Recorded November 20, 2005
Listen: MP3 One 30-minute segment
REALAUDIO
NB: This stream contains both FTR # 535 and an older program, FTR #514 Conversation with John Loftus About the Muslim Brotherhood, originally aired and blogged on June 21, 2005. Each is a 30 minute broadcast. See also FTR #527 Death Trap Part II & FTR #471 Death Trap.
Introduction: In a supplement to FTR#’s 471, 502, 527, this program presents information about the bogus intelligence used by the United States to justify the invasion of Iraq. This broadcast highlights the role of the fascist-influenced Italian intelligence agency SISMI in the generation of the Niger yellow-cake uranium canard that generated the Valerie Plame case. As noted, during the run-up to the Iraq war, Italian foreign minister Gianfranco Fini—the head of Italy’s fascist political party (the Alleanza Nationale) and a coalition partner of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi—met in Switzerland with leaders of European fascist political parties, including Achmed Huber, a director of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Bank Al Taqwa. The broadcast asks the hypothetical question: Did Fini and his cohorts work to deliberately lure the US into a trap in Iraq, using the SISMI to help plant the bait? In that context, the program also reviews numerous other connections between the milieu of the Alleanza Nationale, Berlusconi and the P‑2 Lodge and the Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa/Muslim Brotherhood nexus. The program concludes with a look at an Al Qaeda defector who was believed to be deliberately misleading his American interrogators with information pointing in the direction of Iraq. All of this information is viewed against the background of Mr. Emory’s working hypothesis that the Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa/Muslim brotherhood milieu and the allied Underground Reich was luring the US into a trap that would enmesh the US in a costly, draining war with the world’s Muslim population. Note that this population will have access to WMD technology as a result of the invasion of Iraq (see FTR#527.)
Program Highlights Include: Review of the “doomsday” arrangement between Al Qaeda and Saddam, in which Iraq would give technical know-how about WMD’s to bin Laden’s forces, which would then act as a “back-up” unit in the event of an American overthrow of Saddam; review of the numerous connections between the Al Taqwa nexus and the milieu of the P‑2 Lodge, Silvio Berlusconi and the Alleanza Nationale.
1. Unfortunately, both the pro-war and anti-war sides have gotten it wrong with regard to Saddam’s relationship with Al Qaeda. Although there is no indication that Iraq or Saddam were involved with 9/11, the two entities did have a “doomsday back-up” arrangement. Saddam and bin Laden worked out an arrangement in which Iraq—in order to provide for a payback capability if the U.S. ousted him—gave information about WMD’s to bin Laden’s people. Al Qaeda, in turn, was to act as a back-up unit for Saddam’s Iraq, striking at the United States if it knocked out Saddam. Of course, precisely that scenario has transpired. The United States has walked into this “Death Trap,” and a disturbingly large percentage of the Muslim and Arab communities appear ready to join the conflict.
“It appears, however, that this version is the publicly admissible one, the one that can pass political muster. According to the same sources, there was another scenario more. In keeping with the calculating mentality of Saddam Hussein and his secret services. In 1998, after declining all offers that had been made to them through official diplomatic channels, those services are reported to have established a secret operational ‘connection’ with bin Laden in Manila and in Kashmir. It was indeed difficult for Iraq to ignore an Arab like Osama bin Laden who so effectively humiliated the Americans.’ Colonel Khairallah al Takiriti, the brother of the head of Mukkhabarat, the intelligence services, is reported to have been named case officer for the connection. The arrest of two Morroccan associates of bin Laden in Rabat on November 11, 1998, made it possible to establish to establish the link with certainty. According to Western sources, the Iraqi services have sought to secure the assistance of bin Laden’s networks, in case Iraq were again to be attacked by the United States, in order to carry out attacks against American targets in Arab countries.”
2. “According to Arab sources, in anticipation of a foreseeable reversal of alliances in Kabul, bin Laden had been in discreet contact since September 2000 with associates of Oudai Hussein, another of Saddam’s sons; the ground for agreement was the anti-Israeli and anti-American battle. Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged information about chemical and biological weapons, despite the opposition of some of the Baghdad leadership, including Tarik Aziz”
(Ibid.;p. 113.)
3. Much of the program focuses on an Italian media report that the SISMI intelligence agency in that country was the source of the bogus claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellow-cake uranium from Niger in order to pursue the development of nuclear weapons. This spurious claim was one of the main pieces of false intelligence used to justify the move into Iraq. Much of the broadcast examines the possibility that Italian fascist elements associated with the P‑2/Alleanza Nationale milieu may have deliberately participated in the deception. Note that this milieu is directly descended from Mussolini’s fascists. For more about the P‑2 Lodge and the AN Party of Gianfranco Fini, use the search function. As will be seen below, Fini, Prime Minister Berlusconi (a former member of the P‑2) and other figures in the P‑2/Alleanza Nationale milieu are linked to the Al Taqwa complex, involved with—among other things—the funding of Al Qaeda. As seen in FTR#413, the Al Taqwa complex also handled some of the illicit funds spirited out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein. Is it possible that figures involved with Al Taqwa may have introduced Al Qaeda and Baathist elements, so that they could conclude the “doomsday” agreement discussed above?
“Behind the CIA leak scandal lies a bizarre trail of forged documents, an embassy break-in and international deception that helped propel the United States to war in Iraq. While American public attention focuses on special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak, U.S. and Italian lawmakers are probing a series of bogus claims of Iraqi uranium purchases in Africa that were the opening chapters in a saga that resulted in the disclosure of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.”
4. “In the past week, the respected, left-of-center Italian daily La Repubblica published a three-part series of investigative articles claiming that documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger had been forged by an Italian freelance spy and then were fed by the Italian intelligence agency to eager officials in Washington and London. On Capitol Hill, Sen. Harry Reid, D‑Nev., the Senate Democratic leader, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D‑Mass., are asking for public hearings into the forgeries and their role in Bush administration claims that Hussein was developing nuclear weapons.”
(Idem.)
5. “The Italian Parliament is scheduled to hold hearings about the La Repubblica allegations on Thursday, with intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari expected to come under heavy grilling. The articles relied heavily on sources in the Italian spy agency, the Military Information and Security Service, known as SISMI. They provide a tantalizing account — credible to some observers, baseless speculation to others — of how President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were snookered by fabricated intelligence about Hussein’s alleged nuclear program. The allegations in La Repubblica’s articles lead far into the murky depths of Italy’s intelligence agencies, a realm of conspiracy claims and counterclaims. In Italy this netherworld is called dietrologia — a word that loosely translates as the widespread belief that political, security and criminal forces are constantly engaged in secret plots and maneuvers, noted Henry Farrell, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University in Washington and a blogger on the Crooked Timber Web log, which has dissected the Italian angle to Plamegate”
(Idem.)
6. The article notes that, during the Cold War, the SISMI cooperated closely with the US. In the wake of the Cold War, has that changed? Are the Italian fascists moving away from the “Atlanticist” position they held during the cold war? (By “Atlanticist,” we mean a pro‑U.S., pro-NATO stance.)
“ ‘It’s hard to say if (the Repubblica information) is the truth, truth with some distortion, or misinformation from the officials who are leading this,’ Farrell said. ‘But it certainly raises some very troubling questions.’ Farrell noted that during the Cold War, the U.S. and Italian spy agencies cooperated closely on undercover work. Bush and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are close allies, and Berlusconi has strongly supported Bush’s Iraq policy, stationing 3,000 Italian troops south of Baghdad.”
(Idem.)
7. The discussion highlights some of the fascist connections of the SISMI organization. For more about SISMI and the Italian terrorist landscape, use the search function and look for information about the “strategy of tension”.
“SISMI has long been accused of involvement in rightist conspiracies, including work in collaboration with Propaganda Due, or P‑2, a Masonic secret society, and the Armed Falange, a neo-fascist terrorist group. SISMI ‘does not have an immaculate history at all,’ said Gianfranco Pasquino, a political science professor at the Bologna, Italy, campus of the School of Advanced and International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. ‘It has been purged and reorganized very often.’ Pasquino called SISMI ‘friendly to the right wing and willing to offer its services for right-wing purposes.’”
(Idem.)
8. “According to La Repubblica, the forged documents were originally produced in 2000 by Rocco Martino, a former member of the Carabinieri paramilitary police who then became a freelance agent for both SISMI and French intelligence. SISMI combined these fakes with real documents from the 1980s showing Hussein’s yellowcake purchases from Niger during that period — in the process, conducting a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome to steal letterhead and seals. Soon afterward, La Repubblica reported, Italian operatives passed news of their scoop to the CIA and the British intelligence agency, MI6. When the CIA expressed doubt about the veracity of the claims, SISMI began seeking to peddle it directly to the most pro- war faction of the Bush administration.”
(Idem.)
9. “SISMI chief Pollari met in Rome with Michael Ledeen, an influential Washington neoconservative who has long been reputed to play a back-channel role between U.S. and Italian spy agencies. Pollari also met in Washington with Stephen Hadley, deputy national security adviser, to discuss the new information, La Repubblica reported. On Thursday, a National Security Council spokesman confirmed that the Hadley- Pollari meeting had taken place The elaborate hoax finally succeeded. In late September 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Iraq’s alleged Niger dealings as proof of Hussein’s nuclear ambitions. In his February 2003 State of the Union address, Bush declared that British intelligence had ‘learned’ Saddam Hussein had been seeking to buy nuclear material in Africa. Throughout the period, Blair made similar claims.”
(Idem.)
10. “British officials have insisted that they had other evidence in addition to the forged documents that confirmed Iraqi uranium purchases in Niger. The British have declined to show this evidence, however. La Repubblica quoted a SISMI official as saying of this alleged corroborating evidence, ‘If it ever were brought forward it would be discovered, with red faces, that it was Italian intelligence collected by SISMI at the end of the 1980s and shared with our friend Hamilton McMillan’ — the top MI6 counter-terrorism official during that period. . . . .”
(Idem.)
11. The allegations in La Repubblica were subsequently confirmed b by Italy’s spymaster, Nico Pollari.
“Italy’s spymaster identified an Italian occasional spy named Rocco Martino on Thursday as the disseminator of forged documents that described efforts by Iraq to buy hundreds of tons of uranium ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons program, three Italian lawmakers said Thursday. Gen. Nicolo Pollari, director of the Italian military intelligence agency known as SISMI, disclosed that Martino had been the source of the forged documents in closed- door testimony to a parliamentary committee that oversees secret services, the lawmakers said. . . .”
12. Next, the program revisits a point of information discussed in—among other programs—FTR#’s 378, 456. In the spring of 2002, as the preparations for the Iraq war were underway, Al Taqwa director Achmed Huber networked with other American and European fascists and far rightists, including Gianfranco Fini, head of the Italian Alleanza Nationale. Might the meeting have had something to do with Iraq? Had the “Atlanticist” orientation of the P‑2 milieu been superseded by an anti‑U.S./Third Position orientation in the Italian fascist milieu? Did this meeting have anything to do with the feeding of false intelligence to the US in order to lure the country into a draining, expensive and (ultimately) fatal war with the Muslim population of the “Earth Island”? Note in this regard, that Fini is currently the Italian foreign minister. Is it possible that the man (Fini) who characterized Mussolini as “the greatest statesman of the 20th century” has not changed his stripes? Is it possible that he was conferring with the other European fascist leaders in order to help lure the US into a trap? (For more on Huber, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 343, 354, 357, 359, 377, 456.)
“Perhaps the most recent remarkable story concerning Huber comes from a brief item in the Swiss tabloid Blick that in an April 26, 2002 article by Alexander Sautter that Huber was involved in a meeting of far-right leaders from Europe. A photo showing Huber with Jean Marie Le Pen accompanies the article. The Blick story (available on the web) is as follows: ‘Mon Pelerin VD: Christian Cambuzat, the promoter (Scharfmacher) of the right extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen (73): The guru assembles together some of the top leaders of the European right. On the idyllic Mont Pelerin, they debate their crude ideas. At his secret visit to a spa in Switzerland, Le Pen hardly remained alone. Rightist leaders from all over Europe traveled to meet the extremist presidential candidate who was hosted by Cambuzat. Franz Schonhuber (79). Founder of the Republican Party in Germany and a former member of the SS. He talked with Le Pen who constitutes together with Schonhuber the ‘Front National’ Faction in the European parliament. Gianfranco Fini (50). Italian post-fascist, Mussolini admirer, and founder of the Alleanze Nationale. He also was at the meeting with Le Pen and Schonhuber. Ahmed Huber (74). The Swiss is on the Bush Administration blacklist . . . ‘I met le Pen at Mont Pelerin as he went to Christian Cambuzat’s spa,’ Huber told Blick yesterday. At the extremist rendezvous an American far right politician was also supposed to have taken part. [Note: the American is not further identified.—KC] Christian Cambuzat said that Le Pen (after the election) had again become the sharpest weapon of the ‘Front National’ because Le Pen changed his image from a venomous old man to a ‘kindly U.S. TV evangelist.’ Proudly Cambuzat brags, ‘With me Le Pen can relax well’ [from his political endeavors—KC]. And openly link up with new contacts. [Although the Blick story does not give details, Cambuzat runs a spa for the very rich, the Lemanique de Revitalisation, inside a hotel on the famous Mont Pelerin.]’”
(“Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” by Kevin Coogan; pp. 14–15.)
13. In the context of the April, 2002 meeting of European fascist leaders at Mt. Pellerin, it is important to note that (in addition to Fini) other Italian fascists from the AN/P‑2 milieu are to be found within the Al Taqwa orbit. Allessandro Ghe is a member of the fascist Ordine Nuovo, headed up by Pino Rauti. Rauti is a veteran of the SS-controlled Salo Republic that was established in Northern Italy after Mussolini’s capitulation in 1943. Rauti is also a part of the successful electoral coalition of Silvio Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini.
“The goal of the meeting with the notary was the founding of ‘al-Taqwa management Organization SA’ that said it would be concerned with importing and exporting various goods. ‘Taqwa management Organization SA’ that said it would be concerned with importing and exporting various goods around the world. 333 of the 1000 shares (at 100 Swiss Francs a share) went to Mohammed Mansour and his wife. 332 went to Huber. Nada and Himmat took the rest. Mansour was named the president but rarely was the clause in the contract papers mentioned that each decision must be co-signed by the minority holders Nada and Himmat . . . Among the 500 shareholders besides Huber, Himmat and Nada were ‘also a notorious right extremist from Italy’ [not further identified but this is Alessandro Karim Abdul Ghe] and three members of the bin Laden family.”
(Ibid.; p. 8.)
14. More about Allessandro Ghe, and Ordinie Nuovo’s links with Moslem radicals and (allegedly) Bin Laden:
“Another Connection involves al-Taqwa group shareholder Allesandro Ghe, an Italian radical who has been questioned by his country’s security forces about his links to Bin Laden. Ghe was a member of the Italian neo-fascist ‘Ordine Nuovo’ that began coupling up with Moslem radicals in the 1970’s, says Ely Karmon. [Emphasis added.]”
(“A Terrifying Alliance” by Yael Haran; 1/14/2002; Enduring-Freedom-Operation.org; pp. 4–5.)
(For more about the links between Ordine Nuovo and the current governing coalition of Italy, see, among other programs, FTR#’s 307, 320, 321. For more about conduits running between Al Taqwa and Silvio Berlusconi, see FTR#’s 342, 351, 357.)
15. The Al Taqwa orbit contains one Gustavo Selva—a parliamentary representative of Fini’s Alleanza Nationale. “Gustavo Selva belongs to Nasreddin’s wider circle. The former journalist and today parliamentary member of the post fascist Partei Alleanza Nationale, Selva was until April 19, 1999, involved in the Roman-based business, the Arab-Italian Consulting House. Six months before it went under, on September 18, 1998, a certain Sergio Marini was named the firm’s official receiver. Marini was, together with the Nasreddin International Group Limited Holdings, also part of the Milan-registered Line Investment Srl. Since 1988, Marini was CEO of ‘L.I.N.E. Development Light Industry and Environment Development Srl’ in Rome whose administrative director was Abduhrahim Nasreddin along with his deputy Ghaleb Himmat, himself a founder of Al Taqwa Group.”
(“Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” by Kevin Coogan; p. 9.)
16. Another evidentiary tributary leading in the direction of the Italian far right concerns areas of overlap between the Al Taqwa milieu and that of Silvio Berlusconi—former member of the fascist P‑2 lodge and the head of the Italian coalition government of which Fini’s AN is part.
“The deeper investigators dug, the more senseless it seemed. For example: The Liechtenstein-registered Nasreddin International Limited Holdings on October 20, 1994, decided to change its name to Middle East and Turkey Investment Holding Ltd. And then eight days later it returned to its original name. There is also the fact that Nasreddin at the founding of the Nasreddin International Group Limited Holding in January 1997 appointed—next to Dr. Enrico Walser as trustee—of all people the Tessino lawyer Dr. Ercole Doninelli to the administrative board. Doninelli, until his death, was seen as the ‘soul’ of the Lugano finance society Fimo that was widely involved in the financial scandals of the 1990’s. Fimo helped Italians to send up to 250 million Swiss francs yearly in capital flight. Even more definitive is the role Fimo has played since 1968 in the financing into the millions [of] the first projects of the (at the time utterly unknown) construction builder from Milan, Silvio Berlusconi. The knowledge of how capital from the married pair of Ercole and Stefania Doninelli went from Eti Holdings in Chiasso to more stops in the Interchange Bank and from there to Italcantieri, a company headed by two Berlusconi straw men, finally ended with the mass bankruptcy of Fimo.”
(Ibid.; pp. 9–10.)
17. Another person bridging the worlds of Berlusconi and Al Taqwa is Pier Felice Barchi, an attorney for both Berlusconi and Yussef Nada. (For more about Barchi, see FTR#’s 357, 359.)
“The Akida Bank of Nasreddin was also supposed to be concerned with the spreading of Islamic banking practices. The Lugano-registered affiliate of the bank listed along with its founder Nasreddin, the Tessino-based Pier Felice Barchi. This attorney had great experience with rich and influential foreign customers. Barchi was also concerned with the Tessino financial interests of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi and the Saudi minority partner in Berlusconi’s media group Mediaset, Prince al-Waleed al Talal.”
(Ibid.; pp. 10–11.)
18. Another detail concerning the bogus intelligence that was used to justify the Iraq invasion involves an Al Qaeda captive who was evaluated by the Defense Intelligence Agency. That agency opined that he was very likely giving his American interrogators information that he felt they wanted to hear. Is it possible that he was also helping to lure the US into a trap? Bin Laden himself stated that the US overthrow of Saddam was a boon for his organization. Is it possible that Mr. al-Shaykh was deliberately working to lure the United States into the “doomsday back-up” trap that had been laid by Al Qaeda and Iraq?! This is a possibility to be seriously evaluated.
“Who in the White House knew about DITSUM No. 044–02 and when did they know it? That’s the newly declassified smoking- gun document, originally prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2002, but ignored by President Bush. Its declassification last weekend blows another huge hole in Bush’s claim that he was acting on the best intelligence available when he pitched the invasion of Iraq as a way to prevent an al Qaeda terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction. The report demolished the credibility of the key al Qaeda informant the administration relied on to make its claim that a working alliance existed between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. It was circulated widely within the federal government a full eight months before Bush used the prisoner’s lies to argue for an invasion of Iraq because ‘we’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.’”
(“Lying with Intelligence” by Robert Scheer; San Francisco Chronicle; 11/9/2005; p. B13.)
19. “Al Qaeda senior military trainer lbn al-Shaykh al-Libi — a Libyan captured in Pakistan m 2001 — was probably ‘intentionally misleading the debriefers,’ the DIA report concluded in one of two paragraphs declassified at the request of Sen. Carl Levin, D‑Mich., and released by his office over the weekend. The report also said: ‘Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.’ He got that right. Folks in the highest places were very interested in claims along the lines Libi was peddling, even though they went against both logic and the preponderance of intelligence gathered to that point about possible collaboration between two enemies of the United States that were fundamentally at odds with each other. Al Qaeda was able to create a base in Iraq only after the U.S. overthrow of Hussein, not before. ‘Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements,’ accurately noted the DIA. Yet Bush used the informant’s already discredited tall tale in his key Oct. 7, 2002, speech just before the Senate voted on whether to authorize the use of force in Iraq and again in two speeches in February 2003, just before the invasion.”
(Idem.)
20. “Leading up to the war, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to sell it to the United Nations, while Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith repeated it breathlessly for homeland audiences. The con worked, and Americans came to believe that Hussein was associated with the Sept.11, 2001, hijackers. Even CIA Director George Tenet publicly fell into line, ignoring his own agency’s dissent that Libi would not have been m a position to know what he said he knew. In fact, Libi, according to the DIA, could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training allegedly occurred. In January 2004, the prisoner recanted his story, and the next month the CIA with- drew all intelligence reports based on his false information.”
(Idem.)
21. Note the reference here to “Curveball”—the code-name for an informant who channeled significant elements of the bogus intelligence to the US. As discussed in FTR#502: “Curveball” was a protégé of Ahmed Chalabi, himself believed by the NSA to be an agent for the Iranian fundamentalists. In addition, “Curveball” was at all times in the custody of German intelligence. The US was never permitted to interview “Curveball” until after the start of the war. In FTR#502 we examined the possibility that the handling of “Curveball” by the BND–the successor agency to the Reinhard Gehlen spy outfit—may have been another part of the hypothetical Underground Reich “deathtrap” being discussed here.
“One by one, the exotic intelligence factoids Bush’s researchers culled from raw intelligence data files to publicly bolster their claim of imminent threat — the yellowcake uranium from Niger, the aluminum tubes for processing uranium- the Prague meeting with Mohamed Atta, the discredited Iraqi informants ‘Curveball’ and Ahmad Chalabi — have been exposed as previously known frauds. When it came to selling an invasion of Iraq it had wanted to launch before Sept. 11, the Bush White House systematically ignored the best available intelligence from U.S. agencies or any other reliable source. . . .”
(Idem.)
This sort of feels like beating a dead horse at this point, but anyways....
Interesting:
There’s quite a bit about SISMI’s involvement with the Ustica coverup in Philip Willan’s Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy (available online via google books).
Did the coup attempt debacle in Venezuela that reportedly left President Trump frustrated with John Bolton’s regime change schemes end up giving Trump cold feet about his administration’s long-standing regime change designs for Iran? That’s one of the big questions raised by a series of recent articles regarding the US’s sudden insistence that Iran and its proxies are planning on militarily targeting US forces. Because not only are we getting reports about US intelligence assessments that there’s some grave new Iranian threat, we’re also getting reports Trump is apparently frustrated with Bolton’s war mongering. Not frustrated enough to actually fire Bolton, mind you, but frustrated enough for these frustrations to end up getting leaked in news reports.
Granted, this could all be purely theatrics. But Trump does appear to be a reactionary individual and Bolton’s embarrassing coup plot in Venezuela is certainly the kind of thing that might trigger a reaction from Trump. Or perhaps Trump is responding to the fact that the top British general in the US-led anti-ISIS coalition just told the world that he’s seen no indication of a increased threats from Iran or its proxies:
““No – there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” Ghika said in a videolink briefing from Baghdad to the Pentagon. “We’re aware of that presence, clearly. And we monitor them along with a whole range of others because that’s the environment we’re in. We are monitoring the Shia militia groups. I think you’re referring to carefully and if the threat level seems to go up then we’ll raise our force protection measures accordingly.””
Ouch. That’s a remarkable rebuke from a top allied general working with US forces in the region, prompting a counter-rebuke by US Central Command which doubled down on the threat warnings. As the article notes, this kind of high-level disagreement has heightened concerns that the hawks in the US are exaggerating or fabricating intelligence under the direction of John Bolton, which is an entirely reasonable concern:
And these concerns of exaggerated or fabricated intelligence is on top of learning that Bolton basically ordered acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan to come up with a plan for sending 120,000 US troops to the region in response to these intelligence assessments:
But beyond the concerns about Bolton pumping junk intelligence, we also have Saudi Arabia alleging that two of its oil pumping stations were attacked by Iranian proxies. Keep in mind that Saudi Arabia and the UAE is waging one of the most brutal wars in recent memory in Yemen (with US assistance), so it appears that attacks by the Yemeni Houthis on Saudi or UAE assets will be used to hype Bolton’s push to war:
So was that major public disagreement between general Ghika and US Central Command a significant factor in Trump’s apparent souring on Bolton’s Iranian war mongering? It seems like the kind of thing that would have left Trump displeased, at a minimum. General Ghika’s comments were pretty damn embarrassing for the Trump administration, after all. But as the following article also describes, it’s not just a British general who isn’t buying into this new threat assessment. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo learned during his recent trip to Europe, the rest of the US’s European allies don’t appear to be buying this either:
“Trump grew angry last week and over the weekend about what he sees as warlike planning that is getting ahead of his own thinking, said a senior administration official with knowledge of conversations Trump had regarding national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.”
LOL! Trump makes John Bolton — a guy known to be one of the biggest advocates for war with Iran on the planet — his national security adviser and Mike Pompeo — another war hawk — his secretary of state, but he’s like to assure everyone that he’s really against war with Iran. But that’s the current spin.
Again, given the incredible failure of Bolton’s Venezuelan coup attempt, it’s not inconceivable that Trump has lost faith in Bolton’s ability to successfully create the justification for an Iranian conflict. But it is pretty unimaginable that war with Iran hasn’t been on the Trump agenda all along. And if we parse Trump’s alleged words, it sounds like he’s saying he’s not convinced the stage is set for war with Iran at this moment. Probably because Bolton’s intelligence assessment isn’t being believed. Plus, there’s nothing stopping him from firing Bolton, Instead, we’re told that he’s not nearly as upset with Bolton has he was with Rex Tillerson, a Secretary of State who managed to embarrass Trump on a number of occasions. And don’t forget that Tillerson actually supported keeping the US in the Iran nuclear deal. Do when we’re told that Trump was more pissed as Tillerson than he currently is at Bolton that gives us an idea of how much real disagreement there is between Trump and Bolton. If anything, this looks more like a disagreement of short-term tactics:
It’s also worth noting that this entire public spat could be done in an pre-emptive attempt to portray Trump as a reticent dove who will only grudgingly be pushed into war. As the article reminds us, when Trump was a candidate he branded himself as someone who would avoid getting the US into uncessary wars. So it’s possible we’re seeing the threatrics Trump feels he needs to spark a conflict in anticipation of the 2020 campaign:
But it’s also very possible that Trump was simply really frustrated and embarrassed by the fact that apparently no one believed Mike Pompeo when he suddenly traveled to Europe last week to meet with the European governments and show them the alleged evidence of Iran’s schemes. As with Venezuela, it was already looking like a big Bolton plan for war was fizzling:
So if Trump is primarily just pissed at Bolton and Pompeo over the fact that no one seems to be buying the US intelligence assessments, and he still has plans for a somehow sparking a conflict with Iran, it’s worth keeping in mind that a lot of forces that are deemed ‘Iranian proxies’ aren’t really under Iran’s control. So the possibility for an ‘Iranian proxy’ playing into the Trump administration’s plans for creating a pretext for war is very real:
It’s also important to keep in mind that the support for war with Iran in the US government isn’t limited to the hawks in the Trump administration. For example, Liz Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney who holds his old seat on congress, appears to be on board with Bolton’s plans of using these intelligence assessment to escalate tensions with Iran:
Interestingly, acting secretary of defense Patrick Shanahan, appears to be joining a number of top US military commanders in taking a more cautions view of the situation:
So can we expect Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who had no government experience before Trump selected him as undersecretary of defense in 2017 and who Trump recently signaled he will nominate to replace Jim Mattis, to act as a backstop against the war plans of Bolton and Pompeo? Well, according to the following article, probably not. When it comes to questions of war in Trump’s cabinet it’s John Bolton calling the shots and Shanahan is still relatively new the job and he’s already been losing fights with Bolton:
“Shanahan had held no government posts before joining the Pentagon nearly two years ago, and in his four months leading the Defense Department he has been less inclined than his predecessor, Jim Mattis, to resist President Donald Trump’s most dramatic impulses.”
Is the new guy on the job up to the challenge of countering someone like Bolton, who has been working on government for years? That’s one of the big questions surrounding Shanahan’s likely nomination to formally replace Jim Mattis as secretary of defense. And based on what we’ve seen, the answer appears to be, no, Shanahan is likely not up to the task:
Adding to those fears is the fact that Shanahan apparently opposed to the recent move to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization, which the Pentagon opposed, and Shanahan lost that battle to Bolton:
So we’re already seeing signs that the next current acting secretary of defense, who is likely to formally become the secretary of defense, is likely going to play second fiddle to Bolton war cries in Trump’s cabinet.
And that all suggests that the biggest force left to oppose the Bolton/Pompeo war plans in the Trump White House is Trump himself. *gulp*
It was pretty clear that regime change in Iran was going to be a top foreign policy objective when President Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear treaty in May of 2018. This was arguably clear at the beginning of the Trump administration much earlier given the Trump’s deep ties to the Saudi government and right-wing forces in Israel. But the nature of that regime change plan was never quite clear. Was the idea to ratchet up sanctions and economically strangle Iran in the hopes of encouraging popular protests that bring down the Iranian regime? Or was it going to be a war?
It initially looked like sanctions were going to be the tool of choice following the reimposition of economically crushing sanctions after Trump pulled out of the nuclear treaty. But then we had those strange events last year like the attack on a Japanese tanker (while Shinzo Abe was making a historic visit to Iran) that was blamed on Iran but had the look of being a false flag set up. So was the plan to weaken Iran with sanctions in preparation for a full blown war? Well, it’s increasingly looking like that may have been the plan following Trump’s unilateral decision to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and someone seen the second most important figure in Iran’s government:
Military Times
Fears of new conflict rise after US kills Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in strike on Baghdad airport
By: Shawn Snow , Howard Altman , and Aaron Mehta
1/2/2020
One of Iran’s most revered and powerful military commanders has been killed in a U.S. strike near the Baghdad International Airport, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday.
The strike will intensify tensions between the U.S. and Iran and many experts say it escalates the risk of a new conflict spreading across the region.
“At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the Department of Defense said in an emailed statement.
Also killed in the strike was a top Iraqi leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, which is known as the PMF and is part of a larger umbrella group that includes a number of Shia militant groups supported by Iran.
An Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that al-Muhandis had arrived to the airport in a convoy to receive Soleimani whose plane had arrived from either Lebanon or Syria. The airstrike occurred as soon as he descended from the plane to be greeted by al-Muhandis and his companions, killing them all.
The DoD said Soleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”
The Pentagon also said Soleimani orchestrated the Dec. 27 rocket attack on the Kirkuk military installation that resulted in the death of an American contractor and wounded four American troops.
William Fallon, a retired admiral who ran U.S. Central Command from March 2007 to March 2008, told Military Times that Soleimani’s death is a “significant blow” to Iran.
“There is little doubt in my mind he was in Baghdad orchestrating activity,” said Fallon, who pointed to the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad Tuesday by pro-Iranian militants. “Those were not protests, they were coordinated attacks on the embassy.”
Fallon said that while tensions between the U.S. and Iran are likely to ratchet up, he does not anticipate a full-scale war.
“It will be interesting to see how big a strike back Iran wants to try,” Fallon said, adding that he expects terror attacks and Iranian-backed militia leaders to “put on a pretty good show against the embassy.”
“They have to be careful about it, as we have seen over the last six months, they are not shy,” said Fallon. “Whether it is tanker attacks, drone attacks, they will likely do something, but they will have to calculate how far they want to go.”
As far as an all-out war, “neither side really wants it,” said Fallon. “It is not in the interest of either party to do it. There is too much to lose. The Iranians have a lot of chess pieces on the table.”
Mara Karlin — a former defense official with expertise in the region who most recently served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development — noted that military officers who served in Iraq during the days when Iran was supplying arms to insurgents have a dark view of Soleimani personally.
“Don’t underestimate the hatred and vitriol that senior U.S. military officials with experience in Iraq have toward Qassem Soleimani,” she said. “He has the blood of hundreds of American troops on his hands. The consequences of killing Soleimani — the most influential Middle East military official for decades — cannot be underestimated. ”
A U.S. State Department report estimated that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was responsible for 17 percent of all deaths of U.S. personnel in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 — roughly 603 casualties.
The strikes prompted an immediate spike in global oil prices Thursday night and set off a debate on Capitol Hill about the White House decision to launch the strike. One lawmaker applauded the killing of Soleimani and calling him “an evil bastard who murdered Americans.” Another lawmaker suggested the strike was an assassination that could cause a “massive regional war.”
The U.S. strike against Soleimani was “one of the most major counter-terror and operations and moves against the Iranians executed by any actor in decades,” Phillip Smyth, a research fellow with the Washington Institute, told Military Times Thursday night.
Soleimani, as commander of Iran’s Quds force — which is tasked with carrying out paramilitary and clandestine operations outside of Iran — has lead Tehran’s irregular wars across Yemen and Syria for several years.
The Quds Force commander has been among America’s top adversaries in recent years as he has helped prop up brutal Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s regime amid a bloody civil war that has ravaged the country since 2011.
And in Yemen, Iran has supported Houthi rebels with training and sophisticated drone and missile and anti-ship systems in their fight against the central government.
It’s unknown how Iran may retaliate against the death of its military commander who is highly revered in the country.
But researcher Kyle Orton says the U.S. may not be able to absorb what Iran throws at the U.S.
American “troops are spread to thin, and Iran’s agents too widespread,” Orton told Military Times.
Orton was previously a Syria conflict expert at the Henry Jackson Society — a London-based think tank.
“If Iran makes the decision to flip the switch, I’m not sure how U.S. forces in Iraq defend themselves,” he said.
The U.S. has deployed more than 14,000 additional troops to the Middle East throughout the past six months. There are more than 60,000 American troops in the CENTCOM theater of operations. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump ordered an additional 4,000 soldiers from the Army’s 82 Airborne Division to deploy to Kuwait to reinforce security in the region.
“This strike and accompanying raid dealt an incredible blow to Iran’s proxy network across the entire region. They [Iran] will respond violently and likely in multiple theaters,” Jennifer Cafarella, an researcher with the Institute for the Study of War, told Military Times.
“But they [Iran] will do so deprived of key leaders and the impunity they’ve enjoyed for the last few years. Tonight’s events have likely fundamentally changed the trajectory of the region,” she explained.
...
“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans,” the DoD said Thursday evening. “The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”
The attack came amid rising tension between the U.S. and Iran and a series of attacks and counter-strikes that intensified this week. That included a New Year’s Eve attack by Iran-backed militias on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The two-day embassy attack ended Wednesday.
The breach at the embassy followed U.S. airstrikes on Sunday that killed 25 fighters of the Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The U.S. military said the strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the U.S. blamed on the militia.
U.S. officials have suggested they were prepared to engage in further retaliatory attacks in Iraq.
“The game has changed,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday, telling reporters that violent acts by Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq — including the rocket attack on Dec. 27 that killed one American — will be met with U.S. military force.
———-
“Fears of new conflict rise after US kills Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in strike on Baghdad airport” by Shawn Snow, Howard Altman, and Aaron Mehta; Military Times; 01/02/2020
“An Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that al-Muhandis had arrived to the airport in a convoy to receive Soleimani whose plane had arrived from either Lebanon or Syria. The airstrike occurred as soon as he descended from the plane to be greeted by al-Muhandis and his companions, killing them all.”
A drone strike assassination of top government leaders. There’s a precedent now. Although the Trump administration already sort of established that precedent given the US fingerprints on the drone assassination attempt against Nicolás Maduro in September of 2018.
And note the pretext for the assassination: it was a preemptive strike “aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.” It’s the kind of explanation that is particularly ominous given that it basically forces a major response from Iran and appears to be a preemptive move to ensure future attacks of this nature are deemed necessary:
Also note the significant build up of US troops in recent months, with 14,000 more troops deployed to the Middle East in the last six months. Recall that it was about 6 months ago when the strange attack on that Japanese tanker took place. It’s the kind of sequence of events that makes it look like we’re seeing a plan for making war inevitable that’s been playing out for months:
And as the following article that was published hours before the assassination drone strike points out, it’s not just war that’s back on the table. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive war is back on the table. That’s what both Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley were making clear when they appeared on various new channels and making declarations like, “Enough is enough,” he said. “We have all the capabilities to either respond to further attacks or take preemptive action.” In other words, hours before this ‘preemptive’ drone assassination strike, Trump’s top military officials were preemptively reiterating the Bush Doctrine:
“The warning came this morning during an off-camera meeting with reporters at the Pentagon, where Esper said there are indications Iran may be planning more attacks on the US and its interests in the region. “We will take preemptive action as well to protect American forces and protect American lives,” he said. “The game has changed, and we’re prepared to do what is necessary to defend our personnel and our interests and our partners in the region.””
Note the vagueness of Esper’s language. He was just talking about preemptive attacks to “do what is necessary to defend our personnel.” He included preemptive attacks to defend “our interests and our partners in the region.” That’s the kind of scope for justifying preemptive attacks that could readily be used to justify a preemptive war with Iran at a moment’s notice given the extreme rivalry Iran has with Saudi Arabia and Israel. So while Esper declared that, “the game has changed,” it’s really just changed back to the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war when that’s perceived to be necessary.
So is war with Iran more or less a given at this point? Well, here’s an article from exactly one month ago that gives some of the context for this escalation: Following a large spike in the price of gasoline in Iran, thanks largely to the reimposition of sanctions on Iran, large scale domestic protests broke out inside Iran, triggering a bloody response by the Iranian government that killed over 200 protestors. It was the kind of situation that had the Trump administration looking for ways to encourage those protests in the hopes that it would lead to the kind of domestic popular revolt against the Iranian regime. Yes, just one month ago, the fomenting popular unrest was the focus of Trump’s regime change agenda. It was the kind of plan that has now obviously been completely abandoned since it’s hard to think of a move that would be more likely to shore up public support in Iran for the regime than killing someone like Soleimani. So while the regime change agenda hasn’t changed, the plan for bringing that about has suddenly done a 180:
“The Trump team sees the Iran protests as a sign that its sanctions-heavy “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran is working – fueling dissent among ordinary Iranians who will then pressure their leaders to spend more at home instead of their nuclear program or military actions outside Iran’s borders. The end goal: an Iran less threatening to the U.S. and its allies.”
So just a month ago, the Trump team appeared to view its “maximum pressure” strategy of intense sanctions as working. Although, given that the massive protests appeared to be largely in response to gasoline price hikes, there remained a question of whether or not the protests reflected a demand for the end to the Iranian theocratic form of government or simply a demand for lower gas prices. The Iranian government blamed the US and Israel for the protests, which was a reminder of the obvious risks of having the largely loathed Trump administration get directly involved in advocating for the protesters. And yet it appeared that some on the Trump team were convinced that these protests really did represent a significant opportunity for the kind of popular protests that could end up in regime change and open US support for that would make that outcome more likely:
So those optimists in the Trump administration that domestic popular protests could accomplish the regime change agenda have clearly been overruled. Because, again, it’s hard to imagine a move more likely to damage those protest movements than the killing of the highly revered Qasem Soleimani. That’s part of what makes his assassination so disturbing: it was clear following the Trump adminsitration’s pull out of the Iran nuclear treaty that regime change is a top priority, but it wasn’t clear that war was necessarily going to be how the Trump administration would go about it. And with the “maximum pressure” strategy of extreme sanctions, it did seem like fomenting popular protests might actually be the strategy the Trump administration was going to follow. It was the kind of strategy that made political sense for a politician who campaigned on non-interventionism and ending the US’s foreign wars. It was a sentiment Trump reiterated in January of 2019 when he announced that the US must “stop the endless wars” when he announced that the US had begun the withdrawal of US troops from Syria. From a crass, cynical standpoint, a strategy of regime change in Iran without a war fits Trump’s political brand. But here we are, with Trump single-handedly ensuring that popular support for the Iranian regime is bound to solidify, leaving outright war as the only realistic option left for accomplishing that regime change agenda. True to form, Trump is pursuing something that would, in theory, be great for the world — the collapse of a wretched theocratic regime that really has oppressed its people and really is a stain on the world stage — in the worst way possible. Imposing brutal sanctions in the hopes of starving the populace into rebellion is a pretty awful strategy, and yet Trump is pursuing an even worse approach. It’s like he’s allergic to not being as horrible as possible.
It’s worth recalling that, back in 2011, Trump repeatedly claimed that President Obama was going to start a war with Iran as a bid to get reelected. Given Trump’s propensity for projection, it’s not hard to imagine that he might imagine a war to be political boon for himself at this point, and yet it’s hard to see how outright war with Iran really would politically help Trump at this point. More wars in the Middle East aren’t exactly popular with the US public. And that raises the question: just who is Trump trying to appease with this move? Does he think independent voters are going to won over with a war that he clearly just started? Is this primarily being driven by the long-standing war hawk contingent in DC? Or are the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel quietly tempting/threatening Trump into this situation? Beyond their long-standing desire to see Iran crushed, let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia’s nuclear weapons ambitions are poised to get a boost from the this escalation of conflict, especially if Iran ends up pulling out of the nuclear treaty entirely (only the US pulled out of it) and accelerates its nuclear weapons program. Let’s also not forget about the entire unresolved “Psy Group” story from 2016, where the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE offered the services of an Israeli psychological warfare firm to assist Trump in the election. Is this, in part, the obligated pay back for that assistance? And perhaps a pre-payment for 2020 assistance from “Emerdata”, the reborn Cambridge Analytica that’s partly owned by figures close to the Saudis and UAE royal families? These are some of the questions we have to ask about the motive for this move given that this assassination drone strike appears to have been done at the directive of Trump himself and the US Congress wasn’t involved in this decision. It’s one of the consequences of having a president who openly embraces foreign emoluments: the US foreign policy is potentially up for sale given the near-unilateral power the president has on these matters. And then there’s the fact that there’s no reason to assume a war with Iran will be limited to Iran. So we also need to be asking some questions about the consequences of WWIII at this point too. It’s quite a start to the new decade.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just again refused to publicly provide evidence of the “imminent threat” to American lives that was the ostensible basis for the drone assassination strike against Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani. It’s not a good look for Pompeo. Or Trump. Although not as bad a look as the following article depicts: according to Iraq’s prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the reason Soleimani arrived in Baghdad on the day he was hit with the drone strike was to deliver a response to a message that Iraq sent to Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia about reconciling the two hostile nations. In other words, Soleimani was in Baghdad under the pretenses of some sort of Iran-Saudi peace initiative:
“Adil Abdul-Mahdi was quite clear: “I was supposed to meet him in the morning the day he was killed, he came to deliver a message from Iran in response to the message we had delivered from the Saudis to Iran.””
So did Soleimani show up in Baghdad for the purpose of lowering tensions between Iran and the Saudis? If so, that’s another big reason this attack should be seen as a means of making war with Iran inevitable. That’s the message of the timing of this attack if Soleimani really was there on a peace initiative. Especially if Trump had Abdul-Mahdi effectively lure him there as Abdul-Mahdi suggests:
So future US-backed peace overtures were discredited by this drone attack. Again, it’s a bad look. But the following Washington Post article makes it look even worse, especially for Mike Pompeo. Because as chilling as the idea is that Trump spontaneously took the option of killing Soleimani that Pentagon officials provided him, catching everyone off guard, the article describes a very different dynamic that led to Trump making that decision: Mike Pomeo and Mike Pence have been pushing Trump to assassinate Soleimani for months now, and they were finally able to convince Trump to carry it out following the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad. Yep, the two chief End Times Christian theocrats at the top of the Trump administration have been lobbying Trump to set these events in motion for months now. Pompeo was even described as “morose” when Trump refused to kill Soleimani earlier this year. So it would appear that the primary imminent threat avoided by the killing of Soleimani was the imminent threat of Mike Pompeo becoming even more morose if Trump refused the attack again:
“The secretary also spoke to President Trump multiple times every day last week, culminating in Trump’s decision to approve the killing of Iran’s top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urging of Pompeo and Vice President Pence, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.”
The drone strike was approved “at the urging of Pompeo and Vice President Pence.” That sure doesn’t sound like Trump’s decision to take the most extreme option presented to him by the Pentagon was a big surprise. Especially since it was Mike Pompeo, along with Defense Secretary Mark Esper and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Milley who personally presented those options to Trump and Pompeo had been pushing for this for months. It also couldn’t have been very surprising given the fact that Mike Pompeo appears to have been personally obsessed with Iran since becoming Secretary of State. The writing has been on the wall for while now:
Yes, Mike Pompeo had been lobbying for this decision for months and he was one of the three people who presented Trump with the list of options when he made this decision. And one of the other figures present was Mark Esper, a long-time associate of Pompeo who is described as being in “lockstep” with Pompeo. So based on these anonymous sources who are familiar with how Trump made this decision, it wasn’t just random Trumpian pique that led to this. It was Mike Pompeo. With the later endorsement of Mike Pence. In other words, the world shouldn’t be worried about Trump accidentally getting the US into WWIII. The concern should be over Trump carrying out an existing plan to get the US into WWIII that was handed to him by the chief apocalyptic warmongers in his administration, which is a much scarier scenario than random Trump pique. It’s a reminder that while Trump’s impulsiveness is certainly a reason to view the man as unfit for office, the fact that he surrounds himself with apocalyptic warmongers and prone to being influenced by them is a bigger reason to view him as unfit.
So what did Pompeo and Esper argue this time that convinced to go through with the assassination plan? We have no idea at this point. But here’s an article from back in March of 2019, right after Trump decided to recognize Israel’s sovereign over the Golan Heights, describing how Pompeo was openly talking to the Christian Broadcasting Network about the idea that Trump is being directed by God, which is presumably something Trump likes to hear. So we probably shouldn’t be super surprised if it turns out Pompeo’s persuasion was rooted in convincing Trump that he will be seen as a vessel of God if he carries out this drone strike since he’s already been making those kinds of arguments publicly:
““I am confident that the Lord is at work here,” Pompeo concluded.”
Lord is at work here. Via Trump. That was the message from Mike Pompeo on television less than a year ago. And don’t forget that Queen Esther isn’t the only Biblical figure Trump’s supporters compare him to, with King Cyrus being another favorite (because it helps excuse his un-Christian past and lifestyle). Might there have been some Esther or Cyrus references during that fateful meeting in late December? Who knows, but it’s pretty clear at this point that the assassination of Soleimani was something that’s been on Pompeo’s mind for quite while. Which implies Pompeo’s got plans for the rest of the steps necessary to bring the US into a full-scale war with Iran also in mind right now. Maybe Trump has already heard those plans or maybe not. But he will eventually. So as this disaster plays out, it’s going to be worth keeping a close eye on Pompeo’s levels of moroseness because a moroseless Pompeo is clearly an international red alert situation at this point.
Now that we’ve seen an initial response from Iran following the assassination drone strike of Qasem Soleimani, and it appears to have been calculated to avoid US casualties and not give the Trump administration an excuse to escalate the hostilities, the issue of whether or not Mike Pompeo is the primary driving force for this push to war is only going to become more important as this plays out. After all, while Trump has a political incentive to avoid a full blown war heading into a reelection, Pompeo doesn’t have those same considerations. So along those lines, here’s a pair of articles from earlier in 2019 that give us an idea of the broader plans Mike Pompeo has in mind for the Middle East. The articles also highlight how Pompeo’s plans regarding Iran has been leading to frictions between the State Department and other agencies like the Pentagon and CIA. Overall, they paint a picture where this policy of moving towards war with Iran really is being heavily driven by Pompeo alone. In other words, Pompeo is like some sort of Iran-hawk-extremists, because he’s even more hawkish than the rest of US government.
Ok, first, here’s an article from almost exactly a year ago. It describes a Middle East ‘anti-Iran’ tour that Pompeo was in the middle of at the time and the difficulties he was facing in putting together a kind of ‘Arab NATO’ military coalition of Middle East nations focused on opposing Iran in the region. That sure sounds like the build up for a planned multi-nation invasion of Iran.
But this military coalition wouldn’t just be focused on Iran. Pompeo also envisioned it moving into North East Syria following the pull back of US forces there. And it would have potentially fight the various Iranian-backed militias operating in the region. In other words, the ‘Arab NATO’ would really be a ‘Sunni Arab NATO’ focused on attacking Shia forces in the region. Keep in mind that the drone strike that killed Soleimani also killed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces. So the killing of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was was consistent with this broader agenda by Pompeo to create a Middle East NATO focused on fighting Iran and any group associated with Iran. A broader agenda that Pompeo was not at all succeeding at implementing this time last year:
““If you are talking about coordination in certain areas, that is already taking place, but if you want to create a military alliance, an Arab NATO, I think it’s a nonstarter,” said Marwan Muasher, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former foreign minister of Jordan. “The ingredients are not there.””
Yep, there’s going to be no shortage of reasons putting together an ‘Arab NATO’, starting with the fact that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the only two countries that appear to be on board with the idea:
And then there’s the fact the Iraq is a majority Shia country with extensive ties to Iran. So trying to get Iraq on board with joining a military coalition against Iran is basically a non-starter:
So that was how Mike Pompeo’s anti-Iran agenda was going in January of 2019. Next, here’s an article from March of 2019 about how Pompeo was ratcheting up pressure on Iraq to actively weaken the Iranian-backed Shiite militias operating in the country. Pompeo was pushing a plan that would not only designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organzation, but would also potentially make the same designation for Iraq’s Shia militias like the Popular Mobilization Forces umbrella group. As a result, these militia members, and Iraqi officials who support them, would be subject to new economic sanctions and travel restrictions. As the article notes, one significant complication in declaring these militias terrorist organizations is that some of them are already legitimate players in Iraq’s politics, with members elected to parliament. And these demands are on top of Trump administration demands that Iraq cut economic ties with Iran as a result of the reimposition of US sanctions following Trump’s pullout of the Iran nuclear agreement. It’s all part of the context of the parliamentary vote to kick US forces out of Iraq following the drone strike: it was a drone strike that also killed the leader of one of the top Iraqi militia umbrella groups that the US had already been pressuring Iraq to cut ties with:
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose confrontational stand on Iran has already strained ties with European allies, is leading the push for Iraq to confront its fellow Shiite-majority neighbor. He arrived in the Middle East on Tuesday to speak with officials in Kuwait, Israel and Lebanon about containing Iran.”
As we can see, convincing the Iraqi government to treat Iran like an enemy was part of Pompeo’s agenda during his Middle East trip in March of last year. But Iran wasn’t the only focus. Iraqi Shia militias were also targeted and declaring them to be terrorist organizations was what Pompeo was recommending at the time. It was a position Iraq’s prime minister explicitly rejected:
But opposition to Pomeo’s plans were just coming from Iraq. Pentagon and CIA officials were also warning that the plan to designate these militias, as well as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, as terrorist groups risk a backlash and US troops receiving the same treatment:
So it would appear that the policy Pompeo is pursuing in the region is being done over the opposition of both US military and intelligence officials.
Next, here’s an article from May that describes the reason for a surprise visit by Pompeo to Baghdad earlier that month. It appears the focus of the trip was US intelligence about the suspicious position by these Iraqi militias towards the US troops station in Iraq. Pompeo’s trip apparently focused on delivering a warning to the Iraqi government: get those militias under control or the US military will unilaterally do it for them:
“He told Iraq’s top brass to keep the militias, which are expanding their power in Iraq and now form part of its security apparatus, in check, the sources said. If not, the U.S. would respond with force.”
So back in May, Pompeo was threatening to use US military force against these Shia militia. Some analysts, however, view the unsettling position of the missiles by the militias as purely symbolic:
Keep in mind that Pompeo was trying to get these same groups designated as terrorist organizations in the months leading up to this so that presumably played a role in any decisions to make a threatening symbolic gesture towards US troops.
So that’s also part of the context of both the assassiation drone strike that also killed the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces.
But note the profit-making angle to this story (because there’s always one of those): by demanding that Iraq cut economic ties to Iran, including energy imports, that doesn’t just weaken Iran. It also creates a market opportunity for companies like GE and Exxon Mobil:
And that’s also one of the contexts to keep in mind with Pompeo’s intense drive to isolate Iran in the region: there’s a lot of money to be made. Might those energy interests also be whispering in Mike Pompeo’s ears while Pompeo whispers in Trump’s ear? We don’t know. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Pompeo is the key driving force between the Trump administration’s policy towards Iran. And that policy appears to not just be an eventual war with Iran but also war against all of the various Shia militia groups operating in the region. And the formation of an Arab Sunni NATO. In other words, a regional religious civil war. That was Mike Pompeo’s top agenda in 2019 and there’s no reason to assume that isn’t still on the agenda for 2020.
The mysterious crash of a Ukrainian airliner is getting somewhat less mysterious as more information is coming out and looking more and more like a horrible mistake that happened in the context of a war situation: First, the information coming in yesterday indicated that the flight exploded in midair. According to Jeff Guzzetti, the former accident investigation chief at the FAA, the crash had “all the earmarks of an intentional act.” And Mary Shiavo, the former Department of Transportation inspector general, “Something happened to blow that plane out of the air. Statistically speaking, that’s a missile or a bomb.” And then there was a video that appeared to show the plane on fire crashing to the ground. Note that the plane, a Boeing 737–800, isn’t the Boeing 737 Supermax that’s had multiple plane crashes that were apparently due to software issues. This was the older version of the 737 that is widely used around the world and has an excellent safety record. Iran is refusing to share the black box with the United States despite the planed being a Boeing 737–800 which would normally make the US a part of the investigation. Taken together, there’s an abundance of mystery about what exactly happened but it’s strongly looking like an explosion of some sort took that plane down:
“Jeff Guzzetti, former accident investigation chief at the Federal Aviation Administration, told the Washington Post the crash had “all the earmarks of an intentional act.””
All signs point to an intentional act. But was it an accidental intentional act or a deliberate intentional act? And who committed the act? That’s all still part of the mystery. Although according to various unnamed US officials, the suspicions are that the Iranians accidentally mistook the plane for a hostile US military plane and shot it down with a surface-to-air missile:
““Photographs purportedly taken near the site of the crash and circulated on social media appear to show the guidance section of an SA-15 Gauntlet short-range, surface to air missile, which landed in a nearby garden,” the firm IHS Markit said in its report.”
So pieces of a surface-to-air missile guidance system landed in a nearby garden and photos are available. If those photos are legitimate that’s pretty compelling evidence of what exactly took the plane down, making an online bomb or something like a shoulder-fired Stinger missile much less likely. And we’re also told that US intelligence picked up a radar being turned on signals of two surface-to-air missile launches shortly before the explosion:
So given that US intelligence claims to have evidence of these missile launches, it’s worth noting that a report from yesterday on the briefing given to the US Congress on the situation in Iran stated that Congress was told there was no intelligence to indicate that the plan was shot down and Gina Haspel, the head of the CIA, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, were two of the officials giving this briefing:
“In Washington, U.S. officials briefing members of Congress on the current tension between the United States and Iran said there was no intelligence to indicate that the plane was shot down, according to a lawmaker at the briefing and who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified session. The briefers included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and CIA Director Gina Haspel.”
It’s a bit of an inconsistency in the reporting, although for event this recent it’s not surprising to see contradictory statements like this. And all of the available evidence suggests something cause that plane to explode in mid-air that that can only mean a bomb or a missile. But even if we assume there was foul play at work here with the downing of this plane over Iran, it’s entirely unclear who benefits unless we learn that the passenger list included the kind of people a government would want killed. It’s not like the shooting down of this plane makes a conflict with Iran any more or less likely. Unless the sole purpose was to ‘sending a message’ of some sort, or a live cyber experiment with messing around with Iran’s air defense systems, it’s hard to see how anyone benefits from this. It’s certainly an embarrassment for Iran, but not the kind of embarrassment that really changes the situation. So it’s going to be interesting to hear what Iran releases for its final official explanation of what happened and whether or not the black box data gets shared with any other investigators.
Still, the fact that this was a Ukrainian airline makes this tragedy a remarkable coincidence too. After all, it was in the skies of Ukraine that a Malaysian passenger airliner, flight MH-17, was shot down back in 2014 under highly suspicious circumstances. What are the odds of the next passenger airline to get shot out of the sky by a military mishap being Ukrainian? That seems extremely improbable and yet here we are. Should we expect an Iranian airliner to get accidentally shot down next? If so, hopefully the fact that the US already shot an Iranian airliner out of the skies back in 1988 — Iran Air flight 655 — somehow completes this weird cycle of air tragedies.
From the moment reports first came out about the drone assassination attack on Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani there was speculation that this was driven, in part, by a ‘wag the dog’ desire by President Trump to distract the American public from the ongoing #UkraineGate impeachment proceedings. Those suspicions were only bolstered by the congressional response to the Trump administration’ private congressional briefing on the justification for the strike, with a number of Senators coming out of the briefing decrying the lack of evidence that Soleimani was planning an “imminent” attack. But it was the complaints of two Republican Senators, Rand Paul and Mike Lee, that presented perhaps the most ominous warning of what’s the come: As Lee put it, the briefing was “probably the worst briefing I have seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I’ve served in the United States Senate”, specifically because Trump officials spent the briefing arguing that a public debate over the wisdom of the drone strike would damage the country. In other words, the Trump administration wasn’t just unable to present evidence of a imminent threat posed by Soleimani, but it also wants to ensure Congress continues to give the administration authorization to do this again in the future:
“He added: “What I found so distressing about the briefing is one of the messages we received from the briefers was, ‘Do not debate, do not discuss the issue of the appropriateness of further military intervention against Iran,’ and that if you do ‘You will be emboldening Iran.’ ””
Yes, congressional oversight only emboldens Iran. That was the core of the Trump officials’ message to Congress, because it doesn’t sound like they provided much else in terms of describing the threat.
Even worse, Senator Lee later gave an interview with NPR where he described a scene where Senators asked the Trump officials if they felt they needed Congressional authorization to call a strike in on the Supreme Leader of Iran and Trump officials refused to answer that question:
““It would be hard to understand assassinating a foreign head of state as anything other than an act of war,” Josh Chafetz, a Cornell law professor and the author of a book on Congress’ hidden powers, told me. “It’s appalling that executive-branch officials would imply, even in responding to a hypothetical question, that they do not need congressional authorization to do it.””
Yep, the Trump administration basically asserted to Congress that the powers congress granted to the presidency to unilaterally engage in military action includes the power to assassinate foreign leaders. Not just popular generals but the actual leaders.
So the Trump administration killed Iran’s top general under the pretense that he posed an imminent threat, then the administration refused to provide Congress with information about that imminent threat and demanding that there be no public debate about whether or killing a top Iranian leader was justified because that would embolden Iran. And the administration also appeared to argue before Congress that it has the powers to kill top foreign leaders without first getting authorization from Congress. And almost all of the Republican Senators appear to be behind this presidential power grab. It’s pretty ominous.
But the Republicans Senator’s handing over of this unprecedented war making powers to the executive branch gets worse in the context of the following story: According to both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Trump told people during phone calls that part of the reason he conducted the drone strike was because of pressure he was getting from Republican Senators who are import supporters in his upcoming Senate trial. So this strike was literally an attempt to appease the Senate war hawks:
“The New York Times reported something similar this week, stating that Trump had said in a phone call that “he had been pressured to take a harder line on Iran by some Republican senators whose support he needs now more than ever amid an impeachment battle.””
Sparking a regional conflict in order to appease Senators in his upcoming impeachment trial. That’s an impeachable offense, right? It sure seems like one. And that’s part of what makes the power-grabbing nature of this scheme so disturbing: it’s already looking like part of the motivation for this strike was to create a giant distraction from his upcoming Senate impeachment trial over the #UkraineGate scandal. But what happens if his impeachment trials starts including charges over this ‘trumped up’ move to war? Is he going to start an even bigger crisis? Maybe kill off Iran’s Supreme Leader under the pretense of a vague “imminent” threat?
Also recall how it’s not just hawkish Senators who have been pressuring Trump to war. Mike Pompeo has made this his pet issue for over a now. It raises the fascinating question of whether or not Pompeo, and perhaps John Bolton, have been in contact with these hawkish Senators. Was there some sort of GOP-hawk extortion campaign against Trump going on to press him into war? That would be rather ironic given the extortive nature of the #UkraineGate scandal.
And note how Mike Pompeo came right out and said on Thursday that, “We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real,” when asked about that imminent threat:
It’s exactly the kind of answer to the growing question of the veracity of the evidence that this attack was predicated on that can turn this whole fiasco into another impeachment charge. And it also happens to contradict what Trump has started claiming on Thursday and in interview Friday: according to Trump, Soleimani was planning on blowing up a US embassy. Later, he asserted that the plot was actually against four embassies:
“President Donald Trump on Thursday asserted that Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani was plotting to blow up a US embassy before he was killed by a US drone strike last week, later saying that the Iranian general was threatening multiple American embassies overseas.”
First, Trump claims Thursday night there was a plan to blow up an embassy. Then it was multiple embassies. This is on the same day that Mike Popmeo, as we saw above, acknowledged that “We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.” So Trump appears to be asserting the opposite and that there were four particular embassies that were at risk of being attacked. Imminent risk, of course.
And yet none of this evidence about threats to multiple embassies were presented to Congress, from the Secretary of Defense to suggest that Congress simply didn’t have access to the intelligence. Keep in mind that the main thing the Senators were angry about after the briefing was that they weren’t shown any intelligence of an imminent threat and the whole purpose of the briefing was to provide that evidence:
And note how the administration already appears to be engaging in damage control over Trump’s assertions, suggesting that he was referring to public demonstrations by a particular group:
So we appear to have all the hallmarks of a signficant coverup here. A coverup involving the president trying to start a war in order to district from his impeachment. Or rather, in order to garner the support of the Senators he feels he needs to survive the Senate impeachment inquiry. And as part of this scheme, the administration is also effectively trying to seize even more powers to carry out even more significant military actions without Congressional approval.
Overall, the table is now set for some sort of diabolical ‘wagging the ‘wag the dog” scenario here: A new larger military act to distract from the investigation over the previous military act that was supposed to protect Trump during an impeachment investigation. An impeachment investigation that, ironically, involved withholding military aid in order to extort Ukraine into providing Trump with political fodder for his reelection. So whether he’s withholding military aid to force a political investigation, or engaging in military acts to distract from a political investigation, it’s all about creating a spectacle to get reelected. Which seems like a pretty big reason not to reelect the guy. Yes, there was already an abundance of reasons to to reelect the guy, but he’s somehow coming up with new, even more compelling reasons...which will probably make him feel even more compelled to start a war for reelection purposes. It’s a reminder that, of all the escalatory scenarios we want to avoid at this point, it’s an escalation of this cycle of desperate malign incompetence is the cycle we want to avoid most of all. But we can’t really avoid that unless Congress steps in to reassert its war-making powers, which won’t happen because the Republicans won’t do that. Which is also a reminder that Trump isn’t the only Republican stuck in a cycle desperate malign incompetence endangering us all.
A debate over the meaning of the word “imminent” is an increasingly hot topic in DC these days following the muddled and contradictory explanations from the Trump administration on the nature of the intelligence pointing to Qassem Soleimani posing an “imminent” threat as the justification for the drone assassination strike. And it doesn’t appear that this debate is going to be ending anytime soon. Because based on the comments from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday it appears the definition of “imminent” that the white house is now working with is ‘something that will happen as some point in the future’, which is a pretty contentious definition of imminent:
““There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks that were being plotted by (Iranian general) Qassem Soleimani,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Thursday evening on Fox News. “We don’t know precisely when, and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.””
We don’t know where, we don’t know when. We just knew it was going to happen. That appears to be Pompeo’s definition of “imminent”, which sounds like the kind of definition that would allow the President to use the “imminent” threat clause in 1973 War Powers Action to engage in pretty much any act of war they choose without congressional approval. That’s part of what makes this debate over the meaning of “imminent” a pretty high stakes debate. If the Trump administration’s definition wins out, there’s basically nothing restraining the president from declaring wars. In that sense, the fact that this “imminent” debate is happening in the context of President Trump appearing to have chosen this moment to kill Soleimani and bring the US to the brink of war is a helpful reminder of the extreme danger of giving presidents de facto unilateral war-making powers.
So it’s worth recalling that this isn’t the first time Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has issued vague, muddled warnings about “imminent” Iranian attacks. Back in early May of 2019, Pompeo made an unannounced trip to Iraq and it was during this trip that we heard Pompeo warn of “specific and credible” intelligence warning of imminent Iranian attacks on US forces in the region:
“US officials have told CNN the US had “specific and credible” intelligence that suggested Iranian forces and proxies were planning to target US forces in locations including Iraq. That intelligence led the Pentagon to recommend a carrier strike group be moved to the region. Speaking to the press pool following his visit, Pompeo reiterated that it was the US’ understanding that “these were attacks that were imminent, these were attacks that were going to happen fairly soon, we’ve learned about them and we’re taking every action to deter them.””
Yes, eight months ago we were warned by Pompeo about “specific and credible” intelligence of “imminent” attacks from Iranian forces. And as the following article describes, Congress was still debating the credibility of this warning of an “imminent” attack two weeks later, with the Democratic members of Congress accusing the Trump administration of hyping up intelligence as a pretext for laying the groundwork for war and Republicans largely defending the Trump administration’s actions and backing up the intelligence claims and were largely unconcerned with the requirement that the president consult Congress in advance of military action. In other words, we’ve been here before. Eight months ago:
“When asked whether officials would justify action under the president’s authority as commander in chief or under existing authorizations, Graham brushed off both suggestions, classifying any potential military action as falling under the “inherent right to defend yourself.””
Yep, Lindsey Graham, perhaps the biggest advocate for war with Iran in the Senate, doesn’t appear to feel the president needs any congressional authorization at all for military actions. That power falls under the “inherent right to defend yourself.” So that’s something to watching for as the debate over presidential authority to use military force gets underway: Lindsey Graham wants to grant presidents some sort of blanket “inherent right to defend yourself” authority for using military force. And in general, the Republican senators appeared to be completely on board with the then-two-week-old warnings of “imminent” threat warnings Pompeo was making while Democrats were calling the evidence overhyped. Evidence that appeared to be limited to intelligence like photos Iran loading small boats with missiles:
So while we aren’t told what the intelligence basis was for the latest “imminent” warning issued by Pompeo about Iranian threats were that left lawmakers irate and accusing the administration of hyping evidence, this episode back in May gives us an idea of what left those elected officials so flabbergasted. Pictures of missiles being loaded onto boats. That was the imminent threat. The imminent threat that was being debated weeks later. Who knows, based on Pompeo’s extremely lax definition of “imminent”, maybe they used the same photos of boats loaded with missiles for this latest imminent threat.
But it’s worth noting that we’re now informed that some members of congress were very much in the loop when the Trump administration was planning its assassination drone strike attack. Specifically, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton were reportedly both in the loop and actively encouraged the strike. So Congress was notified in advance of this strike, but it happened to be limited to the two most hawkish members of the president’s party who have been pushing for war with Iran for years. This is particularly interesting given the recent revelation that Trump reportedly told people that he conducted the strike in order to appease Republican Senators that would be important defenders in his upcoming #UkraineGate Senate impeachment trial. It was the kind of revelation that raised the question of whether or not there was a faction of hawkish Republicans that were using the threat of impeachment to literally extort Trump into conducting this strike. And now we learn that two of the biggest Iran hawks in the Senate were not just aware of these strike plans but encouraging it:
“As planning got underway, Pompeo worked with Esper, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Milley and the commander of CENTCOM Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, who assessed the profile of troops in the field. Multiple sources also say that hawkish Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were kept in the loop and also pushed Trump to respond.”
Cotton and Graham pushed Trump to carry out the strike. That’s what we’re now told. Although it doesn’t sound like Trump needed much coaxing:
Still, while Trump apparently wasn’t reluctant to carry out the strike, he still reportedly told people that he felt under pressure from GOP Senators to carry out the strike. And it’s hard to imagine Graham and Cotton weren’t two of the Senators applying that pressure. It’s a reminder that this Republican push to grant presidents more powers to make war on flimsy evidence is particularly dangerous when the president happens to be so corrupt almost anyone can blackmail him. It’s a real danger. Some might even call it an imminent danger.