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Ireland formally joins ICJ genocide case against Israel

Ireland is the latest country to join South Africa in attempting to hold Israel accountable at the International Court of Justice in the Hague

News Desk, JAN 7, 2025,  https://thecradle.co/articles/ireland-formally-joins-icj-genocide-case-against-israel

Ireland has submitted a declaration to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide.

“Ireland, invoking Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, filed in the Registry of the Court a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” or South Africa versus Israel, the ICJ said in a statement on 7 January.

Under Article 63, any state party to a convention that is under judicial consideration has the right to intervene, making the ICJ’s interpretation of that convention binding on them as well.

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin announced in December his government would join the ICJ case.

Israel closed its embassy in Dublin in response, while the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, described Ireland’s Prime Minister, Simon Harris, as antisemitic.

Harris responded by saying, “You know what I think is reprehensible? Killing children, I think that’s reprehensible. You know what I think is reprehensible? Seeing the scale of civilian deaths that we’ve seen in Gaza. You know what I think is reprehensible? People are being left to starve, and humanitarian aid is not flowing.”

US-Palestinian entrepreneur and art curator Faisal Saleh said he has begun efforts to lease the closed Israeli embassy building and convert it into a Palestinian museum.

“This will be a very powerful symbolic move where Palestinian art replaces the genocidal entity representation in Ireland,” Saleh told Anadolu Ajansi on 3 January.

Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, placing the strip under total siege and unleashing a horrific bombing campaign targeting Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters alike.

In December of that year, South Africa filed an application instituting proceedings against Israel, claiming its actions in Gaza were in violation of the Genocide Convention.

Several countries have since joined the case, including Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, and Turkiye.

In fifteen months of war, Israeli forces have killed over 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, while injuring over 105,000.

The campaign has laid waste to much of the enclave, including homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, agricultural land, and water infrastructure, making Gaza largely unlivable.

Israeli soldiers and politicians have declared it their goal to forcibly expel all 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and to build Jewish settlements on the ruins of the destroyed Palestinian cities and refugee camps.

January 12, 2025 Posted by | Ireland, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Genocidal President, Genocidal Politics

The presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Jan 6, 2025, Norman Solomon,  https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/genocidal-president?utm_source=LA+Progressive+NEW&utm_campaign=c01ae947cf-LAP+News+–+%288%29+18+NOVEMBER+2022_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_61288e16ef-c01ae947cf-287023764&ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_11_17_2022_10_46_COPY_01)&mc_cid=c01ae947cf&mc_eid=02629a6e14

Then news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.

It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions has collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction.

While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”

The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.

For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.”

Content analysis of the war’s first six weeks found that coverage by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had a steeply dehumanizing slant toward Palestinians. The three papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians,” a study by The Intercept showed. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

After a year of the Gaza war, Arab-American historian Rashid Khalidi said: “My objection to organs of opinion like the New York Times is that they see absolutely everything from an Israeli perspective. ‘How does it affect Israel, how do the Israelis see it?’ Israel is at the center of their worldview, and that’s true of our elites generally, all over the West. The Israelis have very shrewdly, by preventing direct reportage from Gaza, further enabled that Israelocentric perspective.”

Khalidi summed up: “The mainstream media is as blind as it ever was, as willing to shill for any monstrous Israeli lie, to act as stenographers for power, repeating what is said in Washington.”

The conformist media climate smoothed the way for Biden and his prominent rationalizers to slide off the hook and shape the narrative, disguising complicity as evenhanded policy. Meanwhile, mighty boosts of Israel’s weapons and ammunition were coming from the United States. Nearly half of the Palestinians they killed were children.

For those children and their families, the road to hell was paved with good doublethink. So, for instance, while the Gaza horrors went on, no journalist would confront Biden with what he’d said at the time of the widely decried school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when the president had quickly gone on live television. “There are parents who will never see their child again,” he said, adding: “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. . . . It’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.” And he asked plaintively, “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”

The massacre in Uvalde killed 19 children. The daily massacre in Gaza has taken the lives of that many Palestinian kids in a matter of hours.

While Biden refused to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing and mass murder that he kept making possible, Democrats in his orbit cooperated with silence or other types of evasion. A longstanding maneuver amounts to checking the box for a requisite platitude by affirming support for a “two-state solution.”

Dominating Capitol Hill, an unspoken precept has held that Palestinian people are expendable as a practical political matter. Party leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries did virtually nothing to indicate otherwise. Nor did they exert themselves to defend incumbent House Democrats Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, defeated in summer primaries with an unprecedented deluge of multimillion-dollar ad campaigns funded by AIPAC and Republican donors.

The overall media environment was a bit more varied but no less lethal for Palestinian civilians. During its first several months, the Gaza war received huge quantities of mainstream media coverage, which thinned over time; the effects were largely to normalize the continual slaughter. Some exceptional reporting existed about the suffering, but the journalism gradually took on a media ambience akin to background noise, while credulously hyping Biden’s weak ceasefire efforts as determined quests.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came in for increasing amounts of criticism. But the prevalent U.S. media coverage and political rhetoric — unwilling to expose the Israeli mission to destroy Palestinians en masse — rarely went beyond portraying Israel’s leaders as insufficiently concerned with protecting Palestinian civilians.

Instead of candor about horrific truths, the usual tales of U.S. media and politics have offered euphemisms and evasions.

When she resigned as the New York Times Magazine poetry editor in mid-November 2023, Anne Boyer condemned what she called “an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.” Another poet, William Stafford, wrote decades ago:

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

January 10, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, politics | Leave a comment

What a second Trump administration may mean for the Saudi nuclear program

By Nour Eid |  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 6th Jan 2025

Donald Trump’s return to the White House could mean the end of the
nonproliferation regime: As the Iranian-Israeli confrontation intensifies,
and the threat of an Iranian nuclear breakout looms, the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia could see in a second Trump administration an opportunity to finally
get the nuclear cooperation the Saudis have been yearning for.

The Saudis argue that it is their right, under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT), to enrich uranium for domestic energy purposes. They
refuse to be subjected to double standards, given that India and Japan
received “blanket consents” to seek enrichment or reprocessing
capabilities under their respective 123 agreements.

Adding insult to injury, in Saudi eyes: Its main rival, Iran, was allowed to enrich uranium
under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as
the Iran nuclear deal. The Saudis aim to benefit from the same privileges
by developing an indigenous nuclear program………………………………………………….. https://thebulletin.org/2025/01/what-a-second-trump-administration-may-mean-for-the-saudi-nuclear-program/

January 10, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Saudi Arabia, USA | Leave a comment

Genocide: The New Normal

The genocide, and the decision to fuel it with billions of dollars, marks an ominous turning point. It is a public declaration by the U.S. and its allies in Europe that international and humanitarian law, although blatantly disregarded by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and a generation earlier in Vietnam, is meaningless.

By Chris Hedges ScheerPost January 7, 2025,  https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/07/chris-hedges-genocide-the-new-normal/

Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of Israel Avi Dichter was probably offering conservative estimates when he said “I think that we are going to stay in Gaza for a long time. I think most people understand that [Israel] will be years in some kind of West Bank situation where you go in and out and maybe you remain along Netzarim [corridor].”

Mass extermination takes time. It is also expensive. Fortunately for Israel, its lobby in the U.S. has a stranglehold on Congress, our electoral process and the media narrative. Americans, although 61 percent support ending weapons shipments to Israel, will pay for it. And those that express dissent will be frog-marched into Zionist black holes where their voices are silenced and their careers jeopardized or destroyed. Donald Trump and the Republicans have an open disdain for democracy, but so do the Democrats and Joe Biden.

The U.S. provided $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel from October 2023 to October 2024, a substantial increase from the already $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. gives Israel annually. This is a record for a single year. The State Department has informed Congress that it intends to approve another $8 billion in purchases of U.S.-made arms by Israel. This will provide Israel with more GPS guidance systems for bombs, more artillery shells, more missiles for fighter jets and helicopters, and more bombs, including 2,800 unguided MK-84 bombs, which Israel has a habit of dropping on densely packed tent encampments in Gaza. The pressure wave from the 2,000-pound MK-84 pulverizes buildings and exterminates life within a 400-yard radius. The blast, which ruptures lungs, rips apart limbs and bursts sinus cavities up to hundreds of yards away, leaves behind a 50-foot-wide and 36-foot-deep crater. Israel appears to have used this bomb to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, in Beirut on September 27, 2024.

The genocide, and the decision to fuel it with billions of dollars, marks an ominous turning point. It is a public declaration by the U.S. and its allies in Europe that international and humanitarian law, although blatantly disregarded by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and a generation earlier in Vietnam, is meaningless. We will not even pay lip service to it. This will be a Hobbesian world where nations that have the most advanced industrial weapons make the rules. Those who are poor and vulnerable will kneel in subjugation. The genocide in Gaza is the template for the future. And those in the Global South know it.

The “wretched of the earth” who lack sophisticated weapons, who do not have modern armies, artillery units, missiles, navies, armored units and warplanes, will strike back with crude tools. They will match individual acts of terror against massive campaigns of state terror.

Are we surprised we are hated? Terror begets terror. We saw this in New Orleans where a man who was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed 14 people when he drove his pickup truck into a crowd on New Year’s Day. We will see more of it. But let’s be clear. We started it. The moral void of the suicide bomber is birthed from our moral void.

Israel’s frustration at the dogged resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen and Lebanon increases the bloodlust. Members of Israel’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee sent a letter to Minister of Defense Israel Katz, calling on the government to intensify the siege of Gaza.


“Effective control of the territory and the population is the only means towards cleansing enemy lines from the strip, and naturally towards decisive victory, rather than treading [water] in a war of attrition, where the side that is most worn is Israel,” they write. “Therefore we end up inserting our soldiers again and again into neighborhoods and alleys that were already conquered by them many times.”

Israel, the letter reads, must carry out “remote elimination of all energy sources, that is fuel, solar panels and any relevant means (pipes, cables, generators etc.)” It should ensure the “elimination of all food sources including warehouses, water and all relevant means (water pumps etc.)” and it must facilitate the “remote elimination of anyone who moves in the area and does not exit with a white flag during the days of the effective siege.”

The letter concludes that “after these actions and the days of siege upon those who remain, [the] IDF must enter gradually and conduct a full cleansing of the enemy nests…. This should be done in the northern Gaza Strip, and similarly in any other territory: encirclement, evacuation of the population to a humanitarian zone, and effective siege until surrender or full elimination of the enemy. This is how every army acts, and so must the IDF act.”

In short, exterminate the brutes.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old U.S. military veteran who plowed his pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans killing 14 people and injuring 35 others, spoke to us in the language we use to speak to the Arab world. Indiscriminate death. The targeting of innocents. The callous indifference to life. The thirst for revenge. The demonization of others. The belief that fate or God or western civilization has decreed that we have a right to impose our vision of the world with violence. Jabbar, who posted videos online in which he professed his support for Islamic State, is our murderous doppelgänger. He will not be the last.

“When a society is dispossessed, when the injustices thrust upon it appear insoluble, when the ‘enemy’ is all-powerful, when one’s own people are bestialised as insects, cockroaches, ‘two-legged beasts,’ then the mind moves beyond reason,” Robert Fisk writes in The Great War for Civilization. “It becomes fascinated in two senses: with the idea of an afterlife and with the possibility that this belief will somehow provide a weapon of more than nuclear potential. When the United States was turning Beirut into a NATO base in 1983, and using its firepower against Muslim guerrillas in the mountains to the east, Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Baalbek were promising that God would rid Lebanon of the American presence. I wrote at the time — not entirely with my tongue in my cheek — that this was likely to be a titanic battle: U.S. technology versus God. Who would win? Then on 23 October 1983 a lone suicide bomber drove a truckload of explosives into the U.S. Marine compound at Beirut airport and killed 241 American servicemen in six seconds…I later interviewed one of the few surviving marines to have seen the bomber. ‘All I can remember,’ he told me, ‘is that the guy was smiling.’

These acts of terrorism, or in the case of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Yemen armed resistance, are used to justify endless mass killing. This Via Dolorosa leads to a global death spiral, especially as the climate crisis reconfigures the planet and international bodies, such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, become hollow appendages.

We are sowing the Middle East with dragon’s teeth and, as in the ancient Greek myth, these teeth are rising from the soil as enraged warriors determined to destroy us. 

January 9, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Iran has absolutely no intention to build nuclear weapons, president says

Jan 7, 2025 https://www.iranintl.com/en/202501076906

Tehran has no plan to acquire a nuclear bomb since Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has forbidden it on religious grounds, Iran’s president said on Tuesday.

“The Islamic Republic has absolutely no intention of utilizing its nuclear capabilities for military purposes based on its ideological beliefs and a fatwa by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” Masoud Pezeshkian said in a meeting with Britain’s new ambassador to Tehran.

For two decades, the Supreme Leader’s so-called nuclear fatwa has been repeatedly cited by senior officials as proof of Iran’s peaceful intentions. But even supporters of that view say the decree could be amended.

The nuclear engineer went on to say that if Khamenei’s opinion changed, Iran would have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.

Tehran ready for return to JCPOA

Pezeshkian’s comments came one day after French President Emmanuel Macron warned Tehran’s nuclear program is nearing the point of no return.

Iran says its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes but has accelerated activity since US President-elect Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – during his first term and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

“The Islamic Republic is fully prepared for all parties to return to the 2015 agreement and fulfill their mutual commitments,” Pezeshkian added on Tuesday.

Last month, European powers France, Germany, and Britain warned that Iran’s actions had further eroded the agreement, noting that Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium has no credible civilian justification.

In December, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog reported that Iran was dramatically advancing enrichment close to the 90% purity needed only for weapons-grade material.

The three European nations, co-signatories of the 2015 accord, had brokered the deal under which Iran agreed to limit enrichment in exchange for the lifting sanctions.

“According to the Leader’s opinion, going in this direction is now forbidden, because he is a religious authority; (but) maybe he will change his opinion tomorrow,” Shahid Beheshti University President Mahmood-Reza Aghamiri said recently in an interview.

January 9, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics | Leave a comment

Iran Condemns US Threats to Nuclear Facilities, Calls for UN Accountability

 Latifa Ferial Nail, 6 Jan 25,  https://nbmediacoop.org/2025/01/06/first-nations-chiefs-shouldnt-be-duped-by-nuclear-is-green-deception/

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, has condemned recent remarks by US national security adviser Jake Sullivan regarding potential military action against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

Baghaei urged the UN Security Council to hold the United States accountable for its threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, emphasizing that such actions violate the United Nations Charter.

Sullivan reportedly presented US President Joe Biden with options for strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, should Tehran allegedly pursue a nuclear weapon—a claim Iran has repeatedly denied.

Baghaei noted that these threats had been made multiple times and stressed that the international community must address this issue to maintain global peace and security. The spokesman reaffirmed Iran’s determination to defend its sovereignty and dignity.

January 8, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

2025, Iran is back in the U.S. crosshairs for regime change

Finian Cunningham, Strategic Culture Foundation, Sat, 04 Jan 2025  https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/01/04/2025-iran-back-in-us-crosshairs-for-regime-change/

A new American president and a new Middle East configuration have brought Iran back into the crosshairs for regime change with an intoxicating vengeance

The signs are that Iran is going to face intensified hostility from the U.S. over the next year for regime change.

The sudden fall of Syria and the isolation of Hezbollah in Lebanon – Iran’s regional allies – have made Tehran look vulnerable.

Anti-Iran hawks in the U.S. are cock-a-hoop about the prospect of regime change in Tehran.

The recent death of Jimmy Carter at the age of 100 puts in perspective how great a prize the Islamic Republic represents for Washington’s imperial desires. Carter was disparaged as the American president who lost Iran in 1979 as a crucial client state for U.S. power in the Middle East.

For over four decades, American imperialist power has sought to topple the Islamic Republic and return the Persian nation to the U.S. global fold.

Though, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken lamented last month, American “regime change experiments” in Iran have been a failure.

Now, however, there is renewed enthusiasm in Washington for the Persian prize.

The lust for regime change in Tehran has peaked with the dramatic fall of President al-Assad in Syria.

American lawmakers and Iranian exiles are publicly calling for the new Trump administration to get back to its maximum pressure campaign on Tehran because they believe there is “a perfect moment” for regime change.

During Donald Trump’s first White House (2017-2021), he revoked the Iranian nuclear deal of the Obama administration and ramped up economic sanctions in what was referred to as a policy of “maximum pressure.”

A growing chorus of Republicans and Democrats are urging the United States to seize the opportunity of a perceived weakened Iran to overthrow the clerical rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

At a recent forum in Washington, it was reported that speaker after speaker brayed for regime change in Tehran. For years, such a desire had been dulled with U.S. failure and the formidableness of the Islamic Republic.

“We have an obligation to stand together with allies in making sure this regime’s suppression will come to an end,” said Democratic Senator Cory Booker.

“Iran is projecting only weakness,” declared Jeanne Shaheen, another Democratic Senator.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz sounded vindicated over his long-time anti-Iran stance: “I have, for a long time, been willing to call quite unequivocally for regime change in Iran… The ayatollah will fall, the mullahs will fall, and we will see free and democratic elections in Iran. Change is coming, and it’s coming very soon.”

James Jones, a former White House national security adviser, said: “The tectonic shift in the Syrian government… should mean to the people of Iran that change is in fact possible in the Middle East.”

The Islamic Revolution in 1979 deposed Shah Pahlavi, an ardent American client. The revolution and the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran was a horrible blow to Washington’s global image. The Shah had been brought to power by the U.S.-British coup in 1953 and for 26 years, the dictatorial monarch ruled with an iron fist as a loyal and massive buyer of American weaponry and supplier of oil profits.

The overthrow of the Shah put Iran in the crosshairs for regime change. The Americans prompted the Iraq-Iran War between 1980 and 1988. The new Islamic rulers were subjected to crippling economic sanctions, which were eased in 2015 with the signing of the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration. By then, the U.S. was trying a softer policy of regime change and limited engagement.

Trump abandoned that policy, reverting to a more hostile one. Trump ordered the assassination of Iran’s top military commander Major General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2020.

Trump can be expected to make Iran his foreign policy goal during the first year of his second administration beginning on January 20.

There is a giddy sense that the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen has fatally weakened the Islamic Republic.

During his election campaign, Trump endorsed Israeli plans to attack Iran’s nuclear sites militarily.

Trump will be tempted that Iran could be an early success for his political legacy. To overthrow the Iranian government and replace it with a pro-U.S. regime would be the prize of the century for the American imperial ego.

There is also the imperative of geo-strategy. Russia, China and Iran have emerged as an important alternative geopolitical axis that is perceived as a threat to U.S. global power and the American dollar hegemony. Iran appears to be the weakest link among the opposing bloc, known as the BRICS.

Trump seems to be prioritizing making a peace settlement in Ukraine with Russia. Part of that calculation is incentivized by freeing up U.S. resources to target Iran.

Last year, the imperialist Atlantic Council published an article headlined: “The United States needs a new Iran policy – and it involves regime change, but not the traditional kind”.

The Atlantic Council article advocated intensified economic and political pressure on Iran and internal destabilization by the covert backing of Iranian opposition groups. We can expect a turbo-charged color revolution in Iran, with Western media amplifying public protests against the authorities. Also recommended by the Atlantic Council: “Propaganda efforts to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran, as well as undermine its support by the rank-and-file within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and military, would also help weaken the regime.”

The year ahead is shaping up for a mammoth effort by the U.S. to target Iran.

Suddenly, the U.S. imperial regime-change machine has found the driving seat again after years of sputtering failure in Iran and Syria. The victory of CIA proxies in Syria to finally overthrow Assad is producing a rush to do the same in Iran. That prize seemed out of reach for too long. A new American president and a new Middle East configuration have brought Iran back into the crosshairs for regime change with an intoxicating vengeance.

January 6, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Biden discussed plans to strike Iran nuclear sites if Tehran speeds toward bomb

Barak Ravid. AXIOS, 2 Jan 25

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan presented President Biden with options for a potential U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities if the Iranians move towards a nuclear weapon before Jan. 20, in a meeting several weeks ago that remained secret until now, three sources with knowledge of the issue tell Axios.

Why it matters: A U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear program during the lame duck period would be an enormous gamble from a president who promised he would not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, but who would also risk handing a fresh conflict over to his successor. Biden did not green light a strike during the meeting and has not done so since, the sources said.

Biden and his national security team discussed various options and scenarios during the meeting, which took place roughly one month ago, but the president did not make any final decision, according to the sources.A U.S. official with knowledge of the issue said the White House meeting was not prompted by new intelligence or intended to end in a yes or no decision from Biden. Instead, it was part of a discussion on “prudent scenario planning” of how the U.S. should respond if Iran were to take steps like enriching Uranium to 90% purity before Jan. 20, the official said.Another source said there are currently no active discussions inside the White House about possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Behind the scenes: Some of Biden’s top aides have argued internally that two trends —the acceleration of Iran’s nuclear program, and the weakening of Iran and its proxies in their war with Israel — together give Biden an imperative and an opportunity to strike.

  • The sources said some of Biden’s aides, including Sullivan, think that the degrading of Iran’s air defenses and missile capabilities, along with the significant weakening of Iran’s regional proxies, would improve the odds of a successful strike and decrease the risk of Iranian retaliation and regional escalation.
  • The U.S. official said Sullivan did not make any recommendation to Biden on the issue, but only discussed scenario planning. The White House declined to comment.

The intrigue: One source said Biden honed in on the question of urgency, and whether Iran had taken steps that justify a dramatic military strike a few weeks before a new president takes office.

The other side: Iran has long denied it is seeking a nuclear weapon and stressed that its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes.

January 5, 2025 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran says ready to enter talks soon with the West to agree on a new nuclear deal

January 4, 2025 ,  https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/508257/Iran-says-ready-to-open-talks-soon-with-the-West-to-reach-a-new

TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said the Islamic Republic is ready to resume constructive and immediate talks on its nuclear program.

“We are still ready to enter constructive dialogue without any delay about our nuclear program, a dialogue with the aim of reaching an agreement,” Araghchi told China’s CCTV in an interview aired on Saturday.

President-elect Donald Trump quit the nuclear deal in his first term with Iran in 2018 and returned the all the previous sanctions lifted under the deal and added new ones.

According to the deal, deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to put limits on its nuclear work in return for the termination of financial and economic sanctions.

The JCPOA was clinched in 2015 between Iran and the 5+1 group, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, after nearly two years of intensive negotiations.

“We negotiated for more than two years with the 5+1 countries in good will and finally we succeeded to reach an agreement that was praised and accepted by the entire world as a diplomatic achievement,” Araghchi explained who acted as Iran’s second ranking diplomat in the talks at the time.

“We implemented it with good will but it was the U.S. that decided to withdraw from it without any reason and justification and brought the situation to this point.”

The chief diplomat added the formula that Iran has in its mind for resolving the nuclear issue is the same previous JCPOA formula, which means creating trust about Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions.

“Based on this (formula) we are ready for talks.”

To revitalize the nuclear deal Iran held a brainstorming session with the three European countries of Britain, France and Germany (E3) in December 2024, which are still party to the dormant nuclear agreement at the level of deputy foreign ministers for political affairs. Iran and the E3 plan to meet again on January 13.

On the policy of the new American administration toward the nuclear talks, the foreign minister said, “It is natural that the new administration should formulate its policies, and we decide based on that.”

Trump will officially take over as president on January 20.

Foreign Minister Araghchi went on to say that “China and Russia were two important influential parties in the negotiations and Iran believes that the two countries should still play their own constructive role in the talks and this is our will and request.”

He added since 2015 when the nuclear deal was signed the world has undergone many changes.

There is crisis in the West Asia region “but the road to diplomatic solution is never closed,” the chief diplomat opined.

“The U.S. pullout from the JCPOA was a grave strategic mistake that faced Iran reaction. Of course, the U.S. sanctions also increased.

 Araghchi added, “As a diplomat I believe it is possible to reach ‘diplomatic solutions’ in the most difficult situations, but it depends how much there is political will and how much diplomats show creativity and devise initiatives to find new ways and agree on new formulas. Finding a solution is difficult, but is not impossible if the other side has the diplomatic will.”

January 5, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Next nuclear talks between Iran and three European countries due on Jan 13

 The next round of nuclear talks between Iran and three European countries
will take place on Jan. 13 in Geneva, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency
cited the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi as saying on
Wednesday. Iran held talks about its disputed nuclear programme in
November, 2024 with Britain, France and Germany. Those discussions, the
first since the U.S. election, came after Tehran was angered by a
European-backed resolution that accused Iran of poor cooperation with the
U.N. nuclear watchdog.

 Reuters 1st Jan 2025
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/next-nuclear-talks-between-iran-three-european-countries-due-jan-13-2025-01-01/

January 5, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

BBC staffers reveal editor’s ‘entire job’ to whitewash Israeli war crimes

News editor Raffi Berg reportedly controls online coverage of genocide in Gaza to ensure Israeli crimes are ‘watered down’ or ignored

News Desk, DEC 28, 2024,  https://thecradle.co/articles/bbc-staffers-reveal-editors-entire-job-to-whitewash-israeli-war-crimes

BBC editor Raffi Berg has almost complete control of the British broadcaster’s online coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and is ensuring that all events are reported with a pro-Israel bias, according to a new report published on 28 December by Drop Site News.

“This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” one former BBC journalist said.

Drop Site News spoke to 13 current and former staffers who stated that the BBC’s coverage consistently devalues Palestinian life, ignores Israeli atrocities, and creates a false equivalence in an entirely unbalanced conflict.

Another BBC journalist said Berg plays a key role in a broader BBC culture of “systematic Israeli propaganda.” 

“How much power he has is wild,” said another journalist.

There was an extreme fear at the BBC, that if you ever wanted to do anything about Israel or Palestine, editors would say: ‘If you want to pitch something, you have to go through Raffi and get his signoff,” another journalist explained.

In one case, Berg downplayed Amnesty International’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Berg chose a headline that stated, “Israel rejects ‘fabricated’ claims of genocide,” to describe the Amnesty report and failed to post the story for 12 hours after it was written to suppress its online reach.

The journalists interviewed by Drop Site also noted that the Amnesty report was not covered on the BBC’s flagship news programs—BBC One’s News At One, News At Six, or News At Ten or its flagship current affairs program, BBC Two’s Newsnight.

“Anyone who writes on Gaza or Israel is asked: ‘Has it gone to edpol [editorial policy], lawyers, and has it gone to Raffi?'” another journalist said.

Raffi Berg, who wrote a book praising clandestine Mossad operations, wields great power to influence perceptions of Israel’s war on Gaza because the BBC news website is the most-visited news site on the internet, with over 1.1 billion visits in May alone.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, and flattened large swathes of the besieged enclave.

The pro-Israel bias imposed by Berg is evident in the language used to cover the war.

While stories “prominently” used words like “massacre,” “slaughter,” and “atrocities” to refer to Hamas, they “hardly, if at all,” used them “in reference to actions by Israel,” wrote Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC Arabic correspondent.

In another case, the BBC published a story with a headline that hid Israel’s responsibility for killing an entire family in a missile strike.

“Israel Gaza: Father loses 11 family members in one blast,” the headline stated.

Drop Site notes that when the BBC does mention Israel as the perpetrator, it uses the caveat “reportedly.”

The BBC also uses euphemisms preferred by the Israeli army to hide its soldiers’ war crimes. For example, the BBC describes the forcible transfer or ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians as “evacuations.”

In one case, the BBC described Israel’s total siege on Gaza with a headline stating, “Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas.”

Defense minister Yoav Gallant’s public vow to impose a “full siege” on Gaza while calling Palestinians “human animals” received just one mention in any BBC online content.

The journalists speaking with Drop Site said they made specific requests to BBC management to balance its coverage, but their requests have been ignored.

“Many of us have raised concerns that Raffi has the power to reframe every story, and we are ignored,” one journalist said.

 “Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him,” one stated. “He has been named in multiple meetings, but [BBC management] just ignore it.”

The journalist said they demanded that stories should “emphasize that Israel had not granted the BBC access to Gaza, that the network should end the practice of presenting the official Israeli versions of events as fact, and that the BBC should do more to offer context about Israeli occupation and the fact that Gaza is overwhelmingly populated by descendants of refugees forcibly driven from their homes beginning in 1948.” 

January 4, 2025 Posted by | Israel, media, UK | Leave a comment

EU officials will claim ignorance of Israel’s war crimes. A leaked document shows what they knew.

Arthur Neslen, The Intercept, Mon, 23 Dec 2024

The internal EU document may strip European foreign ministers of “plausible deniability” in Israeli war crimes in Gaza, experts said.

European Union foreign ministers rebuffed a call to end arms sales to Israel last month, despite mounting evidence of war crimes — and, potentially, genocide — presented to them in an internal assessment obtained by The Intercept.

The contents of the previously unknown 35-page assessment could sway future war crimes trials of EU politicians for complicity in Israel’s assault against Gaza, according to lawyers, experts, and political leaders.

The appraisal was written by the EU’s special representative for human rights Olof Skoog and sent to EU ministers ahead of acouncil meetingonNovember 18, as part of a proposal by the head of the EU’s foreign policy to suspend political dialogue with Israel. The proposal was rejected by the council of foreign ministers from EU member states.

Skoog’s analysis laid out evidence from United Nations sources of war crimes by Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah since October 7, 2023, when around 1,200 people were killed during a Hamas-led attack that prompted Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. The U.N. estimates some 45,000 people have died in Gaza since, with more than half estimated to be women and children.

Though the assessment did not spare Hamas and Hezbollah, much of its strongest language was reserved for the Israel Defense Forces.

“War has rules,” the paper says. “

Given the high level of civilian casualties and human suffering, allegations focus mainly on how duty bearers, including the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), have seemingly failed to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects against the effects of the attacks, in violation of the fundamental principles of IHL” — international humanitarian law……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

In the wake of the assessment, some EU politicians will be at risk of complicity if Israel is found to have committed war crimes, said Tayab Ali, a partner in the U.K. law firm Bindmans, which recently took the British government to court over its arms exports to Israel.

“Lawyers across Europe are watching this closely and likely to initiate domestic and international accountability mechanisms. Economic interests are not a defence to complicity in war crimes,” Ali told The Intercept. “It is astounding that, following the contents of this report, countries like France and Germany might even remotely consider raising issues of immunity to protect wanted war criminals like Netahyahu and Gallant” — referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser and negotiator for the Palestinian Authority suggested that the rejection of the EU’s own analysis by its member states was political.

“Legally, we know where the dominoes should be falling,” Buttu said. “It was a question of whether the politics would match with the law, and unfortunately, they did not.”…………………………………………………………………………………………….

Skoog’s assessment says international law allows Israel “the right and indeed the duty to protect its population,” but that this can only be exercised in response to an armed attack or imminent attack and must be proportional. Because it is an occupying power, the assessment says, Israel also had an obligation to ensure safety and the health of those living under occupation.

Agnès Bertrand-Sanz, an Oxfam humanitarian expert, said the assessment “reinforces the case that EU governments have been acting in complicity with Israel’s crimes in Gaza.”

“Even when their own services presented them with the facts, they refused to act,” she said. “Those that continued exporting arms to Israel in defiance of the report’s clear advice, are involved in a blatant case of criminal collusion.” m https://www.sott.net/article/496948-EU-officials-will-claim-ignorance-of-Israels-war-crimes-A-leaked-document-shows-what-they-knew

January 2, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | 1 Comment

No change in Iran’s nuclear doctrine, top security official says

December 31, 2024 ,  https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/508118/No-change-in-Iran-s-nuclear-doctrine-top-security-official-says

TEHRAN – Iran’s top security official said on Monday that contrary to what is claimed by foreign media outlets there has been no change in Iran’s nuclear doctrine.

Ali Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, made the remarks in a meeting with Omani Foreign Minister Said Badr al-Busaidi who visited Tehran on Monday

“… based on the views of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution there has been no change in the nuclear doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Ahmadian asserted.

In response to a clarification by the Omani foreign minister about Iran’s nuclear activities as well as “remarks and rumors” that Iran has increased its stockpile of uranium or is enriching uranium to a higher level, Ahmadian said these are “baseless”.  

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is still committed to the framework of the Muscat agreements and the ball is on the other side’s court to honor its commitments” based on the 2015 nuclear agreement, Ahmadian explained.

Under the 2015 nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to put limits on its nuclear activities in exchange for termination of economic and financial sanctions.

The agreement was signed in 2015 between Iran and the 5+1 group, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. However, the U.S. quit the agreement in 2018 and the remaining parties, including Britain, France and Germany (European trio), failed to observe their commitments.

January 1, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics | Leave a comment

Syrian minorities under threat as security forces carry out raids against ‘remnants of Assad militias’

Reports of sectarian killings and ethnic cleansing of Alawites and Christians continue to emerge as Ahmad al-Sharaa’s new government seeks to exert control over the country

The Cradle, News Desk, DEC 29, 2024

The new Syrian government led by former Al-Qaeda leader Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammad al-Julani is carrying out raids and arrests against members of Bashar al-Assad’s fallen government amid reports of sectarian killings of minorities by forces associated with the new government.

The state-run Syrian news agency SANA reported on Saturday that “a number of remnants of the Assad militias” had been arrested and their weapons and ammunition confiscated in Syria’s coastal Latakia region.

Security forces have also been pursuing members of the former government in the regions of Tartous, Homs, and Hama in recent days.

The media office of Syria’s interim interior ministry said the campaign was only launched after members of the former government had failed “to hand over their weapons and settle their affairs” within a specific time frame.

Videos and reports circulating on social media indicate that former soldiers and civilians are also being expelled from their homes or abducted and executed by HTS militants for simply being Alawite.

The HTS-led Military Operations Command in Syria has set up “reconciliation centers” for ex-Assad government personnel to surrender weapons and receive temporary IDs, but reports indicate that numerous individuals have been abducted and found dead, even after having given up their weapons……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

On 18 December, the Washington Post reported that some HTS members were carrying out sectarian revenge attacks.

“Over the past week, Washington Post reporters saw evidence of extrajudicial killings in Damascus and Hama province, and verified two videos showing fighters executing alleged members of Syria’s state security forces,” the paper wrote………………. more https://thecradle.co/articles/syrian-minorities-under-threat-as-security-forces-carry-out-raids-against-remnants-of-assad-militias

January 1, 2025 Posted by | Syria, weapons and war | Leave a comment

With successful Syrian regime change, will US set sights on Iran regime change 2.0?

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 30 Dec 24.

Seventy-one years ago the US and UK launched Operation AJAX, a jointly planned coup that deposed Iran’s legitimate ruler Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq in August, 1953.

The Brits conceived the coup in 1952 and presented it to ‘Give ‘Em Hell’ Harry Truman, who told the Brits to go to Hell. A year later newbie Prez Ike greenlighted AJAX to allow Britain to grab back its Iranian oil monopoly nationalized by Mosaddeq, seeking to break free from US, UK dominance. For Ike, it was a chance to make his bones as a bonafide anti-communist, due to Mosaddeq’s unwillingness to crush Iranian leftist influence. In McCarthyite America and forever more, leftist governments posed a danger to US exceptionalism.

Leading this first official CIA coup against a foreign leader who wouldn’t do our bidding was Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson Kermit Roosevelt Jr. Our hand-picked successor was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, son of the first Pahlavi monarch Reza Shah Pahlavi. His reluctance and indecision about being summoned as the US/UK puppet almost wrecked Uncle Sam’s best laid plans. But CIA coup leader Roosevelt disobeyed orders to shut down Ajax. He had his Iranian operatives masquerading as commies shed enough blood to turn the tide against Mosaddeq. Up in Warlovers Heaven, Grandpa Teddy beamed with pride. 

The Shah ruled Iran for another 26 years, with his CIA trained secret police killing thousands who dared speak out against his tyrannical rule.

The CIA, emboldened by their success, toppled the Guatemalan government a year later and were on a roll till their delusional 1961 Bay of Pigs regime change operation failed spectacularly. This led to the Cuban Missile a year later that nearly got us all vaporized in nuclear war with Russia.

Seventy-one years later the US appears bent on Iran regime change 2.0. Goaded by Israel seeking to topple its only remaining rival for Middle East dominance, the incoming Trump administration is signaling a return to a belligerent anti Iran policy.

By withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018, Trump freed up Iran to start up a nuclear weapons program if it felt US/Israeli pressure posed an existential threat. Current warfare in Gaza, Lebanon and the Syrian regime change makes that more likely today. Trump’s return to power, staffing his foreign policy team with anti-Iran hardliners, s increases that likelihood. That could trigger implementation of a 21st century Operation Ajax with Israel replacing the UK as Uncle Sam’s co coup plotter against Iran. More ominous than the 1953 version, this one could lead to all out war posing extreme danger to 40,000 US troops in the region.

Iran is not now and never has been America’s enemy. But senselessly imagining a nuclear program that does not exist and plotting with Israel to topple its Middle East rival is a sure way to make Iran one.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

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