MIDDLE EAST « nuclear-news

Iran’s future FM says nuclear deal broken, favors military-diplomatic path

Niloufar Goudarzi, Iran International, 14 Aug 24

Iran’s foreign minister-designate has dismissed the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal as irreparable, advocating instead for a strategy that blends military force with diplomacy, according to an Iranian MP.

Abbas Araghchi, who has openly aligned himself with IRGC values, firmly rooted in anti-Western and anti-Israel stances, is currently defending his proposed action plan in parliament, where he seeks approval as the nominated minister.

Speaking after Araghchi’s parliamentary session, MP Mohsen Fathi quoted him as stating, “The JCPOA is beyond revival. In the new government, our focus is not on restoring the nuclear deal but on lifting the sanctions. We are dedicated to a strategy integrating diplomatic efforts with military strength.”

It is not clear how Tehran wants to have the sanctions lifted without a nuclear agreement, unless Araghchi was referring to using diplomatic-military pressure on the United States.

In 2015, Iran and global powers signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to limit Iran’s nuclear activities for sanctions relief. In 2018, then-president Donald Trump withdrew, claiming it failed to address Iran’s missile program. Since then, efforts to revive the JCPOA have involved indirect talks, with European diplomats mediating between US and Iranian officials.

Araghchi’s remarks mirrored those of the outgoing Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri-Kani who asserted in July that the primary objective of the JCPOA was lifting sanctions………………………………https://www.iranintl.com/en/202408142991

August 16, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

The Fajr massacre: Every 70 kg bag of human remains is considered a martyr

The bodies of Palestinians killed in the latest Israeli massacre in Gaza were destroyed so far beyond recognition that doctors have only been able to give grieving families an anonymous bag of human remains to bury.

Mondoweiss, By Tareq S. Hajjaj August 11, 2024

Zainab al-Jaabari, 79, sits a few dozen meters in front of the scene of the massacre. She is waiting for her family members to return from checking for her seven sons and grandchildren, who were in the prayer hall praying Fajr at the time it took place.

Her family members arrived to see the reality of the massacre with their own eyes: more than a hundred people were killed, and their bodies were now scattered and mixed in the prayer hall in the Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City. It is possible their delay in returning now is due to their horror at what they found, or perhaps because they can’t imagine how to tell Zainab that her seven sons and grandchildren have been killed.

At dawn on Saturday, August 10, the Israeli army bombed a mosque while dozens of displaced people were praying the Fajr prayer, the daily Islamic prayer offered in the early morning. The bombing killed more than a hundred people, most of whom were dismembered or destroyed beyond recognition. For this reason the identification of the bodies has so far been incomplete……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Every 70 kilograms of remains is considered a martyr

In the mosque, people stand in a row close to each other as they pray, and after the bombing, the worshipers remained intermingled as well, as remains and corpses. Large numbers of martyrs were not able to be identified, and entire families were wiped out.

Survivors of this massacre are describing a new and horrifying experience they are being forced to endure in aftermath of Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip: they cannot even identify the remains of their loved ones.

Because the rescue teams couldn’t identify many of the human remains collected due to the intensity of the bombing, the doctors at Baptist Hospital were not able to identify each martyr individually. Instead, the doctors have started collecting body parts in plastic bags and giving 70 kilos of remains to the family of a martyr who has gone missing.

Hassan Ahmad told Mondoweiss that he searched extensively for the body of his 6-year-old son Ali, and after hours of searching, he did not find a trace of him. He then went to the Baptist Hospital to ask about his son, or to find any part of his body so I could identify him and bury him. After a long search that did not yield any results, the doctors at the Baptist Hospital gave him a plastic bag containing 18 kilograms of human remains and told him, “This is your son; go and bury him.”………………………………………………………..

I saw my father’s carnage

Muhammad Hamida, 12, recounted to Mondoweiss how he found his father, who had been torn apart in the Israeli attack. He says that he went with his older brother to the prayer hall after the bombing to rescue their father, who was praying at the time.

When we arrived, we couldn’t enter because of the intensity of the fire, blood, and body parts, but we wanted to check on my father. Moments later, we could enter the prayer hall but we couldn’t bear the scene.”

“People were cut up, there was a lot of blood on the ground, and body parts and small pieces of worshipers’ bodies were scattered everywhere. We found my father lying on the ground there. We recognized him, and our relatives helped us drag him out of the prayer hall. We found a human head stuck between his feet when we took him out. I was stunned with fear. I have never seen scenes like this in my life. I hope I never see them again.”

“They will kill us all; we are here alone; no one cares about us. They killed my father, and a month ago, they killed my two uncles, and they will kill everyone who remains in Gaza.”

Fatima Hassona conducted the interviews for this report from Gaza. https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/the-fajr-massacre-every-70-kg-bag-of-human-remains-is-considered-a-martyr/?ml_recipient=129461487750088454&ml_link=129461453864305971&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-08-12&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation

August 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Iran planning to resume testing nuclear bomb detonators

Wednesday, 08/14/2024 Mojtaba Pourmohsen, Journalist at Iran International

Iran is intensifying efforts on its secretive nuclear weapons program, bringing the country closer than ever to developing a nuclear bomb—a threat that has loomed for over two decades, according to exclusive information obtained by Iran International.

According to three independent sources in Iran, who have chosen to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the topic, the Islamic Republic is advancing its secret nuclear weapons program by restructuring the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), retaining Mohammad Eslami as the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and resuming tests to produce nuclear bomb detonators.

For years, US intelligence agencies consistently stated in their annual reports that Iran “isn’t currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device”. However, in the Director of National Intelligence’s 2024 report, released in July, that phrase was omitted. Instead, the report stated that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

The newly obtained information shows the Islamic Republic has intensified its efforts to complete the nuclear weapons production cycle, including high-level uranium enrichment, the production of nuclear detonation devices, and the development of missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Restructuring SPND.

Less than a month before Ebrahim Raisi’s death, the Iranian Parliament passed a bill to formalize the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND) as an independent entity. Originally established in 2010 as a subsidiary of the Ministry of Defense, SPND was restructured under this new legislation, enacted just a week before Raisi’s passing.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent figure in Iran’s military nuclear program, previously led SPND.

Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in November 2020 near Tehran, an act attributed to Mossad. The new law has granted SPND financial independence, exempting it from the oversight of the National Audit Office, essentially allowing it to operate without accountability for its budget.

The law also states that SPND will be governed according to a statute issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This restructuring of SPND is significant as it provides the organization with unique autonomy, allowing it to continue the legacy of Fakhrizadeh’s work, particularly in producing nuclear detonation devices

SPND’s role in Iran’s nuclear program……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Shifting to nuclear weapons for deterrence
A Western diplomat told Iran International that Iran’s suspicious nuclear activities have raised concerns among the United States, Israel, and European countries. Following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau in Tehran said the Islamic Republic’s deterrence policy, which relied heavily on proxy forces, has lost its effectiveness, something Khamenei and other government officials are fully aware of.

This reality might have driven the Islamic Republic to consider pursuing another form of deterrence. On the day Pezeshkian presented his ministerial picks to the Parliament, Iranian lawmaker Mohammad-Reza Sabbaghian told the open session, “What logic or law dictates that arrogant powers should have nuclear weapons, but Iran should not?”

He added, “We call on the Supreme National Security Council to review the new circumstances and recommend to the Supreme Leader that, considering dynamic Islamic jurisprudence, the path be cleared for the development of nuclear weapons.”

This could be the final, and perhaps most dangerous, arrow in Khamenei’s quiver. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202408148823

August 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran to Israel: Ceasefire in Gaza war, or retaliation for Haniyh murder will proceed

SOTT, Parisa Hafezi and Laila Bassam, Reuters, Tue, 13 Aug 2024

Only a ceasefire deal in Gaza stemming from hoped-for talks this week would hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil, three senior Iranian officials said.

Iran has vowed a severe response to Haniyeh’s killing, which took place as he visited Tehran late last month and which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement. The U.S. Navy has deployed warships and a submarine to the Middle East to bolster Israeli defenses.

One of the sources, a senior Iranian security official, said Iran, along with allies such as Hezbollah, would launch a direct attack if the Gaza talks fail or it perceives Israel is dragging out negotiations. The sources did not say how long Iran would allow for talks to progress before responding.

With an increased risk of a broader Middle East war after the killings of Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, Iran has been involved in intense dialogue with Western countries and the United States in recent days on ways to calibrate retaliation, said the sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

In comments published on Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey confirmed Washington was asking allies to help convince Iran to de-escalate tensions. Three regional government sources described conversations with Tehran to avoid escalation ahead of the Gaza ceasefire talks, due to begin on Thursday in either Egypt or Qatar.

“We hope our response will be timed and executed in a way that does not harm a potential ceasefire,” Iran’s mission to the U.N. said on Friday in a statement. Iran’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said calls to exercise restraint “contradict principles of international law.”

Iran’s foreign ministry and its Revolutionary Guards Corps did not immediately respond to questions for this story. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and the U.S. State Department did not respond to questions.

“Something could happen as soon as this week by Iran and its proxies… That is a U.S. assessment as well as an Israel assessment,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday.

“If something does happen this week, the timing of it could certainly well have an impact on these talks we want to do on Thursday,” he added.

At the weekend, Hamas cast doubt on whether talks would go ahead. Israel and Hamas have held several rounds of talks in recent months without agreeing a final ceasefire.

In Israel, many observers believe a response is imminent after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would “harshly punish” Israel for the strike in Tehran……………………………………….. more https://www.sott.net/article/493939-Iran-to-Israel-Ceasefire-in-Gaza-war-or-retaliation-for-Haniyh-murder-will-proceed

August 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Bloody Eschatology: Israel and the next Big War

Australian Independent Media, August 14, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark

The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning. A blood filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel. That appalling prospect is certainly not one to discount: the messianic are always a frightful bunch, thinking history and selectively pruned religions texts to be on their side.

Each week now comes with some measure of sabotage, mutilation and disruption to prospects of peace. In his July 24 address to the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined his crude Manichean vision in routine barking fashion. In doing so, his intention, as Noa Landau pithily put it, was not to end the war in Gaza so much as prolong it.

For Netanyahu, the strained chords of civilisational rhetoric are never far away. He would like other powers to muck in, battling the fiends he calls an “axis of terror.” Impediments to the Jewish state’s war efforts had to be rejected. To impose them would see other countries of similar kidney shackled. “If Israel’s hands are tied, America is next. I’ll tell you what else is next: the ability of all democracies to fight terrorism will be imperilled.”

Room was reserved to attack the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor has sought warrants of arrest against himself and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and the presidents of notable US universities. As for protesting students, they had chosen to “stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers.” With daring outrage, he blotted out any notion that Palestinian civilians were being butchered, despite a death toll in the densely populated strip hovering near 40,000. Indeed, civilian deaths had been “practically none,” with Israel scrupulous in “getting civilians out of harm’s way, something people said we could never do.”

With this blood crusted Weltanschauung, acts of destabilising mayhem are automatic.Showing an utter contempt for Israeli hostages, let alone any humanity for the Palestinians they regard with expansive condescension, the Netanyahu government thought it wise to carry out two assassinations: that of Hamas’ political chief and chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, and Hezbollah’s top military chief Fuad Shukr, both killed within twenty-four hours in Beirut and Tehran respectively……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

This, as former UK diplomat Alastair Crooke observes, is the State of Judea doing battle against the State of Israel. He quotes Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who sees such bloody eschatology as resting on a fundamental concept: “Jewish supremacy” or “Mein Kampf in reverse”. For Rabbi Lior, the next big war cannot come soon enough, one, he anticipates, that is bound to feature Gog and Magog. https://theaimn.com/bloody-eschatology-israel-and-the-next-big-war/—

August 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Why We Must Oppose Israel’s Dangerous Gamble Before It’s Too Late

Failure to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians gambles with the fate of humanity as a whole.

Kathy Kelly, Aug 10, 2024,
https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/israels-dangerous-gamble

Following World War II, Albert Camus posed a “formidable gamble” to those who had survived a tragedy of immense proportions. “We’re in history up to our necks,” he observed, yet we must wager that “words are more powerful than munitions.”

“Leave or die” are the horrid words threatening largely unprotected Palestinian civilians in Gaza as dismayed populations around the world demand moral decency, or at least some indication of sanity, from their non-responsive governments.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. For decades, Israel has flouted international norms by refusing to acknowledge its nuclear weapons arsenal. Nor has it signed relevant treaties governing the biological weapons it possesses. For years, Israel has flagrantly violated the Geneva Conventions and basic principles of customary international law through its forcible acquisition of territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and through its transfer of Israeli settlers into the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Now, Israel’s genocidal attacks against Palestinians living in Gaza have cost the lives of at least 39,677 people. Tens of thousands more are believed to be buried beneath the rubble, with at least 90,000 wounded and the overwhelming majority of its displaced 1.9 million population facing starvation.

Israel’s failure to comply with international treaties and humanitarian law signal an acute need for other countries to organize weapons embargoes, cease trade deals, and provide support for civilian peacekeepers to bring about a permanent ceasefire.

Instead of unwavering adherence to international law, the United States continues to arm and protect Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians, which now includes using starvation as a weapon of war.

We must try to absorb what it means to live as a refugee in an open-air concentration camp—already one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, even before 70 percent of its housing was destroyed. More than 341 mosques and three churches have been destroyed. 2,000-pound bombs have been dropped on tents in places deemed safe areas.

Innocent civilians are being killed by snipers. Thirty-one out of thirty-six hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. Escape routes are cut off. Persistent restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid into and around Gaza are driving a desperate shortage of food, fuel, and medicine. As access to humanitarian relief is deliberately choked off, children are being collectively punished while Israeli leaders denounce them as animals. The world watches in horror as surgeons are forced to amputate the limbs of wounded children with no available anesthetics.

A new polio epidemic emerges while Israel vaccinates its soldiers but leaves the Palestinian civilian population vulnerable. Newly released prisoners have said they were subjected to torture, including being waterboarded and raped.

Rather than bring suspects before international courts, Israel has resorted to assassinations of the very negotiators with whom it purports to be seeking peace, and in a manner clearly intended to expand the conflict into a global war involving multiple nuclear-armed nations.

In its July 19, 2024, authoritative Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Settlement Policy and Practices, the World Court clearly declared the Israeli settlement project in the Occupied Territories to be illegal. The Court outlined the obligation of all parties to the Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention to discontinue any economic or trade dealings with Israel which might help perpetuate Israel’s occupation and unlawful presence in the territory. Countries that signed or ratified these agreements are obligated to immediately stop arms exports to Israel and to use political, military, and economic influence to stop Israel’s flagrant, escalating violations of international humanitarian law.

The World Court has provided strong, clear words denouncing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. As during the Vietnam War, ordinary citizens can no longer abide with the lawless barbarism of continuing assaults against Palestinians.

“Rolling the bones” is a slang expression for gambling. With a regional war perhaps now unavoidable in the Middle East, the genocidal derangement of the United States and Europe over Israel’s actions may well lead to a nuclear war that ends the human species. Failing to use our words at this most crucial juncture for humanity would be, as Camus said, a formidable gamble indeed.

August 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel Suddenly Has A Problem With Attacks On Population Centers

Caitlin Johnstone, 13 Aug 24, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-suddenly-has-a-problem-with?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=147648103&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Israel has been loudly and melodramatically fretting about an impending retaliatory attack from Iran and Hezbollah which it claims will likely include strikes in the vicinity of civilian population centers. This is of course rich coming from the regime that has spent ten months turning Gaza into a flattened wasteland of rubble and civilian corpses.

A Washington Post article titled “Israel anticipates direct attack from Iran; U.S. deploys more vessels to region” contains the following interesting paragraph:

“Israel has communicated to Iran and Hezbollah that targeting civilian population centers would be considered a red line for Israel, which is preparing for a spectrum of scenarios, including one in which Hezbollah attacks first and is joined by Iran afterward, said Yoel Guzansky, a former official on Israel’s National Security Council who is now a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.”

Israel’s fretting about attacks on its population centers is echoed in a recent Axios post titled “New Israeli intelligence suggests Iran prepares to attack Israel within days,” whose Israeli intel sources “said the attacks by Hezbollah and Iran are likely to be bigger than the one conducted by Iran last April and include the launching of missiles and drones at military targets in central Israel, including in the vicinity of civilian population centers.”

This claim that Iran may launch attacks “in the vicinity of civilian population centers” is funny in a couple of different ways. Firstly, the IDF headquarters is located smack dab in the heart of Tel Aviv, so any attack on the hub of the Israeli war machine would necessarily occur in the vicinity of civilian population centers. Secondly, it’s funny because Israel has spent years justifying its attacks on Palestinian population centers by claiming Hamas is using “human shields” by surrounding themselves with civilians to deter attacks.

Placing a legitimate military target in the heart of a civilian population center and then declaring a “red line” against attacking civilian population centers where legitimate military targets are located—after launching an insanely escalatory assassination in Tehran — is obviously using civilians as human shields. And what’s wild is that Israel’s own claims about Hamas using human shields in the same way have been conclusively debunked, firstly by the self-evident fact that the presence of civilians obviously doesn’t deter Israeli attacks at all, and secondly by revelations that the IDF deliberately waits to launch airstrikes on suspected Hamas members until they are at home with their families, thereby ensuring the maximum number of civilian deaths possible.

It goes without saying that Israel does not have any sincere concern for civilian lives, at least for anyone who’s paid attention to its actions at any time between the state’s inception and today. But it is worth highlighting these contradictions anyway, to contextualize all the histrionic garment-rending we’re going to witness should an attack on or near civilian population centers occur in the coming days.

August 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Gantz warns of a civil war in “Israel”

By Al Mayadeen English, Source: Agencies, 12 Aug 2024

Israeli Channel 14 reported on his statements, indicating that he expressed his thoughts during a public ceremony held Monday commemorating the so-called “destruction of the Temple.”

Israeli Knesset member and opposition leader Benny Gantz has warned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not “sacrifice his government to protect Israelis,” or do what is necessary to prevent civil war.

The former member of the Israeli war cabinet stressed that if Israelis “do not come to our senses, there will be a civil war here… It is forbidden to hide the truth.”

According to him, there is a “leadership that divides the people and poisons the well from which everyone drinks.”

Israeli Channel 14 reported on his statements, indicating that he expressed his thoughts during a public ceremony held Monday commemorating the so-called “destruction of the Temple.”

Gantz criticized the raids on military bases and the “trampling on the dignity of captives’ families.”…………………………………

According to Israeli Channel 12 last month, high-ranking security officials have warned that the personal and political conflict between Netanyahu and Gallant is “damaging” the management of ongoing military operations. It was noted that the two do not communicate outside of official discussions…………………………….. https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/gantz-warns-of-a-civil-war-in–israel

August 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

‘Heinous’: Children Among 100 Killed by Israel Bombing of Gaza School Just Hours After US Weapons Approval

“It is hard to comprehend how the Biden administration can justify rewarding Israel with new weapons, despite Israel’s persistent defiance of every single plea the Biden administration has made urging a modicum of restraint.”

Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and co-founder of Progressive International, asked the same on Saturday.

“Israel has now killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded well over 92,000 others,” said Varoufakis. “Thousands more lie, uncounted, under the debris. Some 10,000 Palestinians have been abducted by Israel’s occupying forces. Question: Where is the ICC indictment?”

Jon Queally, Aug 10, 2024 https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-massacre-us-weapons

The Palestinian Authority’s Fatah government in the Occupied West Bank released a statement Saturday describing the attack on the al-Tabin school in Gaza City as a “heinous bloody massacre” that represents the “peak of terrorism and criminality” by the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Just hours after the Biden administration Friday announced approval of $3.5 billion in military funds for Israel and shipments for new weaponry, an Israeli bombing of a school-turned-shelter in Gaza has killed 100 people or more, including scores of civilian men, women, and children in what was described as a “bloody massacre” that struck during morning prayers, leaving body parts scattered “in pieces” and healthcare workers overwhelmed with the dead and wounded.

“Committing these massacres confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt its efforts to exterminate our people through the policy of cumulative killing and mass massacres that make living consciences tremble,” said the PA.

Footage taken by volunteers working alongside Palestinian medical units in Gaza City showed wounded small children and adults being taken to local hospitals as well as scenes of carnage from the scene of the bombing [Warning: Images are graphic]. Gaza journalist Motasem A. Dalloul also posted his reporting from the scene, including footage of the carnage [Also graphic].

Al-Jazeera spoke with witnesses at the scene of the massacre, one of whom said many of the dead—which included women, children, and old people who had been praying and others sleeping when the missiles struck—were collected afterward “in pieces”:

Tamer Kirolos, a regional director for Save the Children, called Israel’s attack on al-Tabin the “deadliest attack on a school since last October.”

“It is devastating to see the toll this has taken, including so many children and people at the school for dawn prayers,” Kirolos said. “Civilians, children, must be protected. An immediate definitive ceasefire is the only foreseeable way that will happen.”

Just hours before the bombing, the U.S. State Department announcement that a $3.5 billion tranche of funds—part of a larger $14.1 billion in overseas military aid approved by Congress earlier this year—would be released to the Israeli government for weapons procurement.

As CNNreported, while some of those weapons purchases made possible by the fund may take years, the “supplemental funding also allocated billions of dollars’ worth of equipment that the Pentagon can draw from its own stockpiles to send directly to Israel on a much faster timeline.”

Unverified reporting indicated that at least one of the missiles dropped on the al-Tabin school overnight may have been a U.S.-made MK-84 bomb weighing 2,000 pounds.

On Friday night, after the State Department announcement but before news of the latest bombing in Gaza broke, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the human rights and advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), was among those confounded by the U.S. government’s continued determination to arm the Israelis in the face of the human suffering in Gaza and the repeated massacre of civilians, day after day and month after month.

“It is mind-boggling that despite the overwhelming evidence of the IDF’s unprecedented crimes in Gaza that has shocked the conscience of the entire world, the Biden administration is greenlighting the transfer of additional lethal weapons to Israel,” said Whitson in a Friday night statement following news that the State Dept. had greenlit the release of taxpayer funds for a new round of weapons destined for Israel.

Making a similar argument in a Saturday morning post on X, Sami Abou Shehadeh, leader of Israel’s leftist Balad Party, said that while President Joe Biden “could have stopped the genocide” by using his leverage of military aid to force the Israelis in a different direction, instead “he just released $3.5 billion for more weapons to kill civilians.”

Shehadeh warned that without any internal opposition “to the genocide” by Israel’s Zionist political parties, Netanyahu’s policies would continue, even as the region inches toward further destabilization over the crisis in Gaza that has also spread to Lebanon and beyond. Calling for the International Criminal Court to intervene, he asked, “If the ICC doesn’t take action now, then when?”

Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and co-founder of Progressive International, asked the same on Saturday.

“Israel has now killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded well over 92,000 others,” said Varoufakis. “Thousands more lie, uncounted, under the debris. Some 10,000 Palestinians have been abducted by Israel’s occupying forces. Question: Where is the ICC indictment?”

It is truly horrific,” Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s policy director told Common Dreams via email Saturday. “Last night’s massacre was another example of how Blinken and Biden have blood on their hands.”

Referencing a separate decision by the State Department to suspend an investigation into documented abuse violations by the “notorious” Netzah Yehuda Unit within the IDF, Jarrar said the “decisions of sending weapons to Israel and not sanctioning Israeli human rights abusers are not just corrupt policy decisions, they are criminal acts.”

August 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel Runs the U.S. No, the U.S. Runs Israel. No, Wait …

The occasion of Netanyahu’s address, his fourth before a joint session, puts all the complexities before us. Who was, in that hour, in charge — the insane man from the periphery, driven by rage, or his audience of adoring lawmakers at the imperial center, driven by… driven by what? I would say driven by greed, ideology and the work of running an imperium that is failing but has not failed yet. Who controlled whom that day? .

This is power.

Joe Biden, in this same line, accepted more money from the Israeli lobby than anyone else on Capitol Hill during his decades in the Senate — $4.2 million according to Open Secrets, and I understand this is a very low estimate if we count Biden’s post–Senate political career. Code Pink, in a signature-gathering campaign, says Harris has received $5.4 million from the Israel lobby, although it does not indicate at what stage in her career she accepted this extraordinary sum.

August 10, 2024 By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost

That deranged speech Bibi Netanyahu delivered to a joint session of Congress last month: I cannot get it entirely out of my mind. It did not change anything — neither the Israeli prime minister nor his hosts seem to desire or intend to change anything in U.S.–Israeli relations. And in this way, there is not much to say about that weird hour the world’s No. 1 terrorist — yes, think about it and tell me I’m wrong — spent at the podium under the Capitol’s rotunda. But the speech did clarify certain things, and then it raised an important question. Let us see about these matters.

There is, to begin with, the question of Netanyahu’s mental stability. If we consider his many outlandish assertions — Israel has minimized civilian casualties in Gaza, Israeli soldiers are to be commended for their moral conduct, those protesting in behalf of Palestinians are probably in Iran’s pay, and so on — we must conclude that the man given to such preposterous misrepresentations is, let’s say, perpendicular to reality.

I am sure Netanyahu spoke in large measure for effect. This must be so. But I am equally sure — note the demeanor in the videos, for instance — he was certain of the truth of what he had to say. Dr. Lawrence’s diagnosis: A man consumed with resentment and hatred, who has led Israel to the brink of a cataclysmic war at the irretrievable cost of its international standing, while dragging the U.S. into it (at similar cost), suffers from severe psychosis with symptoms of paranoia and obsessive-compulsive megalomania.

I do not say this to indulge some cheap denigration of one of the many contemptible political figures now walking around the Western world and its appendages. After Netanyahu’s notably strange performance in Congress July 24 — at times he seemed pure id — I say this diagnosis would hold in a clinical setting. We should all take note of this and brace ourselves accordingly. Never mind who’s driving the bus: It would be better in this case if no one were driving it.

There is also the reception Netanyahu enjoyed on Capitol Hill. Seventy-two ovations by my count, 60–odd of them standing, for a war criminal, a flouter of international law, a man who commits to waging “a seven-front war” across the Middle East?

Bibi’s big theme, running all through his remarks, was congruence, the perfect alignment of Israeli and American interests. Remember? “Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight, and”—here the left fist pounded—“our victory is your victory.”

The response among those in attendance tells you all you need to know about what America’s lawmakers think of this idea. Netanyahu was looking merely for reaffirmation of standing arrangements at a moment when when terrorist Israel’s conduct had begun to turn more stomachs than he had bargained for. And he got what he wanted, needless to say.

This brings us to the question Netanyahu’s speech forces upon us. Does the U.S. control Israel or does Israel control the U.S.? Is the apartheid state another of Washington’s client regimes, albeit — let’s borrow a little from the Chinese — a client with Zionist characteristics? Or is Israel a case — rare, if not unique — of a distant outpost that dictates to the imperial center? The periphery exercises power over the metropole, this to say: This would have to be something new under the sun, surely.

This is not a new question. A lot of people have pondered it for months, if not longer —

The occasion of Netanyahu’s address, his fourth before a joint session, puts all the complexities before us. Who was, in that hour, in charge — the insane man from the periphery, driven by rage, or his audience of adoring lawmakers at the imperial center, driven by… driven by what? I would say driven by greed, ideology and the work of running an imperium that is failing but has not failed yet. Who controlled whom that day? ………………………………………………………………………

This is power.

Joe Biden, in this same line, accepted more money from the Israeli lobby than anyone else on Capitol Hill during his decades in the Senate — $4.2 million according to Open Secrets, and I understand this is a very low estimate if we count Biden’s post–Senate political career. Code Pink, in a signature-gathering campaign, says Harris has received $5.4 million from the Israel lobby, although it does not indicate at what stage in her career she accepted this extraordinary sum.

Harris is now wowing all the dreamy liberals in our midst with gestures here and there intended to suggest that she will be tougher on the Israelis than Joe-the-Zionist and more sympathetic to the Palestinians. Follow the bouncing ball, please, as those honorable Arab–Americans up in Michigan follow it: Harris makes it quite clear, on those occasions she fails to avoid the topic, that she has no intention of making any meaningful adjustment in U.S. policy toward the terrorist state. Let the murdering go on, as long as the Israelis want it to continue.

This, as I say, is power—perversely acquired and perversely exercised………………………………………..

What is at issue in all this is the question of responsibility. Israel exercises considerable power over the U.S. — yes, we all know this — but this is by dint of a corrupt abdication on America’s part. We must not miss this. Washington’s whorish elites have sold U.S. policy to the Israelis, and Congress has sold itself similarly………………………………..

……………………………………..America could sink Netanyahu’s boat any time it chooses to do so. Don’t let the moment fool you: Bibi, as history will show, is at bottom merely a passing punk.

This, to finish the thought, is the power that matters most — imperial power.

Here’s the important thing about the distinction I draw. The ephemeral power Israel asserts in the U.S., accumulated over the eight postwar decades, reaches an historic impasse. It is waning, in a word.

In his final days as a public figure, Joe Biden will continue to carry on about the Zionist state as he has the whole of his political career. “Without Israel, no Jew in the world is safe,” he declared the other day, and hardly for the first time. Kamala Harris is not saying anything about Israel and the Gaza crisis in part because she has little to say about anything, but mostly because, when circumstances require her to break this silence — “weird” indeed, this — it will not be good news for those anticipating even a millimeter’s worth of change.

………………………………………………………………….there was an interesting item at the end of last month on WMAC Radio, the NPR station broadcasting in Upstate New York and western New England. Kamala Harris was just then raising hundreds of millions of dollars, cashing in on the irrational exuberance by then evident among Democrats. At a typically boisterous campaign stop in Pittsfield, Mass., she also faced protesters carrying placards that read, among other things, “End the Genocide” and “All This Money Will Not Wash the Blood Off Your Hands, Kamala.”

What are we looking at here? Pittsfield is a small postindustrial city struggling back to life after General Electric abandoned it decades ago. But this is just the point: Anger about “the Biden–Harris administration” for its participation in Israel’s genocide seems to run right down to this nation’s broken sidewalks. Harris has since gotten the same treatment at a big campaign rally in Philadelphia, and again the other day in Detroit, where she high-handedly dismissed protesters with “I am speaking.” You come away with the impression Americans are simmering — virtually everyone I know is simmering, now that I think about it — and the major media, complicit with the Harris bandwagon, are doing their part to keep this out of sight. Let us not forget: American campuses are quiet after the honorable demonstrations this past spring, but classes resume in a month.

You can bribe some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t bribe all of the people all of the time. I think I have my Lincoln right. And I think the Israelis, who, I imagine, don’t bother much with Abe, are on the way to learning that the power they have long exerted over U.S. politics and policy will eventually, in however long, prove ephemeral. https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/10/patrick-lawrence-israel-runs-the-u-s-no-the-u-s-runs-israel-no-wait/

August 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Nothing’s changed since 1948 – except now Israel’s excuses don’t work

8 August 2024 https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-08-08/1948-israel-excuses/

We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin

A headline about community displacements is about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published in yesterday’s Middle East Eye.

When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes – what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.

1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel’s establishment.

2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom to expel Palestinians from their homeland, did so only because they were traumatised by their experiences in Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, these Israelis assumed that, were the Jewish people to survive, they had no alternative but to drive out the Palestinians en masse.

3. From others, I was told that no ethnic cleansing had taken place. The Palestinians had simply fled at the first sign of conflict because they had no real historical attachment to the land.

4. Or I was told that the Palestinians’ displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn’t left because of Israeli violence but because they has been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region. In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.

Every one of these claims was nonsense, directly contradicted by all the documentary evidence.

That should be even clearer today, as Israel continues the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Palestinian people more than 75 years on.

1. Every Israeli knows exactly what is going on in Gaza – after all, their children-soldiers keep posting videos online showing the latest crimes they have committed, from blowing up mosques and hospitals to shooting randomly into homes. Polls show all but a small minority of Israelis approve of the savagery that has killed many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children. A third of them think Israel needs to go further in its barbarity.

Today, Israeli TV shows host debates about how much pain soldiers should be allowed to inflict by raping their Palestinian captives. Don’t believe me? Watch this from Israel’s Channel 12: [on original]

2. If the existential fears of Israelis and Jews still require the murder, rape and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians three-quarters of a century on from the Holocaust, then we need to treat that trauma as the problem – and refuse to indulge it any longer.

3. The people of Gaza are fleeing their homes – or at least the small number who still have homes not bombed to ruins – not because they lack an attachment to Palestine. They are fleeing from one part of the cage Israel has created for them to another part of it for one reason alone: because all of them – men, women and children – are terrified of being slaughtered by an Israeli military, at best, indifferent to their suffering and their fate.

4. No serious case can be made today that Israel is carrying out any of its crimes in Gaza – from bombing civilians to starving them – with regret, or that its leaders seek the best for the Palestinian population. Israel is on trial for genocide at the world’s highest court precisely because the judges there suspect it has the very worst intentions possible towards the Palestinian people.

We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was always a settler colonial project. And like other settler colonial projects – from the US and Australia to South Africa and Algeria – it always viewed the native people as inferior, as non-human, as animals, and was bent on their elimination.

What is so obviously true today was true then too, at Israel’s birth. Israel was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.

We in the West abetted its crimes in 1948, and we’re still abetting them today. Nothing has changed, except the excuses no longer work.

August 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Genocide in Gaza still not on Kamala Harris’ moral radar

‘Don’t’ mention US enabling genocide…we’ve got an election to win.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 11 Aug 24

Three weeks in, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris continues support for Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.

Over 40,000 dead with thousands more buried under the rubble from tens of thousands of US bombs in Gaza has made no dent on Kamala Harris’s conscience. Nor has a death toll predicted by the UK Medical Journal Lancet that upwards of 185,000 will soon be dead from disease, starvation to go along with endless US weapons of civilian destruction in the most grisly genocidal ethnic cleansing this century.

Of course, Harris has more sense than to cheer on the Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Her campaign frames her support this way: “Harris has been clear: she will always work to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups”. She claims to be troubled by the suffering caused by endless US bombs there, but refuses to support an embargo on genocide weapons.

Hubby Doug Imhoff chimed in “Let me just make this clear: the vice president has been and will be a strong supporter of Israel as a secure democratic and Jewish state, and she will always ensure that Israel can defend itself, period. Because that’s who Kamala Harris is.” If Imhoff were honest and decent, he’s could do so by simply replacing “democratic” and “Jewish” with “Apartheid” and “genocidal.”

When anti-genocide protesters confronted her Harris about her genocide support during a campaign speech in Detroit, Harris shot back “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” That has become the go-to Democratic response to pushback against Democratic support for Israeli genocide in Gaza: ‘Don’t’ mention US enabling genocide…we’ve got an election to win.

Three weeks into her campaign to become the first woman US president, Kamala Harris’ moral compass is frozen in support of Israeli genocide in Gaza. She should ponder this eternal truth. What does it profit a person to gain the world, when she must sell her soul to achieve it?

August 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Iran´s new president reappoints UN-sanctioned official as head of the country’s nuclear agency

By Associated Press, 10 August 2024

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran´s newly-elected president reappointed a U.S.-educated official who came under United Nations sanctions 16 years ago as head of the country´s nuclear department, state TV reported Saturday.

Mohammad Eslami, 67, will continue his work as chief of Iran’s civilian nuclear program and serve as one of several vice presidents. Eslami’s reappointment by President Masoud Pezeshkian comes as Iran remains under heavy sanctions by the West following the collapse of the 2015 deal that curbed Iran´s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

Pezeshkian had said during his presidential campaign that he would try to revive the nuclear deal.

The United Nations sanctioned Eslami in 2008 for “being engaged in, directly associated with or providing support for Iran´s proliferation of sensitive nuclear activities or for the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems”, when he was the head of Iran´s Defense Industries Training and Research Institute.

He was appointed as the chief of Iran´s nuclear department for the first time by late President Ebrahim Raisi in 2021, before that, from 2018, in moderate former President Hassan Rouhani´s era, Eslami served as Transport and Urban Development Minister.

He has experience working in Iran´s military industries, for years, most recently as deputy defense minister responsible for research and industry……………………

Iran is building two nuclear power facilities to supplement its sole operational 1,000-megawatt reactor at the southern port town of Bushehr, which went online with Russia´s help in 2011. Under its long-term energy plan, Iran aims to reach 20,000-megawatt nuclear electric capacity.

The nation has in recent months faced country-wide power outages.https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-13730505/Iran-s-new-president-reappoints-UN-sanctioned-official-head-countrys-nuclear-agency.html

August 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics | Leave a comment

We Must Oppose Israel’s Dangerous Gamble Before It’s Too Late

Failure to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians gambles with the fate of humanity as a whole.

CODEPINK Alert, By: Kathy Kelly, Aug 09, 2024, https://codepink.substack.com/p/we-must-oppose-israels-dangerous?r=cqey&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true