Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov and Vladislav Sovin
[REGNUM] The mantra about returning the “1991 borders” in the Ukrainian version has long become an integral part of any international meetings, and Ukraine’s allies echo it in every possible way on this issue.
Recently, the foreign ministers of the G7 countries stated that they will never recognize the annexation of Ukrainian regions by Russia and demanded that the Russian Federation abandon “its claims regarding the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, as well as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.”
The formula about borders has become so familiar and categorical that no one even thinks that it fundamentally contradicts the concept that official Kyiv has been building for many years. After all, the borders of Ukraine as of 1991 are the borders of the Ukrainian SSR, a constituent part of the USSR, formed in this form thanks to the targeted policy of the Soviet state.
At the same time, the modern Ukrainian concept of "state-building" categorically denies any connection with it, pursuing a policy of total "decommunization" and "decolonization". The countdown of Ukrainian statehood begins with the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) of the period 1917-1920, and the annexation of eastern Polish lands to the Ukrainian SSR is traditionally called occupation.
Consequently, the size of the territory and the contours of the Ukrainian borders have no connection to 1991. Moreover, the redistribution of territories in Europe (and not only there) by Ukraine’s Western partners created enough precedents to no longer speak so categorically about Russia’s actions.
"THERE IS TERRITORY UNDER THE CARRIAGE"
As the first experience of independent nationalist statehood, the Ukrainian People's Republic of the early 20th century and its leaders are glorified at all levels - from school textbooks to monuments and street names. Symon Petliura, the head of the Directory of the UPR, is among the main national heroes.
At the state level, various dates associated with this period of history are annually celebrated, in particular the so-called Day of Unity on January 22, when Zelensky invariably records another pompous address to the people. But then it is completely logical to consider the starting position and borders of the UPR - not those to which it formally claimed, but within which it actually existed.
The first step was the proclamation by the Central Rada (the governing body of various Ukrainian organizations created in March 1917) of the autonomy of Ukraine within Russia. It was allowed within a limited framework by the then Provisional Government, which recognized this autonomy on the territory of five provinces: Kyiv, Volyn, Podolsk, Poltava and Chernigov (with the exception of part of its northern districts).
The Kiev optimists did not receive the desired nine provinces and did not object to this; the text of the First Universal was read by Vladimir Vynnychenko on June 10 (23), 1917 at the Second All-Ukrainian Military Congress and proclaimed that, “without separating from all of Russia… the Ukrainian people must manage their own lives.” The following two Universals reinforced this position.
Thus, the original territory of the autonomous Ukraine as part of Russia included only the central lands and part of the western ones, and its total area was significantly less than half of the territory of the Ukrainian SSR according to the 1991 borders.
When the creation of the UPR was proclaimed after the October Revolution, it aimed at a much larger territory, including Donbass, Kharkov and Odessa. But such desires again did not coincide with reality. Neither the Bolsheviks who came to power in Petrograd, nor the majority of the population of the territories that the UPR declared its own, had any intention of recognizing its claims.
In the confrontation that soon unfolded, the "unrecognized republic" was defeated, the Central Rada fled even from Kyiv and by the end of January 1918 controlled only part of Right-Bank Ukraine. In these conditions, the delegation of the UPR, which began negotiations with Germany and Austria-Hungary, hastily concluded a peace treaty with the latter, according to which it was recognized as an independent state, but in fact passed under external German-Austrian control.
If we talk about the UPR in its second period of existence - from November 1918 to 1920, headed by a new supreme body - the Directory, then everything was even more interesting there. After the defeat of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires and their collapse, the revived UPR regained control over part of the Ukrainian lands, including Kyiv, for some time.
On January 22, 1919, the unification ( the "Act of Zluka" ) of the UPR with the ZUNR - the West Ukrainian People's Republic, created on the territory of Eastern Galicia, which had previously been part of Austria-Hungary, was pompously proclaimed. However, the Red Army was already advancing from the east, and from the west - the Poles, who had revived their state, an integral part of which they considered most of Western Ukraine.
So by the beginning of spring of the same 1919, a little over a month after the "Act of Zluka", only Zhitomir and Vinnytsia remained under the control of the UPR from the large cities. The famous Ukrainian satirical writer Ostap Vyshnya, who witnessed all these events with his own eyes, aptly characterized the situation with the phrase "In the carriage there is the Directory - under the carriage there is territory", which became a catchphrase.
The French consul in Odessa, Emile Henno, who at one time negotiated with the Petliurists regarding the acceptance of the UPR under the protectorate of France, called them "a gang of fanatics without any influence." As a result, due to the complete worthlessness of the UPR, the Western powers - the victors in the First World War, not only did not satisfy the exorbitant Ukrainian territorial "wants" presented at the Paris Peace Conference, but also did not recognize it in principle as a separate state - within any borders.
The last attempt of Petliura and company to stay afloat was the conclusion of the Warsaw Treaty with Pilsudski's Poland in April 1920. In exchange for recognition of the UPR headed by himself and receiving military aid against the Red Army, Petliura agreed to the inclusion of the western Ukrainian lands of Galicia and Volyn into Poland, completely nullifying that same "Zluka" with ZUNR.
However, this alliance with the Poles did not help the Directory, and after the end of the Polish-Soviet War, the UPR, left without territory even under a train car, ceased to exist.
"SOVIET OCCUPATION"
The creation of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic fully corresponded to the political moment, and both of them had exactly the same right to exist as the UPR. The DKR, by the way, was also an autonomy within the RSFSR - the process of self-determination after the fall of the empire allowed for any options.
Therefore, the political competition for territory was fair: who had the better idea and more bayonets. As in our days, Kyiv called for help from the Germans and Poles, and Yuzov (future Donetsk) - the Russians. And the fact that Petliura and the romantics from the Central Rada had no unifying ideology and their own resources (just like Zelensky and those sitting in the Verkhovna Rada) - that's their problem.
The crux of the matter is that Soviet Ukraine became a full-fledged state with all its attributes, including a clear state border, while the UPR did not, and it officially renounced its western part. As a result, the Ukrainian SSR of 1939 had a border along the Zbruch. And as a result of the Soviet-Polish war, Poland completely annulled the Warsaw Treaty of 1920 with the Ukrainian People's Republic, and the new treaty established the borders between the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the BSSR, and the Polish Republic.
No other Ukrainian republics existed any more, and Crimea was not part of the Ukrainian SSR, just as it was not part of the UPR.
In 1939, Galicia and Volyn, which had previously been part of Poland, were annexed to Ukraine. Following this, in 1940, Northern Bukovina (today's Chernivtsi region) and Southern Bessarabia (the south of Odessa region), occupied by Romania after World War I, were annexed.
In 1945, after the victory in the Great Patriotic War, Transcarpathia, which until 1938-1939 was part of Czechoslovakia, was included in the Ukrainian SSR, and during its division was captured by Hungary. Finally, in 1954, Crimea was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR as a gift in honor of the anniversary of the Pereyaslav Rada - since then denounced by "patriots" at least twice.
The entire Soviet period has been officially declared an occupation period in Ukraine, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact has been declared criminal, and the rhetoric of Poland and Romania about an act of aggression with the seizure of “ancestral territories” has been supported. On April 9, 2015, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a package of laws on “decommunization,” as well as the law “On the condemnation of the communist and national-socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and the ban on the propaganda of their symbols.”
In April 2023, Zelensky signed a law on "decolonization", as the former head of the Institute of National Memory Volodymyr Vyatrovich stated, "this is a systemic document on the liberation of our country from the markers of the "Russian world". This law directly "recognizes as criminal and condemns Russian imperial policy". So, in full accordance with its spirit and letter, the territorial acquisitions of the Soviet period are a solid marker of the Russian world and the consequences of imperial policy.
And the fact that the “1991 borders” are not a dogma was confirmed by President Viktor Yushchenko. When in 2004 Romania appealed to the International Court of Justice with the question of delimitation of the continental shelf in the area of Zmeinoye Island, which belongs to Ukraine, it refused to appeal to the demarcation and delimitation of the borders between the USSR and Romania that took place in the first post-war years. Although it was then mutually recognized by both parties.
In the dispute with Romania, Ukraine could have resorted to the support of the Russian Federation as the successor to the Soviet Union, once and for all closing the question of the ownership of part of its territory. But instead, Kyiv accepted a court decision, according to which 80% of the continental shelf around Zmeinoye went to Romania.
Thus, this precedent has already made the borders different from those in 1991.
And the process of revising the borders that emerged in Europe after the end of World War II was not started by Russia at all. One could start with West Germany's absorption of the GDR in 1990, but the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia in 1991 and the separation of Kosovo as a result of direct military aggression by NATO are more appropriate here.
This is also a precedent that provides grounds for individual regions thirsting for self-determination. Especially if we are talking about a country that is quite consciously rejecting its own territories.
Ukraine must get what it so desperately wants: complete decommunization and decolonization, an integral part of which is decommunization of borders. Let them be honest with themselves.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] An absolutely amazing article in The Hill - about how "Russians should suffer, but live better than in the EU."
"Russians seem to be suffering less from the war than in 2022. Neither Ukraine's invasion of the Kursk region nor Western sanctions seem to be causing discontent among "ordinary" citizens or wealthy residents of Russia's largest cities.
This came as a surprise to many Western politicians and Russian dissidents, who had pinned some hopes on Muscovites and St. Petersburgers rebelling against the "war economy" and the loss of Western boutiques, free internet and travel to the EU. But even though Russia has been cut off from the West, too few people are irritated by this to cause significant protest.
Western sanctions imposed in 2022 have caused a sharp drop in capital outflow from Russia. Almost all the money that would have previously been directed to luxury European real estate has instead begun to flow into Moscow, St. Petersburg and their suburbs.
Although Visa and MasterCard have suspended their operations in Russia, Russians continue to use the Russian Central Bank's SBP, which allows them to transfer money by phone number immediately and without commission. Russian capitals are now ahead of European megacities in the use of QR codes and facial recognition, and mobile data is the cheapest and fastest in the EU. Even in stores, the range of goods is the same as before the war, including French wine and Italian sweets. In addition, home delivery of food and goods by robots is commonplace.
We see such tempting job offers that many Russians who left are now returning, having failed to integrate into European societies.
Russians are not so much worried as happy about the departure of their liberal compatriots and (not suffering, but) welcoming positive economic changes - and this economic progress has undermined anti-Putin sentiment in the country. Thus, Western attempts to undermine the Russian economy since 2022 have led to the opposite result - at least for now."
Text taken from the post in the link
[X] If you are wondering why citizens are being turned away that are coming to help NC and TN - you'll want to hear my experience as someone who has been doing this as a private citizen for almost a decade.
I was able to get into, and out of Asheville. We brought food, water, fuel and other supplies as well as helped people affected by the floods, but there are reasons why they are not allowing outside help.
I cannot confirm the reasons why in NC, but i can tell you the reasons in other storms i have worked - i'll explain below.
Let me share with you the first disaster area that i finally realized that this was all about money.
In the FL Keys with Hurricane Irma, after Texas got hit with Harvey, we finished our efforts in Texas and were the first citizen team to make it to Key Largo.
The federal agencies had US1 shut down just South of Key Largo and wouldn't let anyone in or out, even though the road was okay to pass.
We explained to them that we had boats, Jet skis, food, water, chainsaws and fuel to bring these people.
They didn't care and wouldn't let us in.
It was night by that point and you rarely saw the lights of vehicles in the distance on the individual keys, meaning the emergency response teams from FEMA weren't even working, it was all quiet.
We decided that we would go in anyways.
We filled up the boats and jet skis with all that we could reasonably carry and went by water, around all their BS blockades and around their law enforcement presence on the water.
It was 87 miles by water to get to our first stop, Cudjoe Key and Sugarloaf Key.
When we arrived there we were greeted by a homeowner (for privacy, I won't name him, though we have video) who was elated to see us and all the supplies we brought, his house was in shambles.
We started offloading supplies on the shoreline and helping to get them into what was left of his house. Read the rest at the link
Posted by: Mercutio ||
10/04/2024 00:00 ||
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#2
It is time to Legally handcuff DC. Time after time we see and read where the DC Swamp/Cartel has grown out of control and takes every opportunity to circumvent the US Legal Code and the Bill of Rights.
Hell, that statement makes a person sound like a 70's radical. But if you stop and think, many 70's radicals have taken many political offices. It seems these Yuppy liberals, have become what they protested.
[TomKilingenstein] The day before Thomas Matthew Crooks sprayed gunfire at President Trump, the Federal Bureau of Investigations arrested Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national who was admitted into the U.S. via parole for “significant public benefit.” The Dallas office of the FBI sponsored Merchant’s parole for the purposes of “security interests.”
The mainstream media has framed this arrest as an Iranian plot gone awry. Lee Smith investigates Merchant’s connection to Iran and analyzes a dangerous habit at the FBI.
Two attempts on the life of a former president, less than two months apart, is unprecedented in American history. And yet it’s not entirely surprising given that the country’s most powerful institutions and industries have spent the last eight years weaponizing the most suggestible and mentally ill of our citizenry to target Donald Trump and his supporters. Now it seems the FBI may be recruiting from abroad as well.
According to the Trump campaign, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently briefed the Republican candidate on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.” The Secret Service was alerted to the threat before the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life and reportedly increased his security because of it. But that was not enough to stop Thomas Matthew Crooks from shooting Trump in the face, killing Corey Comperatore, and wounding two other attendees.
There’s little doubt the Iranians are targeting Trump, say former intelligence officials with whom I spoke. “The Iranians are promiscuous assassins, and they hate Trump more than anyone else on earth,” says Peter Theroux, a retired CIA officer who worked on Iran and related issues during his tenure at Langley. “Trump enforced sanctions against Iran. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. He was the most antithetical to everything Tehran wants, including the triumphal visit to Riyadh he made for his first presidential trip in 2017.”
But above all, there’s the fact Trump ordered the January 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, onetime chief of the Quds Force, the external operations unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and second in command only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Iranians have vowed to avenge the terror master’s death and have threatened not only the former president but also former Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Iran envoy Brian Hook, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and his successor Robert O’Brien. In August 2022, the Justice Department charged an IRGC officer for plotting to kill Bolton.
The Islamic Republic definitely has it out for Trump, but it seems this most recent Iranian plot to kill the Republican candidate was hatched by the FBI.
Last month the DOJ announced it had charged a Pakistani national with ties to Iran in connection to a plot to assassinate a politician or U.S. government official on U.S. soil. According to reports, Trump was the target.
The suspect, Asif Merchant, entered the country in April and was arrested on July 12 as he prepared to leave the country. It appears that Merchant was the Iranian threat the Secret Service was briefed on before the July 13 rally in Butler, PA.
The FBI arranged his entry into the U.S. According to an August Twitter post from Fox correspondent Bill Melugin, Merchant “was admitted into the U.S. via parole for ‘significant public benefit’ when [Customs and Border Patrol] encountered him at the airport in [Texas] in April after he flew in from overseas.” The sponsor of his parole, Melugin reported, “was the FBI’s Dallas office, for ‘security interests.’”
Melugin’s sources told him the FBI had intelligence on Merchant “before he arrived in the U.S. and needed him to physically come into the country to develop the case on him and arrest him, and that if they had arrested him at Customs, they would not have been able to gather evidence and information about his plot.”
But to date there’s little evidence the FBI developed a case based on intelligence collected before Merchant’s entry. Rather, it seems more likely that federal law enforcement imported a terrorist entrapment target for the purpose of fabricating a plot. Former FBI agent turned whistleblower Steve Friend says the Bureau’s playbook is simple: “Identify a vulnerable person. Establish fake friendships with undercover agents and informants. Encourage him to agree to commit a terrorist act he is otherwise incapable of committing. Arrest him.”
Friend says that if the FBI really had probable cause for an arrest, it would make sense to facilitate Merchant’s travel rather than going through a lengthy and possibly contentious extradition process. But what’s curious, he says, “is that he was in the country for several months before they executed the arrest.”
If the FBI had intelligence on Merchant’s plan to kill Trump before he arrived in the United States, there’s no evidence of it in the affidavit for his arrest. “It was all information about his actions while in the United States,” says Friend. “That doesn’t mean that he hadn’t done anything before then. But it confirms that they didn’t have enough to arrest him when he arrived here.”
Neither the affidavit nor the indictment make a strong case that Merchant is an experienced operative. The “use of coded language, use of multiple cellular telephones, and removal of cellular telephones to attempt to avoid surveillance” cited in the affidavit do not, contrary to the arresting agent’s contention, exemplify expert “tradecraft and operational security measures.” “It’s laughable,” says Friend. “Like complex tradecraft is telling an accomplice to put his phone in a box? A corner drug dealer’s tradecraft is more sophisticated than that.”
Nor is there any evidence of Merchant’s ties to the Iranian regime. In the affidavit, the arresting agent cites his experience working on investigations related to Iran and the Quds Force, but all that connects Merchant to Iran is the fact he has a wife and family there as well as another wife and family in Pakistan. He traveled to Iran before coming to the U.S., but there’s no indication of what he did there, who he met with, how the plot originated, or on whose behalf it was to be executed.
In fact, according to the affidavit, Merchant told undercover agents that the “people who will be targeted are the ones who are hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world.” The FBI resolves this major discrepancy by explaining it away. “In my training and experience,” the arresting agent states in the affidavit, “individuals engaged in plots originating overseas to commit acts of violence in the United States often obscure the sponsor or broader purpose of the plot.”
But that’s not what DOJ records documenting previous Iranian plots show. For instance, DOJ’s 2022 filings regarding the arrest of Iranian national Shahram Poursafi for plotting to kill Bolton specifically identify the suspect as a member of the IRGC. DOJ documents concerning the 2011 arrest of Manssor Arbabsiar for conspiring to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. show that Arbabsiar confessed that he met with Quds Force officials who recruited, funded, and directed him to blow up a Washington, D.C. restaurant where the Saudi ambassador regularly ate. There’s nothing in the Merchant filings tying him to official Iranian channels.
There are other signs that there’s something not quite right about the Merchant plot. Arbabsiar was ready to pay $1.5 million for killing the Saudi ambassador. Poursafi put a $300,000 bounty on Bolton’s head and said he had an additional job for which he’d pay $1 million, presumably to kill Trump. But Merchant offered only $5,000 to kill Trump. And he didn’t even have the money. He had to travel from New York to Boston to make arrangements to have $5,000 sent from a foreign country, which, according to the affidavit, was likely Pakistan.
But perhaps the most bizarre detail is Merchant’s assertion that the assassination was to be only the first in an ongoing series of high-profile crimes. How, after killing the former and likely future president in broad daylight, did Merchant expect to evade law enforcement authorities long enough to embark on a sustained crime spree targeting heavily guarded politicians and officials?
Historically, the Iranians don’t send their best when targeting their enemies abroad. Arbabsiar, for instance, reportedly suffered from bipolar disorder and was known for being disorganized. But Merchant stands apart. From the court filings alone, it’s plain that he’s delusional. It seems pretty obvious that the so-called Iran plot, or at least the Merchant component of it, is an FBI fabrication.
Why would the FBI invent a plot to kill Trump? First, by claiming the Iranians are responsible for this effort deflects attention from the fact that the real two would-be assassins, Crooks and Ryan Routh, are Democratic Party supporters. Further, says Friend, it boosts FBI statistics. “If they had just been aware of some sort of a plot and brought it to light then it would have been a disruption of a domestic terrorist plot. But because they arrested him, it’s dismantlement, which is a very rare and very valuable statistic.”
Disruption interferes with an organization’s ability to function, like arresting a member of a drug gang. It disrupts the gang in a way that is going to impede them. But dismantlement, says Friend, “means taking down the entire organization. With the Merchant plot, the FBI can argue that he was forming an organization and now [they’ve] dismantled it — even though he was able to create it only because [they] facilitated his entry.” And because the other members of the plot are informants or undercover officers.
The Merchant plot is reminiscent of the alleged Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping and murder plot in 2020. Court proceedings showed that the entire scheme was cooked up by federal law enforcement officers and informants.
The danger with these kind of entrapment schemes, Friend explains, isn’t that someone as obviously incompetent as Merchant was going to kill Trump, but that, as a mentally unstable target committed to righting perceived wrongs against the Muslim world, he might have selected easier targets.
“This is a low intelligence person that they were able to cultivate here,” says Friend. “What if he just at one point had a moment of clarity and said, ‘Hey, this is a huge lift? I don’t have the logistics. I don’t have the financing. Why don’t I just grab a giant knife and stab an infidel?’ But that’s not something the FBI ever takes into consideration because they don’t think about the people they’re supposed to be protecting.”
The FBI’s problem isn’t just that it’s fudging statistics to boost its budget and win accolades, raises, and promotions all around for “solving” a high-profile case. The much bigger issue is timing. After all, Merchant was arrested a day before the first attempt on Trump’s life in Butler. There’s no evidence that the Secret Service’s failures that afternoon can be attributed to anything but incompetence. But the fact that the FBI is importing foreigners and encouraging them to plot against Trump raises questions that both the Secret Service and FBI would prefer to ignore.
Typically, the Bureau hides facts by claiming they are part of an active investigation and can’t be divulged to the public. This time, FBI Director Christopher Wray, notoriously stingy with facts he is bound to share with the American public, must come clean.
Posted by: 3dc ||
10/04/2024 00:00 ||
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#1
When I 1st heard of the DC Swamp concocted IRANIAN plot. I said could see them doing it given Trump's no BS manner of taking out Terrorist issues, instead of inviting them in via OPEN BORDERS.
Then the "What if's" started kicking in.
What if this was media bait to cover or facilitate a DC Swamp Assassination attempts, 3 and 4?
Or
What If _ _ _ knew of the plot and wanted to look like heroes by foiling it at the last minute to restore their credibility?
Or
What If it was to deflect media attention from previous mistakes?
Why shouldn't there be an implicit arrangement that if Iran were to rid the swamp of this "turbulent priest politician" the reaction would be limited to a sharp condemnation.
[Ynet] Given the rapid acceleration of military events, the date of 16 September has now receded into the distant background, even though barely two weeks have passed. Yet, that day remains vitally important for understanding the nature of contemporary Western strategy, and marks the beginning of its collapse.
THE STRATEGY OF DOING NOTHING
On that mid-September day, the Biden administration’s envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel to reiterate some simple, and rather tired, ideas. Specifically, hitting Hezbollah harder would not help Israel, and it would increase the danger of a large war, so the administration sought a diplomatic solution. All of that was declared on what was then the 345 day since Hezbollah began firing on Israel on 8 October last year.
What Hochstein conveyed to Israel is the essence of what passes for the West’s strategy in autumn 2024. A strategy of not rocking the boat, not making the situation worse than it already is, by doing very little, preferably nothing at all. The goal is to preserve the status quo, the still fairly comfortable and safe present enjoyed by the West, if not by Israel, Ukraine and other countries.
The concomitant, unavoidable, obsession is that with diplomacy. If the task at hand is to maintain safety in the immediate term by eliminating almost all risk, it inevitably becomes grossly inappropriate to contemplate war. After all, even a fool knows that wars are not risk-free. Therefore, the fool reaches for that magic wand, diplomacy.
DIPLOMACY AS A DELUSION
What the fool knows not, being a fool, is that the achievements of Western diplomacy over the past many decades are prominent by their absence. In my previous article on this sad topic, I discussed the catastrophe that has overtaken the Korean peninsula as a result of decades of American-led diplomacy. The Stalinist Kim regime is in power, equipped with intercontinental missiles and nuclear weapons, and under no effective pressure.
Everywhere else in the world, diplomacy has been similarly distant from triumph. Take the case of Iran. More than 22 years ago, on 14 August 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an opposition group, accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons in secret, including by building a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. It was later suggested that U.S. intelligence had discovered this some months earlier, but in either case it took another 16 months for the first of several failed diplomatic arrangements with Iran.
On 21 October 2003, not by coincidence a mere six months after the fall of Baghdad to coalition forces, Iran agreed with Britain, France and Germany that it would answer outstanding questions about its nuclear program and suspend uranium enrichment. This supposed diplomatic achievement lasted slightly longer than two years, after which Iran resumed enrichment at Natanz in January 2006.
This is the general pattern of Western diplomacy with hostile states. Even to initiate diplomacy, a combination of difficult intelligence work and military pressure, at least of the indirect kind, is needed. Then, once negotiations begin, the hostile state eventually agrees to unenforceable concessions, in order to renege on them at the appropriate time. The West, determined to avoid that unpleasant outcome, war, sidles gradually towards the worst possible outcome, a larger war at a later date.
In substance, the West’s diplomacy only gives its enemies the time and peace of mind needed to become more dangerous. So it has been with Iran. After wasting another eight years, the West was led by the utterly irresponsible Obama administration into a vile nuclear agreement with Iran. This was the Joint Plan of Action of 24 November 2013, which enabled Iran to continue to enrich uranium, and to test more advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium in the future.
President Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, possessed the necessary combination of immorality and stupidity to persist until, on 20 July 2015, they turned the awful 2013 deal into the catastrophic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This formally permitted Iran to operate 5,060 enrichment centrifuges, and conduct research with uranium on more advanced centrifuges. On the day when the deal was signed, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter shamelessly promised Israel that "we will be watching Iran very closely."
All the interminable years of diplomacy, all the long-winded promises were shown to be worth nothing in April 2018. Then, Israel, and not the United States or any other signatory of the repugnant Iran deal, made public that its intelligence service had extracted from a secret archive in Tehran the plans of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Project Amad. The administration of President Trump explicitly referred to the concealment of these plans by Iran as proof of Iran’s bad faith in signing the deal and failure to keep its terms, and so the U.S. withdrew from the deal on 8 May 2018.
Neither Trump, nor his successor President Biden, nor any other leader of any other Western signatory of the catastrophic 2015 agreement, ever found the strength to draw the conclusion that must be drawn. Diplomacy with hostile states in general, and with Iran in particular, is a road to disaster.
If Iran’s nuclear program is to be dismantled, war is the only way. Yet, since the very purpose of Western strategy is to preserve the status quo and avoid war, futile and repulsive attempts to pursue diplomacy with Iran continue to this day. As they go on, Donald Trump nonsensically compares Iran’s attack on Israel to "two kids fighting in the schoolyard," while his election opponent Kamala Harris speaks of continuing to "work with our allies... to disrupt Iran’s aggressive behavior." Neither of the two non-entities understands how irrelevant their talk has become.
THE WEST HAS LOST CONTROL OF EVENTS
Western rhetoric became inconsequential in February 2022, when Russia, one of the two non-Western signatories of the deal with Iran along with China, invaded all of Ukraine. Russia has been openly engaging in nuclear blackmail of the West ever since.
Already in June of that year, China and Russia jointly opposed the West’s feeble criticism of Iran’s insufficient cooperation with nuclear inspectors. Almost 20 years after the diplomacy around Iran’s nuclear program began, it publicly imploded. Over those two decades, the West had comprehensively lost control of events, while Iran came within reach of nuclear warheads.
Meanwhile, the catastrophic 2015 agreement continues to bear poisoned fruit. On 18 October 2023, eleven days after Hamas massacred Israeli civilians, United Nations restrictions on Iran’s missile and drone programs expired. Iran, which was already supplying drones to Russia in breach of those restrictions, can now do so in the knowledge that there are few if any restraints on its actions, and that it is free to use the proceeds of its sales to Russia to further develop its own arsenal.
The only virtue of the 2015 deal, the West’s ability to ’snapback’ all sanctions previously imposed on Iran, has naturally proved a hollow one. Busy attempting to ’de-escalate tensions,’ a miserable euphemism for pretending that the collapsing status quo can still be upheld, Western European states remain parties to the deal and refuse to contemplate ’snapping back’ sanctions. Nothing remains of Western diplomacy but desperation.
SIXTEEN DAYS OF DESPERATION
Desperation, mixed with complete moral bankruptcy, was the guiding star of what passed for Western diplomacy between Hochstein’s visit on 16 September, and Iran’s missile attack on Israel on 1 October.
Hochstein’s predictably worthless visit to Israel was rapidly followed by various successful Israeli offensive actions against Hezbollah, up to and including the killing of the commander of its rocket branch, Ibrahim Qubaisi, on the afternoon of 24 September. Instead of prompting some sobriety in Western thought and action, this led to a grotesque demonstration of desperation, faintly disguised as diplomacy.
The joint statement of 25 September issued by 38 countries, including the 27 members of the European Union and also the United States, is one of the most obscene documents in the many centuries of international diplomacy. As Israel was inflicting substantial damage on Hezbollah, this statement called for "an immediate 21 day ceasefire," which would have given the terrorists in Lebanon vital relief from Israeli pressure.
This same text did not even mention the word ’terrorism,’ or any derivative thereof. It also omitted all mention of Hezbollah. It did call for a "diplomatic settlement" in Lebanon, and also a ceasefire in Gaza. It was nothing less than an attempt to force Israel to capitulate, to allow the terrorists on its borders to survive, to reorganize, and to prepare to murder Israelis more effectively on an even greater scale.
Precisely.
The Biden administration was sufficiently desperate to force this on America’s closest ally that it anonymously briefed multiple members of the press that "we’re expecting the deal in the coming hours." Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet deserve the utmost credit for treating these histrionics with contempt, and standing up to a form of diplomatic extortion which is not less than criminal, because of the threat that it poses to Israel’s survival.
Two days after the statement, on Friday 27 September, State Department Counselor Tom Sullivan was still attempting to press on with a ’diplomatic solution,’ and insistently failing to acknowledge that no such solution is in fact possible now, or was possible in the past. It was most appropriate that Israel closed out that day by killing Hassan Nasrallah.
Nasrallah’s killing was not only an important success against terrorism, it also forced the Biden administration further into a self-created corner. On 29 September, National Security Spokesman John Kirby had to concede that the deaths of Nasrallah and others were "good for the region, good for the world." Kirby did not elaborate that this meant that the administration had desperately attempted to prevent these good developments by imposing a ceasefire on Israel.
The administration is not alone in its desperation. The spokesman of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called "on all sides to show restraint, to step back from the brink and avoid any further escalation" the day after Kirby’s television appearance. Even after Iran’s missile attack on 1 October, the same spokesman was still calling for ’de-escalation’, while issuing a routine condemnation of Iran. Israel is meant to stop fighting for its survival, simply because Britain does not know, and does not want to know, how to stop Iran.
The West’s practical response to Iran’s attack has been of very limited value. Two U.S. Navy destroyers, the USS Bulkeley (DDG-84) and USS Cole (DDG-67), did fire a dozen interceptors, but this was a fraction of the overall effort needed to defeat an attack in which approximately 200 Iranian missiles were launched. A Navy which has 237 combat ships in service, including dozens of destroyers, could have done much more, but was neither organized nor ordered to do so.
The rest of the West did not intercept a single ballistic missile, and Britain contributed nothing more than two Typhoon fighters which are ludicrously claimed to have provided deterrence, without attacking any targets. British and other Allied aircraft cannot in fact attack any ballistic targets, because what was called the Air-Launched Hit-to-Kill (ALHTK) initiative, involving the launch of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles from aircraft against ballistic missiles, which was advertised in 2007, never came to anything. A natural consequence of the West’s inability to seriously contemplate, and to prepare for, war.
With their direct military contribution to Israel’s defense minimal, the leading nations of the West are stuck in a loop, in which they continue to highlight their own irrelevance and impotence. On 24 September, the G7 called "for a stop to the current destructive cycle." On 2 October, it was still insisting, with no evidence and no attempt at original thought, that a non-specific "diplomatic solution is still possible." The message is clear. Israel’s survival is Israel’s problem, and the West has no answer to anything, no desire other than to keep rolling forward in neutral gear. This cannot and will not continue for long.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
10/04/2024 00:00 ||
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[Bee] BEIRUT: Young Hezbollah recruit Muhammed Amin was surprised to learn this week that he's already been promoted to the position of Regional Manager.
Amin recently joined the ranks of the prestigious terror organization and expected to spend the next several years proving himself before rising through the ranks but was given the unexpected news that he was now in an important leadership role.
"I can't believe I'm moving up the ladder so quickly!" Amin said. "I was only recruited last week and all of a sudden they're telling me I am a manager — and not just manager, but regional manager! I can't believe my luck!"
Amin was immediately given a pager and told to check it for explosives, a directive that worried the young man but he decided not to ask too many questions.
"It's just so exciting!" he continued. "They said I would be given a free pager and a set of walkie-talkies but that I was to be super careful and not use them too often and something about imminent bodily harm, but I'm sure it's all just boilerplate corporate orientation stuff. I only wish my mentor could see me, but he exploded last week in what I'm sure is a totally unrelated incident."
At publishing time, Amin's supervisor had been killed in an exploding Gameboy Advance incident and Amin had been promoted to the head of Hezbollah.
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/04/2024 11:04 ||
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[MiddleEastMonitor] In an interview with CNN yesterday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib confirmed Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire with Israel moments before the occupation state killed its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah last week. The Lebanese government had informed America and France of the decision, he explained, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also accepted the terms.
I find this very hard to believe, despite White House claims.
Lebanon and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire with Israel moments before the occupation state assassinated the movement’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah last week, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib has told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Oh. Her. The Mouthpiece of the Mullahs. The one who claimed that peace-loving Iran does not want conflict with Israel even as Iranian missiles were starting to rain down on the Jewish state. Though to be fair, Iran indeed does not want conflict, they want Israel to peacefully submit in order to achieve the peace of the grave. Lying with the truth, if you will.
“We agreed completely,” said Bou Habib. “Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire.” He added: “The Lebanese House Speaker, Mr Nabih Berri, consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French about the agreement. They told us that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu also agreed to the statement issued by both presidents.”
Unfortunately, the Americans and the French speak only for their own wishful thinking, not for Israel.
The minister confirmed that Hezbollah had agreed to the ceasefire proposal, which was part of a broader initiative involving American and French leadership. The US, France and other allies had prepared a 21-day ceasefire plan starting on 25 September after Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. However, the ceasefire agreement was rejected by Netanyahu a day later, after which he ordered the military to continue fighting.
The revelation raises questions about Israel’s motives in escalating the conflict despite apparent progress towards a ceasefire. It’s been pointed out that Israel’s behaviour aligns with a long-standing strategy of avoiding what has been termed a “peace offensive” by the occupation state.
The concept, first articulated by Israeli strategist Avner Yaniv in 1982, posits that Israel perceives a risk in Palestinians or their allies becoming too moderate or diplomatically credible. Such a scenario could force Israel to make peace or engage in talks, potentially undermining its military or political dominance in the Middle East.
Critics argue that successive Israeli governments have historically used escalations in violence as a means to avoid peace negotiations. By provoking or continuing conflicts, Israel can justify military actions, prevent diplomatic solutions, and delay the establishment of a Palestinian state, allowing for continued illegal settlement expansion and the domination of Palestine.
Israel has been offered full normalisation by the Arab world since 2002 through the Arab Peace Initiative.
That was another proposal that started with Israel surrendering — and giving up land under the old Land For Peace formula — as a pause on the way to the complete subjugation of the Jewish state. That one had the additional piquancy of being pushed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman at a Saudi diplomatic dinner to puff himself up — not even the Saudis were truly keen on it, but they couldn’t say so publicly.
The proposal pledges Arab countries to a comprehensive peace and normal relations with Israel in exchange for ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state.
The Palestinians got the West Bank all the way to the Green Line, Gaza, and Jerusalem, while Israel got indefensible, pre-1967 borders and unenforceable promises.
However, Israel has consistently rejected this offer, preferring to continue its illegal occupation and territorial expansion.
The reluctance to pursue peace is evidenced further by the hateful charter of the most successful political party in Israel, Likud, led by Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister, Netanyahu. “The Jordan River will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel,” says the charter. “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River.”
This latest claim about Israel rejecting peace in favour of a war with Hezbollah, will be seen as yet another attempt by the apartheid state to avoid diplomatic solutions in favour of continuing its illegal occupation of Palestine.
Lying liar who lies. But a powerless one, poor man, whose government is not even properly elected to the office that nobody wants.
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[Bee] BEIRUT: Young Hezbollah recruit Muhammed Amin was surprised to learn this week that he's already been promoted to the position of Regional Manager.
