the empire, stood down with a brown nose again. But who would have expected a backbone from a vassal state anyways? China and Russia have a backbone and no such issues it seems.

This not enough, the U.S. even claimed to have him murdered because they knew he was up to killing people.
What an irony, as it turns out that seemingly the U.S. asked Iraq to mediate with Iran to resolve the tensions in the region, hence Soleimani came to Iraq for a message and the U.S. knew all about it and murdered him.

“I was supposed to meet Soleimani at the morning the day he was killed, he came to deliver me a message from Iran responding to the message we delivered from Saudi to Iran” the Iraqi PM said, highlighting that Soleimani was carrying a response from Iran to a Saudi initiative to diffuse tensions in the region. That came after Trump called the Iraqi PM and asked him to mediate.

Search for above quote from the Iraq PM here – or take ZH’s coverage here.

Pepe Escobar wrote in Financial N-option will settle Trump’s oil war

On foreign soil, as a guest nation, US has assassinated a diplomatic envoy whose mission the US had requested.

The bombshell facts were delivered by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, during an extraordinary, historic parliamentary session in Baghdad on Sunday.

Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani had flown into Baghdad on a normal carrier flight, carrying a diplomatic passport. He had been sent by Tehran to deliver, in person, a reply to a message from Riyadh on de-escalation across the Middle East. Those negotiations had been requested by the Trump administration.

So Baghdad was officially mediating between Tehran and Riyadh, at the behest of Trump. And Soleimani was a messenger. Adil Abdul-Mahdi was supposed to meet Soleimani at 8:30 am, Baghdad time, last Friday. But a few hours before the appointed time, Soleimani died as the object of a targeted assassination at Baghdad airport.

Seems to be legitimate, as Iraq just voted to kick the U.S. out of their country!

Then Trump said he won’t leave, then the U.S. base wrote a letter to Iraq that they do something to leave, which then got revoked and what not.. all while the U.S. is putting their attack force in place closer to Iran, not exactly retreating.

Now that is what I really call RICH.

Who is the beneficiary? Many do believe this is sadly just one move in the very long term planed strategy of the empire. No, this has nothing to do with Trump or some politicians over there. People got executed across the world by U.S. activities way before. Starting with Obama, they started to use drones and scaled up.

Let’s hope the worst will not happen.

Another article just released, also correcting Soleimani’s presentation.

Published by Sven

8 thoughts on “From Syria back to Libya, Lebanon, Iraq and .. Iran”

  2. And another ‘leak’ https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/blowback-from-the-soleimani-assassination-increases-as-iraq-reveals-how-trump-tried-to-steal-its-oil.html – excerpt:

    The removal of U.S. troops from the region was also the theme of Sunday’s speech by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. It seems clear that the Resistance Axis will work on the project in a coordinated manner.

    Trump said he would ask Iraq to pay for the bases the U.S. has built should the U.S. troops be kicked out of Iraq. The U.S. already has binding legal agreements with Iraq which stipulate that the bases, and all fixed installations the U.S. has built there, are the property of Iraq.

    Trump had already asked Iraqi Prime Ministers -twice- if the U.S. could get Iraq’s oil as reward for invading and destroying their country. The requests were rejected. Now we learn that Trump also uses gangster methods (ar) to get the oil of Iraq. The talk by the Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi happened during the recent parliament session in Iraq (machine translation):

    Al-Halbousi, Speaker of the Iraqi Council of Representatives, blocked the speech of Mr. Abdul Mahdi in the scheduled session to discuss the decision to remove American forces from Iraq.

    At the beginning of the session, Al-Halbousi left the presidential seat and sat next to Mr. Abdul-Mahdi, after his request to cut off the live broadcast of the session, a public conversation took place between the two parties. The voice of Adel Abdul Mahdi was raised.

    Mr. Abdul Mahdi spoke with an angry tone, saying:

    “The Americans are the ones who destroyed the country and wreaked havoc on it. They are those who refuse to complete building the electrical system and infrastructure projects. They have bargained for the reconstruction of Iraq in exchange for giving up 50% of Iraqi oil imports, so I refused and decided to go to China and concluded an important and strategic agreement with it, and today Trump is trying to cancel this important agreement.”

    The American President’s threatened the Iraqi Prime Minister to liquidate him directly with the Minister of Defense. The Marines are the third party that sniped the demonstrators and the security men:

    Abdul Mahdi continued:

    “After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I also refused, and he threatened me with massive demonstrations that would topple me. Indeed, the demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event of non-cooperation and responding to his wishes, so that the third party (Marines snipers) would target the demonstrators and security forces and kill them from the highest structures and the US embassy in an attempt to pressure me and submit to his wishes and cancel the China agreement, so I did not respond and submitted my resignation and the Americans still insist to this day on canceling the China agreement and when the defense minister said that who kills the demonstrators is a third party, Trump called me immediately and physically threatened me and defense minister in the event of talk about the third party.”

    The reliable Based Cat in Iraq seems to confirm the timeline:

    TØM CΛT @TomtheBasedCat – 4:00 UTC · Jan 7, 2020
    Yes a 50-person delegation visited China in 2019 and then the protests started on October 1st until the Arbaeen dates, then picked up again on Oct 25th. I’m skeptical about the 3rd party but the timing itself was interesting. The flames were fanned by Gulf media and Al-Hurra.

    Al-Hurra is a U.S. government financed Arab language TV outlet.

    Southfront has a similar report, seemingly from a different source, with some additional context.

    While this talk has not yet been confirmed it does sounds highly plausible.

    ++++

    https://www.axios.com/trump-to-iraqi-pm-how-about-that-oil-1a31cbfa-f20c-4767-8d18-d518ed9a6543.html
    https://twitter.com/TomtheBasedCat/status/1214396388999663619
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1214408047302520832.html

    Iraqi Prime Minister Was Forced To Resign After Trump Threatened His Life: Report
    https://southfront.org/iraqi-prime-minister-was-forced-to-resign-after-trump-threatened-his-life/

  3. 11/29/2019 https://www.dw.com/en/iraq-prime-minister-adel-abdul-mahdi-says-he-will-resign/a-51469003

    Al-Sistani, the 88-year-old spiritual leader of Iraqi Shiites, warned in his sermon of civil war after a deadly day of violence, in which security forces shot dead 40 people in the capital and southern provinces.

    The latest deaths brought the number killed since October 1 to more than 400 people, while thousands more have been wounded.

    .. so what if .. it was like in the Ukraine indeed? (Snipers from err the ‘beneficiary’ of the uproars, see above ‘leak’)

    Then all parts of the puzzle are complete.

  4. Who Started it? https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2020/01/05/who-started-it-litigious-a-reverse-timeline-of-us-iran-retaliations/
    (he only missed the 290 dead from the attack on the Iranian airplane AFAIK)

    Regardless, Iran gave the heads up days ago re US military targets.
    Nasrallah of Hezbollah also stated the very same, i.e. all U.S. mil is game for them.

    In this sense, both need to restrain themselves now.
    U.S. not hitting back to Iran’s retaliation strike.

    …

    Turns out there was some backchannel communication and Iran saved its face.
    Laters.

  5. ‘The first casualty of war is Truth’ .. in this sense,
    it ‘looks’ like while Iran and U.S. “played war” to save face or whatever,
    somehow around 180 people got in the way in an airplane from the Ukraine.
    Said airplane took off from Iran – even though there was a no flight zone installed
    by the FAA during the missile launches – and seriously, how come one would try to
    even fly during this time?
    Then the airplane crashed and it does look like it got hit by something,
    if those video clips and pictures are true.

    Could be AA missiles from Iran, or could be a false flag Ukraine MH-17 thing.
    Could be many things.

    So Soleimani got assassinated by the U.S., then around 50 Iranian people
    die during the ‘mourning demonstration’, then Iran seems to have arranged
    a no casualty missile attack on some U.S. bases in Iraq with the U.S.,
    then another unrelated ~180 had to die because of incompetence?

    While I am surely glad this didn’t lead to a big world war,
    this is a tragedy and disaster already.

    And as if this is not enough, two earthquakes in Iran got reported
    during these hours. Fascinating and disgusting at the same time.

  7. Well, this tragedy has concluded it seems.

    Iran/US backchannel – check: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/id-see-them-call-me-how-trump-used-encrypted-swiss-fax-machine-defuse-iran-crisis
    Hereby we need to thank the Swiss Ambassador, Markus Leitner!

    +++

    Iran shot down the commercial airliner by accident – check: https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/11/615905/full-responsibility-IRGC-Hajizadeh

    Detailing the events which led to the tragic incident, Hajizadeh said the country’s air defense networks had been put on the “highest level of readiness” and alerted to a possible cruise missile attack prior to the incident.

    The IRGC aerospace chief added that the operator manning the system had repeatedly called for a halt in flights in the region during the night.

    He added that the operator then identified what his air defense system had detected as an incoming cruise missile 19 kilometers away.

    The operator, as required by military guidelines then proceeded to call for orders to deal with the perceived threat, but wasn’t able to do so as his communication network failed to work.

    Hajizadeh added that the operator then “took the wrong decision” of firing on the perceived threat in a “ten-second” time span to shoot or ignore the flying object.

    The aerospace chief added that Iran’s aviation authorities had no information regarding the matter and that they, along with the plane’s crew, had conducted no wrongdoing in the incident.

    Hajizadeh also said the General Staff of the Armed Forces’s Friday statement regarding the matter was released after it was established that certain parties were guilty over the incident.

    +++

    I have to admit, it is very courageous to admit this horrible mistake of mistaking
    the plane for a cruise missile and not being able to confirm due to broken down communications.

    Please Iran – and all other countries: Next time you play with a very big fire shooting rockets
    around and even expecting others to shoot back: CLOSE THE F***ING AIRSPACE.

    A tragedy.

    Next time the powerful need to compare and sabre rattle, just let them meet on an island and *FIGHT IT OUT MAN TO MAN*.
    I know, sounds ridiculous, but the whole war games are just that: ridiculous.
    Only that the latter bares the risk of something going UNPLANNED and indeed millions of people could die.

    This in addition to the track record winner of war crimes with most civilians killed: The United States of America.
    – Direct Wars
    – Financed Proxy Wars
    – Sanctions
    (just to balance this comment ..)

    He who holds the most power also needs to have the highest responsibility.

    No, don’t worry – I am not pointing my finger ‘for fun’.
    Germany and the EU is also guilty of quite many war crimes, even in the latest years.

    Good evening, let’s try to better ourselves – trying almost daily 😉

  8. Potential ‘fingering’ on the AA system is not ruled out, but certainly hard to prove.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOL-ug6U4AUe8CV.jpg
    https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf

    Additionally some rumors or articles about RU having given IL some codes for remote access to the
    Iranian AA system (which RU sold to Iran) years ago.

    Then add the situation that the plan was ascending while being shot twice, not exactly how a cruise missile have its flight path?
    We will probably never know. Hello MH-17.

    What remains is that Iran chose to not close the airspace for commercial airliners, a political disastrous decision.

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