Gantz: Iran main suspect in attack on Israeli-owned ship in Gulf of Oman - Tobias Siegal

 

​ by Tobias Siegal

The ship – Helios Ray – usually used as a vehicle carrier, was sailing to Singapore from Saudi Arabia when the explosion occurred.

 

Iran is the main suspect behind the attack overnight Thursday on an Israeli-owned cargo vessel that was damaged by a mysterious explosion in the Gulf of Oman, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Saturday.

“We will need to keep investigating, but we can say for sure that Iran is attempting to damage Israeli infrastructure and to hurt Israeli citizens,” Gantz told KAN. He noted that the ship’s proximity to Iran during the incident has strengthened the suspicions against Tehran.

 

שר הביטחון גנץ בתגובה ראשונה לפיגוע בספינה באולפן #הכול_פוליטי: ההערכה היא שהאיראנים עומדים מאחורי הפעולה@asaf_lib pic.twitter.com/SRZrTJVhaL

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) February 27, 2021

 

 The ship – Helios Ray – usually used as a vehicle carrier, was sailing to Singapore from Saudi Arabia when the explosion occurred. It was then diverted to a port in Dubai to assess the damage.

The ship’s company was reportedly in good condition and there were no known injuries. It continued under its own power to Dubai.

 

Several assessments have pointed to possible causes for the explosion. According to early estimations made by the United Kingdom Marine Trade Operations (UKMTO), the explosion was most likely the result of a maritime mine being triggered.

 

However, a US defense official later told Reuters that the ship was hit by a blast above the water line that ripped holes in both sides of its hull. If correct, this would mean that it is highly unlikely that the damage was caused by an anti-ship mine.

 

 

UKMTO noted that initially, it was not ruling out any option and had issued a warning to nearby vessels, advising them to stay away from the area until the incident is clarified.

 

Officials from the security firm Dryad that was securing the area have also said that they are examining the possibility that the Iranian military was involved.

 

“Whilst details regarding the incident remain unclear, it remains a realistic possibility that the event was the result of asymmetric activity by Iranian military,” Dryad said in a report.

 

In an interview to Ynet, Rami Ongar, the Israeli businessman who owns Helios Ray, said he did not believe that the explosion was the result of an intentional attack, but he noted that the ship has holes in it, which may indicate damage caused by missiles.

Ongar said it was possible that if the explosion had been the result of an Iranian attack, it might have been a signal to the Biden administration.

 

"שני חורים בקוטר של כמטר וחצי": תיעוד הנזק בספינת איש העסקים הישראלי בפיצוץ במפרץ עומאן, החשוד כנקמה איראנית@MoavVardi https://t.co/aKh3iAiatW

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) February 26, 2021

On Saturday, N12 reported that a delegation of representatives from Israel’s defense industries that was meant to travel to an international exhibition in Abu Dhabi did not receive approval to travel due to Iranian threats in the region. This differed from an earlier reason given for the Israeli no-show due to health concerns, and fears that the delegation might import coronavirus mutations upon their return home.

 

The US Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said it was aware of the incident and was monitoring the situation.

 

Tensions have risen in the Gulf region since the United States reimposed sanctions on Iran in 2018 after then-president Donald Trump withdrew America from the Islamic Republic’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers.

 

Washington has blamed Tehran for a number of attacks on shipping in strategic Gulf waters, including on four vessels, including two Saudi oil tankers, in May 2019. Iran distanced itself from those attacks.

In early January, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps seized a South Korean-flagged tanker in Gulf waters and detained its crew amid tensions between Tehran 

and US ally Seoul over Iranian funds frozen in South Korean banks due to the US sanctions.

 

In 2018, 21 million barrels per day of oil flowed through the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz, equivalent to about 21% of global petroleum liquids demand at the time, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

 

Tobias Siegal  

Source: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/israeli-cargo-ship-damaged-after-mysterious-explosion-rattles-oman-gulf-660332 

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The Federal Reserve Is Taking Us into Uncharted and Deadly Waters - William Levin

 

​ by William Levin

Nothing in U.S. history matches the radical acceleration into the abyss being pushed upon us now.

At the Federal Reserve semi-annual testimony before Congress this week, Chair Jerome Powell should have been asked whether the Fed has become the national Reddit.

The Reddit stock frenzy created a pool of motivated buyers, irrespective of the value of the underlying company.

For more complicated reasons, the federal government is the biggest Redditer of all, Reddit on crack cocaine.  Instead of billions, the government plays in the trillions. Instead of a handful of small cap stocks, it has hijacked the entire stock market.  But the mechanism is the same.  Flood the market with funds, and for good measure force interest rates to zero, eliminating alternative investments.  The recent congressional Reddit hearings are parody in comparison to the government's role in driving market prices, in particular the Fed.

Let's make it specific.  When Joe Biden promises to spend $1.9 trillion, where exactly does that money come from?  Beyond that, even excluding the $1.9 trillion, how does the government finance four years of deficits, which the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated at $5.9 trillion?  That's an expected one-term cumulative deficit of $7.8 trillion.  Where indeed does this money come from?

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The wrong answer is tax receipts.  In FY2020, federal budget revenues — i.e., tax receipts — totaled $3.4 trillion — $1.6 trillion from income taxes; $1.3 trillion from payroll taxes; $0.2 trillion from corporate taxes; and the balance of $0.3 trillion from excise, custom duties, estate taxes, and miscellaneous.  Spending, on the other hand, totaled $6.6 trillion, versus the pre-COVID budget of $4.8 trillion.  The result is a record $3.1-trillion deficit.

Scale matters here.  One point nine trillion dollars is 40% more than the total regular spending of the entire U.S. government.  And that is on top of $3.5 trillion in COVID spending already committed, of which some $1.0 trillion has yet to be spent.  Put another way, Biden could triple income tax receipts in 2021, from all taxpayers, and still not pay for this year's forecasted $4.2-trillion deficit, including his plan.  Taxing the wealthy does not work, either, as a 1% rise in the highest two tax brackets raises, by these standards, a mere $120 billion over 10 years, an amount that will decline as higher rates change behavior.

Bottom line: There is no money in tax receipts to pay $1.9 trillion, or indeed any of the $7.8-trillion unfunded spending coming our way.

The next option is to borrow the money from third parties.  Here the problems begin to multiply.  We as a country have already been tapping this well aggressively.  We have to pay interest on this debt.  Over time, the interest payments, which already approximate $350 billion annually, will swallow the discretionary budget.  It addicts this country to maintaining artificially low interest rates.  If rates were to advance back to historic norms, the country would immediately enter a deficit death spiral.

Lastly, and perhaps most problematically over the longer term, who will buy?  Excluding the federal government as owner, foreigners already own more than 30% of our public debt, including China which holds in excess of $1 trillion currently.  Will China continue to buy our debt so we can increase military expenditures to wage war with China?  That sounds absurd now.

That leaves the final option of printing money.

From time immemorial, the printing press has been the preferred choice of weak governments.  Easy money has no immediate or obvious cost since inflation and currency devaluation can take time to materialize.  It does not require a willing buyer.

In a modern economy, printed money has a third virtue.  The Federal Reserve increases the money supply by purchasing debt securities, with printed money, from banks or private parties.  When the purchases are big enough, it dramatically increases the competition for interest-bearing assets, raising their price, which in turn lowers their yield.  In 2020, the Fed used printed money to reduce interest rates from the 1.4% range to zero.

The stock market zoomed to historic highs on the back of this easy-money, zero-interest-rate nirvana.

Correlation between the Fed balance sheet and the U.S. stock market.
Source: Preston Pysh.

Historical perspective is needed here.  Congress created the Federal Reserve system in 1913.  In all those years, until very recently, the Fed's balance sheet was restricted to influencing the Federal Funds rates as the reference marker for all interest rates.  As a result, the balance sheet expanded when the Fed purchased assets and shrank when it sold those assets, but it always remaining quite small as a percentage of GDP.  Even as late as 2007, the Fed balance sheet was a mere $870 billion.

Then the 2008 financial crisis hit.  It was only then that the Fed announced a new tool, usually referred to as Quantitative Easing, though the more precise term preferred by the Fed is Large Scale Asset Purchases.  This was the first time the Fed aggressively pumped printed money into the economy via enormous asset purchases.  By 2015, the Fed balance sheet peaked at $4.5 trillion.

With the crisis past, the Fed announced its intention to restore normality by selling assets.  But as with all things governmental, norms once broken never are restored.  The balance sheet went as low as $3.8 trillion in 2019, but the Fed balance sheet currently stands at a hard-to-fathom $7.5 trillion, which sets several dubious records.

It is the greatest one-year increase in the Fed balance sheet in U.S. history.  It means that all COVID expenditures to date have been financed with printed money.  And, given $2.3 trillion in expected FY2021 deficits, apart from $1.9 trillion in supplemental spending, the Fed balance sheet by year-end 2021 is expected to reach or exceed $10 trillion.

So there is the answer.  All of the $1.9 trillion in proposed spending, and much more, will be funded with printed money, via asset purchases by the Fed.

The Fed does not explain what constitutes a normal balance sheet.  Nor has there been candor with the American people that the COVID spending, all of it, has been, and will continue to be, paid for with printed money.

Rather, Treasury secretary, and former Fed chair, Janet Yellen cheerleads for $1.9 trillion in spending, without regard to its funding; inflationary pressure; waning need ($1 trillion unspent, a working vaccine; an underway recovery; the scientific prospect for herd immunity by this summer); and sheer political looting ($465 billion directly to individuals versus blue-state payoff money of $350 billion, $170 billion boondoggle for schools and colleges, $200 billion in leftover slush fund expenditures, and on and on).  All this as the administration readies yet more trillions in spending in March for "infrastructure."

As a postscript, the Fed balance sheet explains when the stock market boom will end.  The answer is 2022, and sensibly far sooner based on rational expectations.  The unthinkable tsunami-like growth in the Federal Reserve balance sheet to $7.5 trillion has fueled the present record market highs.  It is the huge pool of money that has led to relentless buying regardless of valuation, AKA Reddit on the grandest scale ever seen.

Wall Street takes comfort that ballooning the Fed balance sheet to $10 trillion in 2021 will support further market advances.  Maybe so.  But small comfort ought to be taken here.  Unless the Fed is committed to owning these securities forever, and growing them further, the day will come when the Federal Reserve, at a minimum, stops growing its balance sheet.  The Fed cannot permanently increase the money supply in excess of the demand for money without reintroducing stagflation to the national vocabulary.

If and when the Fed starts selling down aggressively, or that expectation becomes clear, markets will fall.  Beginning in 2022, the deficit is forecast at "only" $1.2 trillion, which is not enough new juice into the system.

In the longest run, the unhinged spending-deficit–new money grift works only because the U.S. is the world's reserve currency.  China understands this.  As much as anything else, a prime Chinese agenda is to displace the dollar as the world's reserve currency with an "international" — i.e., non-U.S. — medium of exchange.  Blockchain technology will make this possible even as reckless spending with printed money hastens our collapse.

Trust is the true coin of the realm.  That trust is gradually but relentlessly eroding, as it should be when no one cares about a $10-trillion Fed balance sheet, a $1.9-trillion political payoff scheme long after COVID peaked, and the prospect of a one-term $7.8-trillion deficit, with more on the way, as far as the eye can see.

The CBO 2020 Long-Term Budget Outlook

Source.

If money on this scale is an unhelpful abstraction, then consider the truly hazardous cost of excess government spending.  The U.S. has emptied its toolbox for future emergencies.  Interest rates are at zero, the Fed cannot print more money with impunity, Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt, tax increases cannot remotely fill the gap, and the deficit forecast has already swallowed us whole.

This unnerving state of affairs has been long in the making and has many parents, Republicans and Democrats alike.  But nothing in our history matches the radical acceleration into the abyss being pushed upon us now, exclusively by one party, and just as we should instead be repairing our finances.

 

William Levin is the founder and managing director of a New York investment banking firm.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/the_federal_reserve_is_taking_us_into_uncharted_and_deadly_waters.html 

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Is the U.S. Arming an Adversary, China, Intent on Overpowering Us? - Peter Schweizer

 

​ by Peter Schweizer

For a Biden administration that has said it wants to protect American investors and look out for America's national interests, strengthening his predecessor's efforts makes perfect sense.

• China's greatest financial weakness remains its continued dependence on Western capital markets, crucial for a growing economy.... To grow, China depends on massive inflows of capital that surge through the capital markets based in the U.S. The Trump administration made several moves during its term to delist Chinese companies that are not forthcoming about who really owns them and what businesses they are really engaged in.

• [S]ince 2013, Chinese state-owned enterprises have enjoyed exemptions from Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory requirements that also force greater transparency from these companies. They were the only ones granted these exemptions while still being listed on New York stock markets. What if those exemptions were removed?

• The only relevant screening in the US happens through the same government body that approved the sale of Uranium One to Russian government-backed investors, called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

• Yet, U.S. capital markets currently have no such insulation. So we have capital markets which freely trade the shares of companies that have violated international sanctions, sold America's adversaries advanced ballistic missiles, armed the PLA, and helped militarize the fabricated new islands in the South China Sea. These companies freely receive investment dollars from ordinary Americans saving for their retirement, unaware of their real activities and ownership.

• This January, the New York Stock Exchange began the process of delisting three Chinese telecom companies.... The administration said the three firms are owned or controlled by China's military.

• No one wants to damage the investment portfolios of American retirement savers. But the dark side of this exposure is what may become of U.S. resolve to stand up to Beijing if 180 million Americans realize that up to 20% of their retirement funds are locked into Chinese securities. These Americans would suddenly have a personal, vested interest in opposing any future sanctions or other penalties against China, regardless of the geopolitical sense or national security implications. That prospect should encourage Congress to move sooner rather than later.

Since 2013, Chinese state-owned enterprises have enjoyed exemptions from Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory requirements that also force greater transparency from these companies. They were the only ones granted these exemptions while still being listed on New York stock markets. Many US investors have been scammed by investments in Chinese companies. Luckin Coffee was a recent example. Its top executives fraudulently inflated their sales figures by $300 million. The fraud extended so deeply into the company that its shares were delisted from the Nasdaq exchange. (Photo by Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

President Ronald Reagan knew the weaknesses of the Soviet Union. Unlike his predecessors, he did not focus on countering their strengths, but by exploiting those problems of life under a Marxist-Leninist regime that were impossible for them to fix. Reagan's policies targeted many weaknesses – religious, political, military, and cultural among them – but his focus on Russia's economic problems exposed those other weaknesses by choking the regime's ability even to throw money at other problems.

Today, the most pressing threats do not come from Russia. They come from the growing power exerted by China. So, the question becomes: Can we apply these today lessons to China? With the massive, worldwide reach of China, its economic power and military build-up combine to pose strategic threats to the U.S. and the free world. Reagan's strategy, however, can counter these threats and reduce others posed by the Chinese dragon.

China's greatest financial weakness remains its continued dependence on Western capital markets, crucial for a growing economy that, if official statistics are to be believed, is trying to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic's toll. To grow, China depends on massive inflows of capital that surge through the capital markets based in the U.S. The Trump administration made several moves during its term to delist Chinese companies that are not forthcoming about who really owns them and what businesses they are really engaged in.

In addition, since 2013, Chinese state-owned enterprises have enjoyed exemptions from Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory requirements that also force greater transparency from these companies. They were the only ones granted these exemptions while still being listed on New York stock markets. What if those exemptions were removed?

Trump's moves towards forcing Chinese companies to conform to the financial transparency required of other companies was a great start -- but if they are to work, these policies must be continued and even strengthened by the Biden administration. The threat of being de-listed from U.S. stock exchanges would force these companies into the light. For a Biden administration that has said it wants to protect American investors and look out for America's national interests, strengthening his predecessor's efforts makes perfect sense.

First, many US investors have been scammed by investments in Chinese companies. Luckin Coffee was a recent example. Its top executives fraudulently inflated their sales figures by 2.12 billion yuan ($300 million). The fraud extended so deeply into the company that its shares were delisted from the Nasdaq exchange.

There are also many Chinese military-linked companies using Western capital markets to modernize their companies through investments. Among these companies is, for example, the noxious, party-controlled Hikvision. This company is responsible for the artificial intelligence facial recognition technology used to identify and track ethnic Uyghurs in China today. Hikvision even makes the surveillance cameras that glower at them inside the Chinese concentration camps where as many as two million Uyghurs are forcibly detained by their own government.

Roger Robinson -- the chairman of the Prague Security Studies Institute and in the 1980s, a member of the Reagan administration's National Security Council -- was intimately involved in the economic warfare waged against the crumbling Soviet Union. He sees the opportunity to do so again with China. In a speech at Hillsdale College, Robinson pointed out that China has more than 700 companies in U.S. stock and bond markets or capital markets. Eighty-six Chinese companies are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, about 62 in the NASDAQ, and more than 500 in the OTC market.

These companies are attractive to investors, including those looking for the dynamic growth Chinese firms claim to be driving. They are represented in millions of investment portfolios for IRAs and pensions, but without having to show the same kind of financial transparency expected of other firms. Hikvision might be the most egregious example we know about, but as Robinson asked in his speech, "do any of us have the financing of concentration camps in mind when we transfer money into our retirement and investment accounts?"

"We can no longer allow China's authoritarian government to reap the rewards of American and international capital markets while Chinese companies avoid financial disclosure and basic transparency, and place U.S. investors and pensioners at risk," wrote U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) last June.

Rubio recognized the eye-popping fact that American investors are unwittingly funding technology to oppress the Uyghurs and even to finance weapons systems for the People's Liberation Army (PLA). This is possible because, as Robinson notes, the U.S. has no security-minded screening mechanism for our capital markets, which manage more than $35 trillion in assets.

The only relevant screening in the US happens through the same government body that approved the sale of Uranium One to Russian government-backed investors, called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Congress expanded CFIUS's reach in 2018 because it was worried about Chinese entities stealing American technology and undermining our security. But CFIUS is consulted when a foreign company wants to buy an American company that may produce strategically important materials or "dual-use" technologies.

Yet, U.S. capital markets currently have no such insulation. So we have capital markets which freely trade the shares of companies that have violated international sanctions, sold our adversaries advanced ballistic missiles, armed the PLA, and helped militarize the fabricated new islands in the South China Sea. These companies freely receive investment dollars from ordinary Americans saving for their retirement, unaware of their real activities and ownership. There are companies trading now whose employees have been arrested for espionage or are known cyber criminals.

As Rubio and the Trump administration understood, only Congress can change this. By pressing Congress, the Biden administration has the chance to check the Chinese grasp for power and a fearsome lever to help do so. Removing any favorable treatment for Chinese companies from the required regulatory paperwork that other companies must supply is just the beginning. Investors need to know the truth about the Chinese companies competing for their money in the capital markets. To be real, Chinese companies, nearly all of which are state-owned enterprises, need the threat of delisting from capital markets.

To return to Reagan's strategy, this effort must be part of a broader strategy to hurt China's ambitions on the world stage. The trade war unleashed by Trump and his tariffs hurts Chinese commerce, as it should. But if China's access to capital markets in the U.S. comes at the price of transparency, as it does for every other company, this will severely restrict Beijing's ability to manage the damage from the trade war.

This January, the New York Stock Exchange began the process of delisting three Chinese telecom companies, after Trump signed an order barring any transactions in securities "designed to provide investment exposure to such securities, of any Communist Chinese military company, by any United States person." The administration said the three firms are owned or controlled by China's military.

As Roger Robinson also warned, it is estimated the Chinese have attracted nearly $2 trillion of American investment in equities alone. For Americans, this exposure will only grow greater if China is not forced by the capital markets to play by the same rules as everyone else. He estimated in 2019 that within the following 36 months, if nothing is done, U.S. exposure will be two to three trillion dollars more than it is today. The Chinese are desperate for the dollars from the investment portfolios of the American people.

No one wants to damage the portfolios of American retirement savers. But the dark side of that exposure is what may become of U.S. resolve to stand up to Beijing if 180 million Americans realize that up to 20% of their retirement funds are locked into Chinese securities. These Americans would suddenly have a personal, vested interest in opposing any future sanctions or other penalties against China, regardless of the geopolitical sense or national security implications. That prospect should encourage Congress to move sooner rather than later.

Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the best-selling books Profiles in Corruption, Secret Empires and Clinton Cash, among others.

 

Peter Schweizer  

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17054/us-arming-china 

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Joe Biden's Embrace of Fallacious Critical Race Theory - John Klar

​ by John Klar

After Anthony Burgess's clockwork orange," this can be called a "clockwork black."

The fallacy that America is “systemically racist” is rooted in arguments that the white majority suffers from subconscious racism which contaminates the entire “system.”  Proponents of Critical Race Theory and government-created “Equity” insist they have yet-to-be-discovered solutions, including conditioning of those who suffer “white guilt” and white fragility.”  President Joe Biden has eagerly joined this crusade to…. eliminate subconscious racism!

White Americans are kept in the dark as to the details of this enlightened reprogramming, but are told that the Bill of Rights is an impediment to these lofty new goals to eradicate systemic biases.  The first step in eliminating subconscious racism is to stifle conscious thoughts: the liberties of Free Speech and Due Process are viewed as tools of oppression by the white majority. 

It is axiomatic that government cannot eliminate subconscious racism.  Yet, government can be very effective at fomenting racism, as numerous current and historical examples demonstrate.  America is about to try its hand at this folly.

Government conditioning to eradicate human evil is hardly novel.  But what happens when government seeks to do great good, by conquering the individual human will to do great evil?  How will the BLM Utopian Police State eradicate human racism?  Is this not the same old reconditioning Kool-aid of Pol Pot and Mao, poured into newly-manufactured George Floyd bottles?

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Anthony Burgess famously delved into this subject, in 1963.  In his iconic novel “A Clockwork Orange,” a seemingly incorrigible criminal is redeemed using “science” -- only, the experiment fails miserably.  Burgess was delving into exactly the issue America’s extremist progressives deliberately obfuscate: the horror of government reprogramming. 

In a 2012 essay, Burgess plainly explained what he had tried to express through fiction:

I had read somewhere that it would be a good idea to liquidate the criminal impulse through aversion therapy; I was appalled…. What I was trying to say was that it is better to be bad of one’s own free will than to be good through scientific brainwashing…. I have been derided and rebuked for expressing my fears of the power of the modern state—whether it be Russia, China, or what we may term Anglo-America—to reduce the freedom of the individual…. The behaviorist approach to man, of which Professor Skinner is a great exponent, sees him moved to various kinds of action by aversive and non-aversive inducements. Given the right positive inducements… we shall all become better citizens, submissive to a state that has the good of the community at heart. We must, so the argument goes, not fear conditioning. We need to be conditioned in order to save the environment and the race. But it must be conditioning of the right sort....

The goal of the “American Experiment” was to secure equal opportunity for all.   Efforts at “equity” aim for a sun that will melt the wings of such fairy-like dreams while depriving citizens of even an aspirational hope of equality of opportunity.  Today’s quixotic, counterproductive BLM movement is no different.  One does not abolish racism by decree, any more than lewd thoughts.  One conquers racism through love, not fear and hate. 

This transfer of a sort of “dark-church” authority to the secular state is reflected in the COVID panic, and how quickly many Americans wish to abandon the Constitution in trust of Big Brother -- and Big Brother Pharma.  Orwell warned of the power of an omnipotent state to inflict unprecedented destruction upon the human condition.  It is ironic that ALL Americans are familiar with Orwell’s books, but so few absorb that his warnings applied to all government structures -- not just the Soviet Union.

Burgess explained that his title “Clockwork Orange” derived from “...an old Cockney slang phrase, implying a queerness or madness so extreme as to subvert nature, since what notion could be more bizarre than that of a clockwork orange?”  Today’s world looks more akin to a “Clockwork Black,” in which the techno-state and modern alienation have pushed humanity far away from awareness of its own soul.  Far too many Americans are lining up to be absorbed willingly into that dead machine.

Said Burgess:

[W]hen the social entity grows large, ...the governing machine becomes remote, impersonal, even inhuman. It takes money from us for purposes we do not seem to sanction; it treats us as abstract statistics; it controls an army; it supports a police force whose function does not always appear to be protective…. The modern state, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it…. Pre-natal and infantile conditioning makes the slaves happy in their slavery, and stability is enforced not through whips but through a scientifically imposed contentment…. It would seem that enforced conditioning of a mind, however good the social intention, has to be evil.

Clearly, BLM activists (and Joe Biden) have not read Burgess.  Antifa is well-steeped in blackness. The Clockwork Black, ticks.

And so Joe Biden declared that “... he had a mandate to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country.”  As with other extremists, he defines neither what that term means, nor how he will eliminate subconscious bias.  Instead he confidently proclaimed:

"Again, I'm not promising we can end it tomorrow, but I promise you we're going to continue to make progress to eliminate systemic racism, and every branch of the White House and the federal government is going to be part of that effort…."

Exposing in practical terms the limitations posed by Anthony Burgess, Cal Thomas recently opined:

In addition to reinstating mandatory race theory training for federal employees, Biden proposes spending even more money we don’t have to fix a problem beyond the government’s reach. As with original sin, curing racism is best solved internally. It is a matter of the heart. If racism is systemic, meaning it is embedded in white people, how is it possible to eliminate it? Do those on the receiving end of discrimination have a role to play? This is a question Democrats never address. If spending money is the key to limiting racism, more progress should have been made by now.

Such common sense is shunned -- soon it will be silenced as a typical gaslighting by a white person who must be silenced.  There are ominous harbingers from the Biden administration:

President Biden signed four executive actions Tuesday aimed at increasing racial equity across the nation, a move the administration said was a big early step in his efforts to dismantle systemic racism, though civil rights groups made it clear they will press for more-sweeping change in the months ahead.

Time will tell how effective this government is at sweeping away subconscious hatreds, rather than inculcate new ones.  The ticking of the Clockwork Black grows audible….

How could such grand designs be anything but “good”?

 

John Klar  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/joe_bidens_embrace_of_fallacious_critical_race_theory.html 

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Biden: It's Okay to Finance China's Military - Gordon G. Chang

 

​ by Gordon G. Chang

Most Americans will have no idea their retirement and other savings are being used to finance their own destruction.... financing China's war on America.

• Wall Street wants to finance the enemy, and the Biden administration is opening the door wide.... Beijing views the U.S. financial community as its channel to influence the highest levels of the American political system.

• "It would be a tragic mistake for the new administration to postpone, dilute, or otherwise eviscerate implementation of the key provisions of Executive Order 13959. Doing so would only serve to enrich Wall Street and Beijing at the expense of American security, fundamental values, and investor protection." — Roger Robinson, chairman of the Prague Securities Studies Institute, interview with Gatestone.

• The People's Republic of China is a unified state, so the investment ban should apply not only to companies the Trump administration designated but also to all state-owned enterprises. State enterprises are by no means separate businesses. The divisions among them are artificial, and all are tightly controlled by the Communist Party. Each one of these entities, therefore, is military-linked and Party-controlled.

• China's Military-Civil Fusion means the People's Liberation Army "has the right to raid any non-military Chinese company for any technology it decides could advance its military strength." — Richard Fisher, of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, interview with Gatestone

• The Biden administration is allowing Wall Street to use the cash of "scores of millions, up to 160 million Americans" to "fund ICBMs targeting their families, to fund concentration camps in Xinjiang." Most Americans will have no idea their retirement and other savings are being used to finance their own destruction.... financing China's war on America.

(Image source: iStock)

Wall Street wants to finance the enemy, and the Biden administration is opening the door wide.

How can this be?

On January 26, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued General License No. 1A, which permits Americans to continue acquiring shares in certain companies associated with "Communist Chinese Military Companies," known as CCMCs, until May 27. The previous deadline, set by the Trump administration, was January 28.

The General License delayed a portion of the application of President Trump's landmark Executive Order 13959, issued November 12, 2020.

EO13959 stopped investors, subject to wind-down provisions, from purchasing or possessing shares in any company designated a CCMC. In short, Trump ordered Americans to stop financing China's military, the People's Liberation Army.

There are now 44 companies designated as off-limits to investment, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China's leading chipmaker, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

The best minds in America did not know how to apply EO13959, which is why Trump amended it on January 13 by issuing another executive order. Moreover, the Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued at least 15 explanations in the form of Frequently Asked Questions.

Some argue that Biden's General License No. 1A is merely one more clarification. Yet in essence, it guts EO13959, allowing investment into dozens of companies that should be off-limits.

The Biden administration, therefore, caved. Wall Street had fiercely opposed Trump's executive order and now has additional time to work for its repeal.

"It would be a tragic mistake for the new administration to postpone, dilute, or otherwise eviscerate implementation of the key provisions of Executive Order 13959," Roger Robinson, chairman of the Prague Securities Studies Institute, told Gatestone. "Doing so would only serve to enrich Wall Street and Beijing at the expense of American security, fundamental values, and investor protection."

Robinson, also a former chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, is right. Beijing views the U.S. financial community as its channel to influence the highest levels of the American political system.

Di Dongsheng of Beijing's Renmin University, in a widely publicized November 28 event in China, spoke about how Chinese leaders had in the past used Wall Street — "the core power of the United States" as he put it — to tell American presidents what to do. Di also said that the link had been broken during the Trump years and that Beijing was looking forward to reestablishing the Wall Street channel to the then-upcoming Biden administration.

It is now time to break the Beijing-Wall Street-White House connection for good. Ultimately, Americans should not be allowed to invest in any Chinese business, whether or not now formally designated as a Communist Chinese Military Company.

The People's Republic of China is a unified state, so the investment ban should apply not only to companies the Trump administration designated but also to all state-owned enterprises. State enterprises are by no means separate businesses. The divisions among them are artificial, and all are tightly controlled by the Communist Party. Each one of these entities, therefore, is military-linked and Party-controlled.

Moreover, America's investment ban should apply to privately owned businesses. As President Trump wrote in the preamble to EO13959, "the national strategy of Military-Civil Fusion" means that the party-state compels private companies to support the "military, intelligence, and security apparatuses and aid in their development and modernization."

As Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone, China's Military-Civil Fusion means the People's Liberation Army "has the right to raid any non-military Chinese company for any technology it decides could advance its military strength."

Money is fungible. Every dollar that goes into a Chinese enterprise, whether state or private, enriches a regime that has declared a "people's war" on the United States. Therefore, every company should be off-limits to investment from Americans.

The Biden administration is allowing Wall Street to use the cash of "scores of millions, up to 160 million Americans" to "fund ICBMs targeting their families, to fund concentration camps in Xinjiang." Most Americans will have no idea their retirement and other savings are being used to finance their own destruction.

Wall Street, with the help of its friend at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, is financing China's war on America.

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Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17099/finance-china-military 

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Mark Levin Warns Storm is Coming in Relations Between Israel, U.S. - Caroline Glick

 

​ by Caroline Glick

"The Biden administration is deeply hostile to Israel."

 

Mark Levin, the conservative Jewish American radio broadcaster with more than 14 million daily listeners, has a gloomy forecast for the future of American media coverage of the United States, of Israel and of ties between the two countries.

Ahead of the launch of the Hebrew-language edition of his bestselling book, Unfreedom of the Press, Levin tells Israel Hayom that to understand the nature and depth of the danger that the U.S. media poses to democracy in America, you have to understand the way that the U.S. media treats Israel.

“I think the American people — forget about the elites — I think the American people and the Israeli people have such a connection, and such a love for each other,” he says.

“We get in this country from our media … that Israel is an apartheid society; it’s a racist society. It’s the same things they say about our country, they say about Israel. So it’s kind of hard to write a book — what I called Unfreedom of the Press — and ignore what’s going on in Israel.”

“It’s also hard to ignore it as a Jew,” he adds. “I see the overlays. I see the animus towards Israel, the animus towards the United States.”

For decades, Israelis and Israel’s supporters in America complained about the anti-Israel bias of the U.S. media. But in Unfreedom of the Press, Levin explains that the problem is far worse than mere bias.

The vast majority of media outlets in the U.S., including all the major television networks aside from Fox News, are fully mobilized to advance a radical ideological agenda that is deeply hostile both to Israel and to the United States. And since his book was first published in 2018, the situation has only grown worse in terms of the media’s hatred of Israel and its supporters, and their rejection of core American values, including freedom of expression, freedom of religion and liberty itself.

Levin explains that to advance their anti-American agenda, the media work to silence, censor and block conservative voices — from former President Donald Trump to the last of his supporters.

Deeply concerned about the future of democracy in the U.S., Levin worries that the widening censorship in the U.S. will be copied by the Israeli media — which Levin argues is even more ideologically uniform and uniformly radical than the American media.

He argues that the way to fight against distortions and false claims, and to counter the media censors, is take a page from the anti-Israel activists’ playbook.

Levin recently shut down his Twitter and Facebook accounts in response to both platforms’ aggressive censorship of conservative leaders and private citizens. He urges conservatives in the U.S. and Israel to do the same.

“We need to BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] them. We need to have a BDS movement against big tech. And if not big tech, then their advertisers.

“We need to BDS these major television networks, just like the left does.”

Levin warns Israelis that the Biden administration is deeply hostile to Israel. Biden’s foreign-policy team is comprised of the most hostile officials from the Obama administration “and then some.” Israel, he says, must be prepared for the storm in relations that is blowing its way from Washington.

 

Caroline Glick  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/mark-levin-warns-storm-coming-relations-between-caroline-glick/ 

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Navalny vs. Putin: The Next Round - Lynn Corum

 

​ by Lynn Corum

Is Putin becoming desperate?

Alexei Navalny has been getting under Putin’s skin for a long time, and recently things came to a head.  In January 2021, the Navalny Channel on YouTube featured the protest film, Dvorets dlya Putina: Istoriya Samoy Bol’shoy Bzyatki (Putin’s Palace: History of the World’s Biggest Bribe), an immensely popular exposé since viewed 113,654,953 times.

To counter the notable lack of reporting by the Russian press on Navalny’s mistreatment at the hands of the Putin regime, the film begins with this précis:  “In August 2020, on the order of Vladimir Putin, Navalny was poisoned with Novichok chemical warfare agent.  He survived, came back to Russia, and was arrested right at the airport.  On January 18, 2021, the court unlawfully arrested Alexey Navalny and sent him to Matrosskaya Tishina Prison.”  An invitation to protest followed:  “For many years, Navalny has been fighting for our rights.  Now, it’s time for us to fight for him.  On January 23, at 14:00, take to the main streets of your cities.  Don’t stand on the sidelines.”  Marches to protest Navalny’s wrongful poisoning, arrest, and imprisonment would indeed be held by his supporters on Saturday January 23, all over Russia.  One pollster estimated the crowd in Moscow alone to number 35,000.

Next, Navalny himself appears saying, “Hi, Navalny here.  We came up with this investigation when I was in intensive care, but we immediately agreed that we would release it when I returned home, to Russia, to Moscow, because we do not want the main character of this film to think that we are afraid of him so that I would tell about his worst secret while I was abroad.  One of the most devoted admirers of our work, the same one on whose orders I was poisoned, is Vladimir Putin.  He is definitely watching this now, and his heart is filling with nostalgia.”  Navalny proceeds to take a trip through Putin’s past, beginning at the building on Radeberger Strasse in Dresden where the early corruption schemes of then-KGB agent Vladimir Putin and his cronies were conceived, “by those who would later arrange the biggest robbery in the history of Russia -- simply, to steal all the national wealth.”  Navalny illustrates this point using material from Putin’s actual case file from Germany’s Stasi archives.

The rest of the film consists of a flyover of Putin’s pleasure palace in Krasnodar Krai, accomplished by launching a drone from a boat offshore to film the “legendary footage” of the edifice, a massive, 190,424 square foot castle on a promontory in Gelendzhik, near Sochi overlooking the Black Sea.  Navalny also homes in on numerous tarps and plywood and other humiliating proof that the building was badly constructed, leading to mold, leaky ceilings, and other problems.  “They literally threw billions into the trash and have now started over.”

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For all of the above reasons, Putin has been livid and intent on some sort of retaliation.  In early February, videos in support of Putin suddenly began appearing on social networks.  The footage was shot in numerous regions as instructed by the presidential administration and as organized by Putin’s political party United Russia.

The sites for these videos were carefully chosen.  One location was Barnaul, a city in Siberia where their  pro-Navalny protest on January 23 is said to have been the city’s largest political rally in 15 years.  The Instagram video supposedly showed an “All-Russian Flash Mob in Support of Putin!”  The “flash mob” in question consisted of young workers of the Barnaul ATI chemical plant in matching bright blue overalls and face masks, standing at attention and waving Russian flags. Another supposed “rally for Putin,” this time of state employees and schoolchildren, was assembled to shoot a video in Volgograd.  Both groups had been told they were to be part of a music video for the Russian rock group Lyube (IPA).  They were not demonstrating for Putin, who was not even mentioned.

The students of Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSLA) were invited to participate in a flash mob in support of Russia “as a leader in the fight against COVID” on February 5, promised that the video would be shown on the internet and on TV, and that each participant would be awarded a letter of thanks before the State Duma legislature.  According to the students who participated, shooting took place in a Moscow hotel.  They were asked to wave flags while reading the following text from a teleprompter:  “We have one president.  We will defeat the virus with him.  We have one president.  Together, we will win.  Vladimir Vladimirovich, we are with you!  Putin is our president!”  The Dozhd television channel published a photograph of the teleprompt slide.  An MSLA graduate revealed that some students refused to participate but would not speak with the reporter directly for fear of sanctions from the university.  They claim that the school administration was unaware that students were “deceived by the organizers from the State Duma.”

A third film clip was taken at Belgorod’s Institute of Arts and Culture (BGIIK).  The BGIIK students were asked merely to “dance with Russian flags to record a patriotic video.”  Later they were shocked to see their dance on Instagram with the hashtag #PutinNashPresident (#PutinOurPresident).  According to the students, a song praising Putin followed by youthful voices, shouting “Putin is our president!” and “Vladimir Vladimirovich, we are with you!” were dubbed in.  According to the students, they said no such things.  The incident led to a scandal.  Their parents complained that their children had not been warned that the video was being staged to show support for the president, and that they had not shouted the words in the video.  On February 8, the local newspaper Belgorod No. 1 published a transcript of a conversation in which the BGIIK Vice-Rector Natalya Baranichenko and Rector Sergei Kurgan apologized to the students.  Baranichenko, who had organized the filming, was made to resign.  She has not worked at BGIIK since February 10 and the leadership page on the BGIIK website no longer mentions the former vice-rector.

This pathetic ruse on the part of Putin, his administration, and United Russia serves only to demonstrate the popularity gap between Navalny and Putin -- one, inspiring tens of thousands of ordinary Russians to risk arrest and take to the streets, and the other, reduced to fabricating bogus “rallies” of supposed “supporters” in lieu of same.

Image: Mitya Aleshkovsky

 

Lynn Corum is a translator of Russian who studies developments in the Russian press that affect America’s national interests.  She has been researching and writing on Putin’s stated plans since 2009, and is a world expert on Project Russia, the Kremlin’s published state ideology.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/navalny_vs_putin_the_next_round.html 

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The Danger of Appeasing the Mullahs - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

After the EU began pursuing ways of appeasing Iran, and after sanctions were lifted in 2015 due to the nuclear deal (which Iran never signed), Iran's assassins and terror operatives ratcheted up their activities on the European soil.

• Turkey and the European Union are on the same page when it comes to pursuing appeasement policies with the Iranian regime. How do the ruling mullahs of Iran repay the favor? Through assassinations and terror plots.

• After the EU began pursuing ways of appeasing Iran, and after sanctions were lifted in 2015 due to the nuclear deal (which Iran never signed), Iran's assassins and terror operatives ratcheted up their activities on the European soil.

• Governments around the world need hold the Iranian regime accountable for its foreign adventurism and its reprehensible repression of dissent and peaceful protests at home. They must adopt a firm policy of expelling Iranian "diplomats" and intelligence agents like Assadi, who may be plotting further terrorist attacks. They also need to consider closing down Iranian embassies until Tehran halts its terror activities.

This month, the Turkish authorities detained an Iranian diplomat, Mohammad Reza Naderzadeh, 43, for his role in killing an Iranian dissident, Massoud Molavi Vardanjani, in November 2019. Reportedly, the Iranian diplomat was a staff member in the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul (pictured) and had forged travel documents for Ali Esfandiari, who orchestrated the assassination. (Photo by Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images)

Turkey and the European Union are on the same page when it comes to pursuing appeasement policies with the Iranian regime. How do the ruling mullahs of Iran repay the favor? Through assassinations and terror plots.

This month, the Turkish authorities detained an Iranian diplomat, Mohammad Reza Naderzadeh, 43, for his role in killing an Iranian dissident, Massoud Molavi Vardanjani, in November 2019. Reportedly, the Iranian diplomat was a staff member in the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul and had forged travel documents for Ali Esfandiari, who orchestrated the assassination of Molavi Vardanjani.

The Iranian regime, it seems, targeted Molavi Vardanjani because of his social media campaign to expose corruption in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its elite Quds Force branch, and the theocrats' military establishment. After serving as an intelligence officer for the Iranian government, he defected. "I will root out the corrupt mafia commanders...," he wrote on social media. "Pray that they don't kill me before I do this."

It is not the first time that the Iranian regime has used Turkish soil to assassinate its opponents. In 2017, Saeed Karimian, a British television executive and founder of GEM TV, which runs 17 Persian-language TV channels, was shot dead in Istanbul. Before his murder, he was convicted in absentia in Iran's revolutionary court for spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic. His killers, traveling on fake passports, were arrested in Serbia while travelling to Iran. An opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, stated that Karimian was assassinated by the IRGC on the direct orders of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

In Iran, orders to carry out assassination on a foreign soil likely come from top. As a senior US official, who requested anonymity, in the Trump administration previously told Reuters:

"Given Iran's history of targeted assassinations of Iranian dissidents and the methods used in Turkey, the United States government believes that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security was directly involved in Vardanjani's killing."

To appease Iran, Turkey has lax visa requirements for Iran which likely make Iran's assassination attempts in Turkey easier: it allows Iranian agents to commute more easily between Ankara and Tehran. Iranian citizens are exempt from obtaining a visa for visits to Turkey for up to 90 days.

The policy is the same for the EU. After the EU began pursuing ways of appeasing Iran, and after sanctions were lifted in 2015 due to the nuclear deal (which Iran never signed), Iran's assassins and terror operatives ratcheted up their activities on the European soil. An Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, was put on trial in a breathtaking case that saw him accused of direct involvement in a terrorist plot in France. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors pointed out that, in June 2018, Assadi delivered 500 grams of the powerful explosive triacetone triperoxide to his accomplices with the aim of bombing a significant Iranian opposition rally in Paris. Had the plot not been discovered at the last minute, the terrorist act could have left hundreds dead, including international dignitaries and many European parliamentarians.

Another individual linked to the Iranian regime, Mohammad Davoudzadeh Loloei, 40, was sentenced to prison in June 2020 in a European court -- this time, in Denmark -- for being an accessory to the attempted murder of one or more individuals who are opponents of Iran's current regime. According to Denmark's Roskilde District Court, Loloei had collected information on a dissident, so far unnamed, and given it to Iran's intelligence service, who planned to murder the man. The information included photos of the target's house, street and surroundings. "The court found that the information was collected and passed on to a person working for an Iranian intelligence service, for use by the intelligence service's plans to kill the exile," the court's statement read.

Governments around the world need hold the Iranian regime accountable for its foreign adventurism and its reprehensible repression of dissent and peaceful protests at home. They must adopt a firm policy of expelling Iranian "diplomats" and intelligence agents like Assadi, who may be plotting further terrorist attacks. They also need to consider closing down Iranian embassies until Tehran halts its terror activities.

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Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US foreign policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17089/iran-appeasing-mullahs 

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Twenty-four hours of Iran’s total war in Yemen, Iraq and Syria - Seth J. Frantzman

 

​ by Seth J. Frantzman

The attack on Saudi Arabia on Saturday included video of an interception over the skies of Riyadh.

Iran is supporting its Houthi rebel allies and proxy in Yemen to conduct an increasing war against Saudi Arabia, the Saudi-led Coalition, and also against Yemen government forces in Marib. Twenty four hours have seen an increased offensive against Marib in Yemen, a reported ballistic missile attack on Saudi Arabia on Saturday night and an attack on a ship in the Gulf of Oman. It is part of a series of tensions across the region linking Iran to conflicts in numerous places. This could be seen as a kind of “total war” that Iran is pushing across the Middle East.   

 

The volume of attacks and the multi-layered nature of them illustrate that this is not a mere happenstance or coincidence. This is not local politics. This is a regional conflict and Iran, which has a foothold in Yemen that has grown since 2015, is seeking to show that it can mobilize on numerous levels through proxies and through its own actions, as well as its advanced technology.   

 

The level of attacks in Yemen also must be paired with rocket attacks in Saudi Arabia and also the airstrikes carried out by the Biden administration over the weekend against Iranian-backed militias in Syria. Add it up and what do you get: Incidents in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, spanning thousands of kilometers.   

 

The attack on Saudi Arabia on Saturday included video of an interception over the skies of Riyadh. This is not the first time that rockets have been fired on Riyadh. Houthis have fired missiles before that triggered Patriot air defenses in Riyadh, in March 2020, in December 2017, in March 2018. In November 2017 Defense News said that Patriots had intercepted over 100 ballistic missiles since 2015 that were fired from Yemen.   

 

In addition, a ship that departed Dammam on Wednesday was forced to turn back after an explosion on Friday. It was in the Gulf of Oman. Israel’s Channel 13 reported that the assessment is that the Iranian Navy fired missiles at the MV Helios Ray in the Gulf of Oman. Up the coast, over Kuwait, in Iraq the Iraqi members of Parliament that are supportive of Iran and linked to the pro-Iranian Hashd al-Sha’abi have slammed the US for airstrikes in Syria and complained about reports that Iraq provided the US intelligence. The attack in Syria came after pro-Iranian militias were accused of firing rockets at US forces in Erbil and Baghdad, killing a contractor. In Nasiriyah pro-Iranian groups are accused of a crackdown on protesters. Threat levels for US service members in Iraq have also gone up, reports note.   

 

In Syria pro-Hezbollah sources have told Al-Manar TV that drones are conducting surveillance of Iraqi militias. These are pro-Iranian militias that are active near Albukamal, the same area the US carried out airstrikes. The US says that airstrikes hit areas used by Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah.   

 

Then in Marib in Yemen, the Iranian-backed Houthis are trying to take Marib city, where there are many displaced Yemenis who fled the fighting. The Houthis were briefly designated terrorists by the Trump administration, before the Biden administration reversed course. They are waging a civil war against the government, which is backed by Riyadh. Saudi Arabia led an intervention in Yemen in 2015. A bi-partisan group of US Senators called on the Houthis to stop the offensive on February 26. “The Houthis and their supporters in the Iranian government must stop the offensive on Marib and avoid needless death and worsening the humanitarian catastrophe. All parties should agree to a nationwide ceasefire and begin inclusive political negotiations to end the war.”  

 

Iran’s state media tells the story openly of Iran’s total war in the region. “Iraqi resistance groups urge probe into deadly US airstrike,” says Press TV. “Ma'rib liberation accelerates as Yemeni tribes abandon Saudi coalition”; “Owner of damaged Israeli ship close to Mossad chief: Reports”; “Iraqi FM in Iran for 2nd official visit in a month”; “China plans robust hike in military budget as US rivalry intensifies”; “‘Bad sign from Biden admin.’: Syria slams fatal US raid on Iraq border”; “Iran condemns 'illegal' US airstrikes on eastern Syria.” 

 

It’s clear that Iran is seeking maximum pressure across the region on the US and US partners and allies from Israel to Saudi Arabia. The tentacles are also long, stretching from Yemen via the Gulf of Oman to Iraq, Syria and then Lebanon. Iran is also using a plethora of technology it has developed to support its proxies, from 107mm rockets in Iraq, to bases in Syria, as well as ballistic missiles (SRBMs) in Yemen and mines and missiles in the Gulf of Oman.  ...

 

Seth J. Frantzman  

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/twenty-four-hours-of-irans-total-war-in-yemen-iraq-and-syria-660424

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