investigations
From PropOrNot to New Lines: How Washington is Weaponizing Media
New Lines Magazine purports to be an independent media organization. Yet it constantly attacks genuine alternative media who stray from Washington’s official foreign policy line, all while employing many spooks, spies and other figures at the heart of the national security state.
Worse still, its parent organization, the New Lines Institute, has recently admitted to being directly funded by the U.S. government. MintPress News takes a closer look at this shady organization acting as Washington’s attack dog.
A Slick, Well-Funded Organization
If you read the Wikipedia entries for many alternative media outlets, they are written off as fringe conspiracy websites pushing debunked foreign propaganda. MintPress News, for example, is described as a “far-left news website” which “publishes disinformation and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” The Grayzone is similarly smeared as a “fringe” blog known for its “misleading reporting” and “sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes” such as Syria, Venezuela and China.
The evidence for these evidence-light smears comes primarily from the U.S. foreign policy journal, New Lines Magazine, a product of the New Lines Institute. New Lines is a very new organization that was established only in 2020. Despite this, it has already become a key player in setting U.S. agendas worldwide, boasting a staff of more than 50 and working with over 150 contributors. Headquartered on the prestigious Massachusetts Avenue NW (some of the most expensive real estate in the world), it sits between foreign embassies and many of America’s most prestigious think tanks, a stone’s throw – metaphorically and physically – from the White House.
New Lines describes its goal as “seeking to shape U.S. foreign policy” based on a “deep understanding of distinct regional geopolitics and value systems.” It began by focusing solely on the Middle East but quickly expanded to cover Ukraine, China, Venezuela and other political hotspots that most concern hawks in Washington. It certainly shapes public debate, and its research and experts are regularly quoted in influential outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN.
A Rogue’s Gallery Of US Officials
New Lines presents itself as an independent organization, claiming that it is “one of the few think tanks in Washington with no foreign or local agendas.” Yet its higher ranks are packed with former state officials.
Chief amongst them is New Lines Institute founder and president Ahmed Alwani. Alwani served on the advisory board of the U.S. military’s Africa Command and influenced Washington’s Middle East positions. His New Lines biography boasts that he “met the commanding generals of Fort Jackson, Fort Hood, Fort Bragg, Naval Station Norfolk and Joint Base Andrews as well as then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his staff numerous times during the Iraq War to consult on U.S. policy” – something many might not consider a badge of honor.
Alwani also founded Fairfax University, a controversial private educational institution that Virginia state regulators considered shutting down in 2019. Auditors found that “teachers weren’t qualified to teach their assigned courses,” academic quality was “patently deficient,” plagiarism was “rampant,” and students’ English levels were “abysmally poor,” making Fairfax look far more like a degree mill than a legitimate university.
New Lines’ senior director, Faysal Itani, has a similarly notable past. Before joining the organization, Itani was simultaneously a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council – a NATO-funded think tank that serves as the brains of the military alliance, and an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University – a department a previous MintPress News investigation exposed as a department filled with CIA agents that functions as a training ground for the next generation of American spies.
Another senior director, Nicholas Heras, was central to U.S. actions in Iraq and Syria. Between 2013 and 2014, Heras was a research associate at the National Defense University (an institution funded and overseen by the Pentagon). While there, he worked with military leaders at U.S. Central Command, Special Operations Command and the broader U.S. intelligence community, briefing them on matters relating to the two countries.
Other key New Lines staff members with similar pasts include Tashi Chogyal, who served in the Obama administration at the Department of Justice and as a special assistant to the administrator of USAID, an organization that has overseen a host of foreign regime change operations; Kamran Bokhari, formerly the Central Asia Studies Course Coordinator at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute; Tanya Domi, a 15-year U.S. Army veteran who also served at the State Department as a spokesperson and counsel for multiple American ambassadors to Bosnia and Herzegovina; Tammy Palacios, currently employed by the United States Military Academy as a counter-terrorism research fellow and Michael Weiss, a non-resident senior research fellow at NATO’s Atlantic Council.
When it comes to attacking alternative media, Weiss, in particular, has a notable past. In late 2016, an anonymous organization called PropOrNot published a list of some 200 websites that it classified as routine peddlers of Russian disinformation. Many leading alternative media outlets were on that list, including MintPress News, WikiLeaks, Truthout, Truthdig, Naked Capitalism and Antiwar.com. The charges were false, but the effect was staggering.
The PropOrNot list went viral, boosted by mainstream outlets such as the Washington Post, which insinuated that a massive, Kremlin-controlled propaganda network was responsible for Donald Trump’s electoral victory. Google, Facebook and other prominent social media platforms subsequently changed their algorithms to punish the outlets on the list and promote “authoritative” content like the Washington Post or Fox News. MintPress News lost more than 90% of its Google search traffic almost overnight, never to return. It was later revealed that PropOrNot was likely Weiss’ brainchild, meaning that the hysteria over foreign government interference in our media was probably a domestic government-funded operation.
A number of other key New Lines staff also previously worked at Stratfor, an organization often referred to as the “shadow CIA,” a private group carrying out intelligence gathering on behalf of the U.S. government.
Spy Games
Perhaps the most notable New Lines Institute employee, however, is non-resident fellow Elizabeth Tsurkov. Tsurkov is a Russian-born Israeli who, before joining New Lines, worked at a number of hawkish think tanks, including the Atlantic Council and Freedom House.
She grew up in Israel and served for many years in Israeli military intelligence, including during Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon. She also worked directly for former Israeli Minister of Interior and Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky. In 2015, she published a photo of her at the Pentagon, claiming she was on a “special mission accompanied by the State Department.”
Tsurkov was an obscure figure who only came to international attention in 2023 when she was arrested in Baghdad, carrying out what authorities described as a spying mission. The news made worldwide headlines, with many official figures in the West leaping to her defense, describing the charges as ridiculous.
It transpired that she had concealed her identity, entering Iraq on a Russian passport, and presented herself as a Russian researcher and supporter of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. A 2022 video interview shows Tsurkov in Baghdad dressed in a khimar – a modest black dress and head covering. “It is clear that Muqtada al-Sadr is a patriotic figure who rejects intervention from any country, whether in the West or the East… In my opinion, this should be the position of every Iraqi political leader,” Tsurkov says, adding that the United States is an “oppressor” nation.
This is a blatant deception, given that she is a former Israeli intelligence officer who worked for NATO’s think tank. In fact, Tsurkov has long taken hostile, anti-Shia positions, supported Sunni militias in Syria and championed U.S. military intervention in the region.
For years, she was one of the most outspoken Syria regime change hawks online, downplaying the U.S.-backed “moderate rebels’” connections to Al-Qaeda and even promoting the “Gay Girl in Damascus” blog – an online personality purporting to be a Syrian opposition organizer that was later unmasked as a pro-regime change hoax run by an American student at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Tsurkov initially claimed she was in Iraq to conduct academic research for Princeton University. This was also the position taken by the Israeli government (whose laws prohibit its citizens from traveling to Iraq without special dispensation). “She is an academic who visited Iraq on her Russian passport, at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University in the U.S.,” stated the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Princeton, however, categorically denied that it had allowed her to go to Iraq on university business.
Thus, very little about her story makes any sense, leading many to conclude that Iraqi authorities were correct in their assessment of Tsurkov. Adding weight to this theory is the complete radio silence from New Lines since her arrest and imprisonment. In more than one year, neither the New Lines Institute nor its magazine has released so much as a sentence addressing the detention of one of the institute’s more senior staff members.
In a video released in November, Tsurkov stated that she was actually in Iraq on behalf of the CIA and Israeli intelligence outfit Mossad. Her goals were to foment intra-Shia division and strife and to organize and support anti-corruption protests. She also said that she traveled to Syria to build ties between Israel and the (Sunni) Syrian opposition forces. Given that she had been detained for over half a year by this point, it is not clear if she was coerced into “confessing.”
Attacking Alternative Media
Studying their output, it is clear that New Lines has two principal targets: nations the U.S. has deemed enemy states and alternative media outlets that question the narratives that New Lines and the U.S. government are trying to establish. Indeed, New Lines has spent years investigating alternative media, promoting a narrative that opposition to U.S. foreign policy equals being in the pay of official enemy countries.
A 2022 article titled “How the Pro-Putin West Is Coping With Russian Defeat in Ukraine” presented journalists such as Max Blumenthal and Michael Tracey, as well as renowned academic Professor Noam Chomsky as Kremlin admirers, and claimed that Ukraine’s “lightning counteroffensive” and the “rapid territorial advances” had left Russia defeated. News of this defeat will no doubt surprise many reading in 2024. But this sort of disinformation about disinformation has become a common method of attacking and smearing anti-war voices.
Another article describes what it calls an “echo chamber” of Syria “conspiracy theorists.” It mentions MintPress News and a host of other alternative media outlets, including Consortium News, Project Censored, Free Speech TV, Media Roots, Shadow Proof, The Grayzone, Truthout, Common Dreams and Antiwar.com.
New Lines again attacked MintPress News for our coverage of Latin America, claiming that we backed “leftist dictatorships” by “looking the other way” as they crushed protests. The report appeared particularly annoyed that we did not support the 2021 Cuban protests – a movement it lionized as an anti-racist uprising led by the local hip-hop community. MintPress showed that the Cuban demonstrations were led by artists funded, trained, and supported by the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, which are part of the same network that funds New Lines.
Groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, as well as journalist Ben Norton and author and public intellectual Vijay Prashad, were also singled out for their support for anti-imperial governments in Latin America.
State-Funded Media
Considering its output, its constant support for U.S. policy and attacks on both domestic and international opponents of Washington, speculation was rife that the U.S. government was secretly funding New Lines. But the institute had always denied this, presenting itself as a neutral, agenda-free organization. That was, at least, until late last year when it announced that it had reached a “cooperative agreement” with the Modern War Institute at the United States Military Academy at West Point to “jointly develop actionable recommendations for U.S. global leadership to address pressing global security challenges.” In other words, to plan out American military strategy. The New Lines Institute also noted that they would now “serve as an intellectual resource for solving military problems.”
Days later, New Lines’ “About Us” section was updated, removing all reference to being funded by the Fairfax Foundation and inserting a clause admitting U.S. government financial support, strongly suggesting that the military is now bankrolling it. It now reads (emphasis added):
Funding for The New Lines Institute is provided by the The [sic] Washington Institute for Education and Research, a 501c(3) nonprofit organization registered in Washington DC.
New Lines Institute accepts research grants and charitable donations from U.S. individuals, registered U.S. legal entities, and the U.S. Government in support of its research priorities, and only insofar as such support is in compliance with U.S. laws and regulations; aligns with the institute’s vision, mission, purpose and principles; and falls within its core areas of expertise.
The news did not come as a shock to those paying close attention. “It will come as a surprise to no-one that New Lines is funded by the U.S. government,” wrote investigative journalist Matt Kennard on Twitter. There is a certain tenor to the articles of these cut-outs that is instantly recognizable. Slightly critical—to be convincing—but only up to a point which leaves state narratives robust.”
It will come as a surprise to no-one that New Lines is funded by the US government.
There is a certain tenor to the articles of these cut-outs that is instantly recognisable.
Slightly critical – to be convincing – but only up to a point which leaves state narratives robust. https://t.co/lWoHt00EVI
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) April 3, 2024
Others were even more scathing. “Congrats to New Lines on their new collaboration with the Modern War Institute at West Point Military Academy,” quipped The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté; “A good reminder that people who smear Grayzone and other independent journalists as state-funded are often projecting.”
Servants of Empire
With their quiet admission of U.S. government funding, New Lines joins an ever-growing list of organizations like Graphika and Bellingcat that present themselves as independent but are funded by the U.S. government. Former U.S. state and intelligence officials staff them and dutifully repeat U.S. government narratives and talking points.
Through their reports and studies, groups like New Lines launder Washington’s narratives into the public domain, smuggled in under the guise of objectivity. Worse still, New Lines has been at the forefront of attacking and demonizing the few dissenting voices left in American society, their reports being used to further marginalize alternative media – the only place where serious domestic critique of U.S. foreign policy can occur. It is, therefore, doubly crucial that organizations like New Lines are understood for precisely what they are: the State Department’s attack dogs.
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
The post From PropOrNot to New Lines: How Washington is Weaponizing Media appeared first on MintPress News.
Inside Job? Ominous New Questions Surround Navalny’s Death
On April 27, the Wall Street Journal published an investigation based on as yet unpublished U.S. intelligence community assessments and anonymous briefings courtesy of “security officials from several European capitals,” which concluded that Vladimir Putin neither orchestrated Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s death in prison two months earlier nor desired it to happen.
It was a belated and confounding intervention in a case that, after an initially intense frenzy of mainstream speculation and accusations, quickly went cold before vanishing from mainstream consideration entirely.
While exerting little domestic influence outside atypically liberal enclaves in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major cities, Navalny was the U.S. and Europe’s most cherished and prominent Putin detractor by some margin for over a decade before his death. His every publicity stunt garnered universal media attention, and the regular publications of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) on state official embezzlement and grift in Russia invariably broke the internet. Western human rights awards were routinely forthcoming.
After purportedly being poisoned on an inter-Russian flight by the FSB in August 2020, then recovering in Germany, he made a much-publicized “hero’s return” to Moscow, at which point, he was summarily jailed. Despite giving regular interviews to the Western media from prison and testifying to the rotten conditions in which he was held, Navalny had largely faded from public consciousness by the time news of his death broke on February 16.
Immediately, the entire Western political, media, and pundit sphere was apoplectic. “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death!” U.S. President Joe Biden forcefully declared. Meanwhile, Navalny’s widow, Yulia, accused Russian authorities of “hiding his body” as they were “waiting for the traces of yet another of Putin’s novichoks to disappear”:
My husband could not be broken. And that’s exactly why Putin killed him. Shameful, cowardly, not daring to look into his eyes or simply say his name. We will tell you about it soon. We will definitely find out who exactly carried out this crime and how exactly. We will name the names and show the faces.”
Yet, on February 26, Ukrainian military chief Kyrylo Budanov “disappointed” everyone by announcing Navalny, in fact, died as a result of simple health complications – namely, a blood clot. The U.S. intelligence assessments cited by the Wall Street Journal, based on “some classified intelligence and an analysis of public facts,” reportedly draw the same conclusion. Quite why this apparent confirmation took so long to surface isn’t clear, although it delivered a “coup de grâce” to any and all suggestions Navalny was deliberately assassinated.
Since the invasion of Ukraine began, Western spying agencies and officials in Kiev have relentlessly spewed oft-intelligence insulting, illogical black propaganda about the proxy conflict. We must ask ourselves why the same sources that would have us believe Russian forces were at one point fighting with shovels, and Moscow blew up its own Nord Stream 2 pipeline, seek to shut down suggestions Navalny was murdered.
‘Cataclysmic Loss’
Budanov’s declaration decisively shunted Navalny’s demise from international headlines. Such is the pace with which events move these days that it is perhaps forgotten that immediately following February 16, there was a concerted campaign by highly influential Western anti-Russian actors for the EU and U.S. to adopt a “Navalny Act.” Under its auspices, the approximately $300 billion Russian assets frozen by Western financial institutions in the wake of Moscow’s invasion would be seized and given to Ukraine.
At the forefront of this effort was billionaire Bill Browder, an investment manager who reaped untold sums from privatization and asset stripping in Russia during the 1990s and supported Putin’s rise to power before being turfed from the country in 2005 on national security grounds. Since then, he has transformed himself into the Kremlin’s most pugnacious overseas critic and an “anti-corruption” campaigner, despite giving up his U.S. citizenship to evade tax. Speaking to UnHerd on February 20, Browder talked a big game:
Now is the moment…Putin is willing to lose one million men, but to lose $300 billion would be a cataclysmic loss. All world leaders are looking for a way to hit Putin back for this murder. I’ve been working on confiscating these assets for the last two years, and the Navalny murder is the impetus to get it done.”
Browder had good reason to believe this campaign would bear fruit. For almost 15 years, he has traveled the world telling journalists, lawmakers, and human rights organizations a shocking story of corruption, fraud, and murder at the highest levels of the Kremlin. In brief, he claims local officials forcibly seized the Russian division of his company, Hermitage Capital Management, to carry out a massive tax scam, reaping $230 million in the process.
According to Browder’s narrative, he then set his “friend” Sergei Magnitsky, a gifted lawyer, on the case to determine what happened. The diligent sleuth duly uncovered the fraud and alerted authorities but ended up jailed on bogus charges for his courageous whistleblowing. He was then viciously tortured in prison in an attempt to make him retract his testimony before being beaten to death by guards for refusing.
Typically, Browder’s audiences have been highly receptive. Over the years, his story has been immortalized in multiple articles, books, official reports and documentaries, influencing legislation and prosecutions in numerous countries. Every member of the “Five Eyes” global spying network and the EU have been successfully lobbied to adopt a “Magnitsky Act,” which sanctions government officials overseas—particularly in Russia—for purported human rights abuses.
‘Navalny Act’
In reality, Browder’s entire Magnitsky fable is a tangled web of lies, fabrications, distortions, exaggerations, and libel. From the very moment he started spinning this deceptive yarn, sufficient open-source, public-domain evidence was available to disprove its every aspect comprehensively. Yet, it took a decade for mainstream journalists to conduct serious due diligence on his assertions. In November 2019, leading German news outlet Der Spiegel published a comprehensive demolition job, savagely indicting Browder’s integrity in the process.
In the publication’s words, Brodwer “has a talent for selling a set of facts so it supports his own version of events.” Magnitsky was, in fact, neither a lawyer nor a whistleblower. He was a crooked accountant who had long-abetted Browder’s fraudulent financial dealings in Russia and was justly imprisoned for these activities. This was confirmed by a damning ruling in August of that year by the European Court of Human Rights in a case brought by Browder and Magnitsky’s family.
While the ECHR ordered Moscow to pay Magnitsky’s relatives $37,500 due to a failure to protect his life and health, having identified shortcomings in the medical treatment he was provided in prison, no mention of murder or even unlawful killing was made in the judgment. Conversely, the court rejected suggestions his arrest and subsequent detention were “manifestly ill-founded” or that “authorities had…acted with bad faith or deception:”
The Court reiterated the general principles on arbitrary detention…It found no such elements in this case. The decision to arrest him had only been made after investigators learned he’d previously applied for a UK visa, booked tickets to Kiev, and hadn’t been residing at his registered address. Furthermore, the evidence against him, including witness testimony, had been enough to satisfy an objective observer that he might have committed the offense in question.”
Der Spiegel’s investigation contained a striking passage, the obvious import of which was bizarrely ignored by the outlet. In it, Zoya Svetova, a Moscow-based human-rights activist who investigated Magnitsky’s death in 2009, said:
What sense would it make to murder him? Magnitsky did not reveal any secret. They wanted testimonies against Browder. That was the motivation. He should have accused Browder of not paying taxes. Magnitsky was a hostage. He himself was of no interest to them. They wanted Browder.”
Anti-Russia campaigner Bill Browder speaking to the media outside the Old Bailey in London, December 19, 2018. Mr Perepilichnyy, 44, Dominic Lipinski | PA Wire
In other words, it was Browder who benefited from Magnitsky’s death, not Russian authorities, which raises the grave prospect that it was the “anti-corruption” campaigner himself who was, one way or another, responsible for his accountant’s tragic passing. Such a reading is amply reinforced by the sworn deposition of Russian opposition activist Oleg Lurie in a failed legal case brought by U.S. authorities against Russian-owned company Prevezon, based on Browder’s bogus claim the firm’s owners were beneficiaries of the $230 million fraud.
Lurie was concurrently incarcerated in the same prison as Magnitsky, and the pair crossed paths twice. The first time, the accountant was in a “happy mood,” boasting of how he was held in a “big special block” for “white crime inmates,” where cells had “plasma TV sets, refrigerators, kettles” and illegally installed telephones. The reason for his buoyancy, Magnitsky explained to Lurie, was that his Western employers would “save him…they would take him out of there” in a matter of days.
As Browder et al. wished for Magnitsky to “keep silence about their actions” and his own crime to be “not serious,” he seemed assured that freedom was impending. Lurie warned him that “his attorneys and people who claim to be standing behind him are lying to him,” but the accountant was unconvinced. Fast-forward a few weeks, and they met again. Magnitsky was “a completely different person at that time…a tangle of nerves,” Lurie testified.
Magnitsky revealed that the “Western people who stood behind him deceived him…they demanded him to sign various documents” completely unrelated to his case, which would’ve implicated him in numerous serious crimes he didn’t commit. As a result, “he had a feeling that he would never get out.” Navalny, like Magnitsky, wasn’t leaving prison anytime soon and almost certainly knew too much. Did his Western backers similarly consider it necessary to silence him?
At the very least, it is supremely puzzling that the Ukrainian government effectively torpedoed the “Navalny Act.” After all, Kiev has, since the start of the proxy conflict, implored Western leaders to hand Russia’s frozen assets to them in service of the country’s reconstruction and the purchase of ever-more weapons and ammunition. The Act would’ve delivered on those demands. There was no clear need at all for Budanov to electively sabotage the narrative of Navalny as a Kremlin murder victim.
‘British Spy’
There are also sinister echoes in the sudden mainstream “reverse ferret” on Navalny’s untimely demise with the similarly mysterious and abrupt November 2019 passing of James Lemesurier, longtime British mercenary and military intelligence operative. Immediately following his fatal fall from the window of his lavish Istanbul apartment, Western sources rushed to convict Russia without evidence, claiming his death may have been – or was likely – a targeted assassination. The most prominent was Mark Urban, veteran BBC “defence” editor.
Within hours of Lemesurier’s lethal crash landing, Urban took to Twitter, urging Turkish authorities to “conduct a thorough investigation” and “ascertain whether there was state involvement.” His misgivings were in part perked by an “extensive black propaganda campaign by Russian and Assad media and their acolytes” in the months prior. In other words, critical, independent reporting raises grave questions about whether Lemesurier’s “White Helmets” were the crusading humanitarian group universally portrayed in the mainstream or something far darker.
More substantively, “a former colleague” – whether of Lemesurier or Urban isn’t clear – told the BBC journeyman, “I know the flat well, [and] it’s not possible to ‘fall’ from that balcony.” They strongly suspected foul play as a result. Seismic stuff, although curiously, these posts were quickly deleted due to Urban allegedly receiving “new information.” The nature of this “information” and who supplied it has never been revealed. But immediately after that, the same sources that hitherto cried murder began labeling Lemesurier’s death an unambiguous suicide.
To say the least, Urban is extremely well-connected in the Western military, security, and intelligence sphere and highly adept at withholding salient facts from public view. In July 2018, he revealed he’d serendipitously spent much of the previous year interviewing Sergei Skripal, who, along with his daughter, was purportedly poisoned in the British city of Salisbury three months earlier. In the intervening time, Urban fronted multiple BBC Newsnight reports about the incident without ever mentioning his personal relationship with the GRU defector.
For Urban – coincidentally once part of the same British Army tank regiment as Pablo Miller, Skripal’s MI6 recruiter, handler, and Salisbury neighbor – to delete his incendiary tweets surely required a high-level intervention. At that time, as now, blaming Russia or Putin for anything and everything – including quite literally the weather – was a thoroughly safe option in the West, without any consequences attached. We are thus left to ponder how and why a long-serving, spook-adjacent British state ‘journalist’ was compelled to retract these charges.
Evidently, though, Urban’s sources – the “former colleague” who clearly said too much aside – were keen that Lemesurier’s end not be perceived or investigated as murder by anyone. Turkish media reports in the aftermath may provide a rationale for this. One article revealed James and his wife, Emma Winberg, a self-professed MI6 operative, “fought violently” outside an Istanbul restaurant just before his deadly plunge. Another suggested Lemesurier – a “British spy” – was “likely running away from someone before his death.”
Fast forward to today, and again, interested parties are eager to dismiss suggestions a high-profile Western asset’s death was the result of foul play. In Navalny’s case, as with Lemesurier, those shadowy elements – the Ukrainian government and the CIA being just two publicly confirmed so far – had every reason to accuse Moscow of murder. Yet, they not only didn’t but instead went to great lengths to remove any insinuation of deliberate killing from the equation. Make of that what you will.
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
The post Inside Job? Ominous New Questions Surround Navalny’s Death appeared first on MintPress News.
“Military and Moral Failures”: How Iran’s Israel Strike Reshaped the Region Forever
On April 13, Iran, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansar Allah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on Israel, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s criminal bombing of Tehran’s Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Iranian generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – particularly West Asia – will never be the same again.
“This action was hugely significant. Now, the Israelis will have to be extremely careful about what they do in Syria against Tehran. The regional balance of power has permanently shifted away from the Zionists. Tel Aviv will never recover at all. It is the end of them. They have destroyed themselves. They are seen as a regime that has no place in the civilized world, a Nazi state, across the entire globe,” geopolitical expert Dr. Mohammad Marandi tells MintPress News.
Iran’s first-ever strike on Israel, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. Israel claimed a 99% interception rate.
However, extensive photo and video material shows that most missiles hit their targets and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top-tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.
This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills through Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message—Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature but didn’t do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv’s to decide whether—and how—to retaliate. A response came on April 19 in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.
Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality, a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran’s air defenses but ultimately couldn’t. An Iranian spokesperson referred to the effort as “failed and humiliating.” This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced following Operation True Promise’s seismic success. As we shall see, Israel now has little time remaining and no good choices left to make.
Iraqi military personnel inspect Israeli missile fragments found by farmers in Latifiya and Aziziya. Photo | Sabreen
‘New Equation’
Despite its astonishing optics and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn’t a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook Iran’s longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran’s Syrian embassy was without historical parallel and concerned with Israel eliciting a major escalation to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred a broader response while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards Israel. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:
We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point, we will attack against them.”
Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike Israel directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities and vulnerabilities of Israel and the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.
Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13, and the data yield was surely enormous. Since Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly told Politico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev “become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians”:
We used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”
If there’s a next time, too, Iran’s missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles were fired at Israel during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) general.
“One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones,” they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs “were enormous,” comparable to what Israel burned through during the entire 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.
IDF personnel remove debris from missile intercepted during the Iranian attack in southern Israel. Photo | IDF
Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly a great many orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. Dr. Marandi tells MintPress News that “most” of the initial “decoy” barrage, including drones, were collecting dust. “Tehran was looking for an excuse to get rid of them,” he says.
“Most of the heavy-duty work attempting to counter Iran’s strike was done by the Americans anyway, not the Israelis. The Iron Dome barely factored in. The two places hit hardest – the southern airbase where F35s are based and Tel Aviv’s Golan Heights intelligence base resulted in significant damage and casualties. Of course, the Zionists don’t admit this,” Dr. Marandi adds.
This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for Israel, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end Ansar Allah’s anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea. Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast at squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 Ansar Allah drones. A CIA officer lamented:
That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor. We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.”
‘Israel Goes Under’
There is no sign yet of Washington having publicly rectified this concern, which may account for why U.S. officials at the start of April offered Ansar Allah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade. This was summarily rejected. No business as usual – no commerce, no trade – on Yemen’s watch while Palestinians are slaughtered. In the event of any subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, too, Tehran’s drones will not be used to deter shipping either, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust Israeli air defenses.
This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause battlefield collapse and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries and states trying to keep Kiev’s lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.
That conclusion is supported by an April 22 Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran’s barrage. It “matched worst-case scenarios” outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, “this was on the high end…of what we were anticipating.” White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn’t.
On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st-century Holocaust, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation published on November 6 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself.
Thousands” of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.
One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn’t yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, Ansar Allah and Hezbollah could completely paralyze the country economically, render entire areas uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran’s crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a terrifying scale.
Resultantly, Israel’s “Samson Option,” under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, “We have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under.” But Tehran’s hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, chemical or biological payload of their own.
‘Whoever Moves’
Israel’s Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster in every conceivable way. The fiasco’s consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent they could be fatal. This may account for Netanyahu’s flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of the Israeli Defense Forces’ defeat is such that in a scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11, Zionist “journalist” Chaim Levinson lamented:
We’ve lost. Truth must be told… It’s unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel’s northern border…No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership’s weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we’re a shtetl with an airforce, and that’s on the condition it’s awakened in time.”
Haaretz | Apr 11, 2024
Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv’s battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IDF, has condemned the Forces’ “military and moral failures” and how “its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down”:
[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound…Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza, and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left…Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible.”
The Economist went on to slam a “lack of enforcement” of already virtually non-existent “rules of engagement” under which the IDF operates. A “veteran reserve officer” was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily “decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed.” A sapper in another unit admitted, “The only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”:
“Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalizing Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20, the IDF’s chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, ‘to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn’t ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.’ Four months into the war, this was too little, too late.”
That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far Israel has fallen since October 7, 2023. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s citizenry. Adversaries do not fear its once-vaunted military and its ability to unilaterally strike neighboring countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.
Meanwhile, Israel has suffered population collapse, with simultaneous mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs. The trauma of perpetrating genocide and living under the daily threat of attack, as Palestinians have since 1948, has ravaged soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads and likely won’t return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.
“I don’t think 10 years from now Israel will exist. Zionism will die. The only solution is equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews throughout Palestine. This war will continue, but direct engagement with Iran would be totally destructive, militarily. So the Israelis now target Rafah, but they will be defeated there, and they know that. As long as Netanyahu is leader, we will have a continuation of this tragedy. The only way out is a coup in Tel Aviv,” Dr. Marandi concludes.
For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, Israel as we know it is on the brink of extinction, which wasn’t the case before Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel’s creation. And there is no going back to “normal.”
Time is now and forever on the side of the tenacious, undefeated Resistance – so, too, justice and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanizing words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023:
If I must die, let it bring hope.”
Feature photo | A passerby, taking on his cellphone, walks past a banner showing missiles being launched from Iranian map in northern Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Vahid Salemi | AP
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
The post “Military and Moral Failures”: How Iran’s Israel Strike Reshaped the Region Forever appeared first on MintPress News.
Amal Clooney’s Silence on Gaza Shows the Limits Of Liberalism
Amal Clooney, the internationally acclaimed lawyer, is a liberal icon. She and her organization, the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), never shrink from pronouncing their global verdicts on human rights matters. And yet, despite being Lebanese and of Palestinian descent herself, Time magazine’s 2022 Woman of the Year has maintained complete silence on Israel’s continued bombardment of those very countries – a crime other human rights experts have labeled a genocide.
It has now been six months since the October 7 attack, Israel’s wholesale destruction of Gaza and its attacks on Lebanon, yet Clooney has made no public statement on the matter, either in public or on social media, despite mounting calls for her to do so.
Condemning Enemy Nations, Ignoring Crimes of Friends
Born in Lebanon to a Druze Lebanese father and a Sunni Muslim mother of Palestinian descent, Clooney’s family sought refuge in the United Kingdom after the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. After practicing law for many years in the U.K. and U.S. in 2016, she founded the CFJ alongside her film star husband, George. “We founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice to hold perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable for their crimes and to help victims in their fight for justice,” the pair explain on their website.
Today, the CFJ works in over 40 countries. This includes many countries the U.S. treats as enemy nations or candidates for regime change. Clooney and her foundation have taken strong stances against many of those nations. She has demanded that Russia be prosecuted for war crimes. “Ukraine is, today, a slaughterhouse. Right in the heart of Europe,” she told the U.N. Security Council in 2022. The following year, the CFJ filed three cases in Germany. The cases accused Russia of many war crimes, including leveling a civilian building in a missile strike on Odesa, killing 40 people, unlawfully detaining, torturing and killing four Ukrainians in the Kharkiv region, and sexual violence and looting in the Kiev region. The CFJ is also suing the Venezuelan government over alleged human rights abuses.
In 2016, Clooney condemned Iran and North Korea for serially abusing their citizens’ human rights. She did this at a conference in the United Arab Emirates, attended by the country’s ruler, Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi. Far from criticizing the UAE’s dismal human rights record, she praised the government and merely offered friendly “advice” to the emirate on how it could improve.
And yet, the Clooney Foundation has been entirely silent regarding arguably the dominant human rights issue of our time. A search for the words “Israel,” “Gaza,” and “Palestine” on both its website and its Twitter account elicits zero relevant results.
While we cannot expect either Clooney or her organization to work on every country simultaneously, it has disappointed many of Clooney’s admirers that neither has even put out a statement about the country of her birth and the country of her ancestry being torn apart by a Western-backed power.
Even when directly questioned about it, George Clooney appeared to dodge the question, stating:
The whole area [the Middle East] is just on fire, and it is heartbreaking all the way around. All you can do is pray that there is some version of this that comes to some peaceful end soon. But I don’t see it happening in the very near future, and I don’t think anybody does.”
This relative silence on Gaza contrasts with other major Western human rights organizations, who have vociferously condemned the state of Israel. Amnesty International, for example, wrote that “there are alarming warning signs of Genocide given the staggering scale of death and destruction” and that “The collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population by Israeli authorities is a war crime – it is cruel and inhumane.” This sentiment was shared by Human Rights Watch, which noted that “The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime.”
Friends in High Places
Why have Clooney and her foundation shown little to no interest in Palestine (or Lebanon)? Firstly, the CFJ is sponsored primarily by large liberal institutions, such as the Ford Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and foreign sources like the German and Swedish Postcode Lotteries, none of whom have shown any interest in pro-Palestine activism.
Moreover, Clooney herself has close connections to many in the Democratic Party establishment, including some of the most hardcore pro-Israel zealots anywhere. In 2016, she and her husband hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton with Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban at their mansion. Tickets for the event cost $34,000 each.
Saban is one of America’s most influential political donors but considers himself a “one-issue guy.” “And my issue is Israel,” he once said. He has also called for “higher scrutiny” of Muslim Americans, suggesting they are a threat to the country’s security, and branded Muslim-American Democrats such as Keith Ellison “anti-semites.” Clinton, who describes herself as an “emphatic, unwavering supporter” of Israel, wrote Saban an open letter promising to stamp out the spread of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement by any means necessary.
George and Amal Clooney, right, pose with Hillary Clinto and Bryan Lourd and Bruce Bozzi at at an event at the Clooney home in Hollywood. Photo | Instagram
Moreover, Clooney has accepted a number of U.K. government posts – positions that rarely go to radical outsiders but rather to those firmly inside the establishment beltway. Those posts include being appointed to the Attorney General’s Office Public International Law Panel, meaning she represented the British government in domestic and international courts. The government also appointed her the U.K. Special Envoy on Media Freedom and the Deputy Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom.
One senior position Clooney publicly rejected, however, was to serve on the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry looking into Israeli war crimes in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (2014). When pressed to explain her decision, she simply cited a scheduling conflict (while refusing to condemn Israel), stating:
I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed… I am honored to have received the offer, but given existing commitments – including eight ongoing cases – unfortunately could not accept this role. I wish my colleagues who will serve on the commission courage and strength in their endeavors.”
“Moral Mercenary”
The refusal to investigate Israeli war crimes is especially notable, given that Clooney has made her career taking controversial posts concerning the Middle East. She previously served as an advisor on Syria to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She currently represents hundreds of Yazidi survivors of ISIS massacres and is in the process of suing cement maker Lafarge. The lawsuit alleges that the French company provided material support to the terrorist group, which kept many Yazidi women as slaves.
In 2014, she defended Abdullah al Senussi, the Former Chief of Intelligence under Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. The International Criminal Court charged Senussi with crimes against humanity, who was alleged to have overseen torture, assassinations and public executions.
Perhaps most surprising, however, was her appointment as legal advisor to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain during the Bassiouni Commission – a royal investigation into the events of the Arab Spring. The people of Bahrain briefly participated in their own popular anti-government uprising before the monarchy called in Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti forces to crush the revolt, killing hundreds and injuring or torturing thousands more. In this instance, Clooney worked on behalf not of the oppressed but of the monarchy, presumably attempting to absolve it of any blame or responsibility for the crackdown on civil liberties, leading one commentator to dub her a “moral mercenary.”
Silent on Genocide
It is barely in doubt that Israel is currently engaged in some of the most egregious crimes against humanity seen anywhere in the 21st century, from genocide to attacks on schools, hospitals, mosques and churches to the deliberate targeting of journalists and other civilians, to the leveling of entire cities and the systematic starvation of a people.
And despite this, Amal Clooney, who presents herself as a champion of progressive, liberal values and human rights, has had nothing to say about it. This is doubly noteworthy, given her country of birth and her ancestry. As an ethical leader with a considerable audience, any pronouncement she utters on the issue would likely make a significant impact.
Palestine is so often, however, the rocks on which the moral and ethical underpinnings of liberalism are dashed. While Western liberals constantly speak in the language of human rights, using them as a weapon against enemy states and even justifying the bloodiest military interventions on their basis, they fall silent when allied nations carry out similar barbaric actions.
This “progressive except for Palestine” mentality is pervasive across the Western world and highlights the profound limits of modern liberalism. While foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin, Nicolás Maduro or Xi Jinping (or even domestic ones such as Trump) are considered beyond the pale for their transgressions on human rights, beltway politicians like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are held up as heroes. This is despite their crimes, which range from using jihadists to overthrow the most prosperous country in Africa to bombing seven countries simultaneously.
It should, therefore, be of little surprise that Clooney and her foundation have remained tight-lipped about the current slaughter. Those who are shocked by their inaction underestimate the moral bankruptcy of modern liberalism.
Speaking on a panel with Michelle Obama and Melinda Gates (two other liberal icons), Clooney outlined the “real driving force” behind her work.
“My son drew a picture the other day of a prison, and he was like, ‘Putin should be here,’” she said before continuing:
I do think about in a few years when they’re more than five when they start to learn about some of these issues that we’re talking about and what’s happening in the world… When they ask us, ‘What did you do about this? What did you say about that?’ I’ve thought about what will my answer be, and I hope it will be a good one.”
If Clooney’s son ever asks her what she was doing as Israel carried out war crimes across the Middle East, she will also have a clear answer: she was silent on genocide.
Feature photo | Amal Clooney speaks during a conference called “Press Behind Bars: Undermining Justice and Democracy” at the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters, Sept. 28, 2018. Craig Ruttle | AP
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
The post Amal Clooney’s Silence on Gaza Shows the Limits Of Liberalism appeared first on MintPress News.
Quds Day Rallies in Yemen Intensify Amid Biden’s Strategic Shift
On International Quds Day, when protests are held around the world to show solidarity with Palestinians, Yemenis are once again at the forefront of worldwide solidarity with Gaza. Yemenis of all stripes took to the streets in unprecedented numbers on Friday to demonstrate their support for Palestine as well as Ansar Allah’s (Houthis) Red Sea operation against Israeli, American and British ships until the war in Gaza is stopped and the blockade is lifted. This year’s protests came as the Biden Administration embarked upon new moves aimed at Yemen’s Central Bank in a bid to pressure Ansar Allah to stop targeting Israeli ships.
The annual event, which falls annually on the last Friday of every Ramadan and sees rallies held across the globe in support of the Palestinian cause, is especially meaningful this year as Israel’s war against Gaza rages on. With the largest rallies taking place in Yemen’s capital city of Sana’a, over 130 cities and squares throughout Yemen filled hundreds of thousands on Friday carrying Palestinians, Yemen and Lebanese Hezbollah flags and carrying banners blaming the United States for the ongoing war in Gaza.
The collective voice of the demonstrations was unified to renew their commitment to Palestinians, to stress that the Palestine issue is the most important to Yemen, that Yemen must take the initiative to liberate it whatever the cost and to call on Muslims around the world to boycott Israeli products.
On March 26, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council reaffirmed in a ceremony in Sana’a on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the Saudi-led war on Yemen that the country’s maritime operations in the Red Sea against Israeli-linked ships will only cease when Tel Aviv’s crimes in Gaza stop, “The only way to stop Yemen’s operations is to stop genocide and violence against the oppressed people of Gaza,” he said.
This year, a new significance
Friday’s protests were unique as they not only attracted crowds from across Yemen’s diverse political and social spectrums: Shafi’i, Zaydi, Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood, but also thousands of former allies of the Saudi-led coalition, who put down arms and joined Ansar Allah following the party’s reaction to the Israeli aggression on Gaza and U.S. support for Tel Aviv.
“By God Almighty, it is an honor to be in AlSabeen Square for supporting Gaza. I deeply regret the past days in which I was on the side of the U.S. allies,” protester Ahmed Mohamed Binh told MintPress. Binh was one of the leaders of the Saudi-led coalition in Marib and a staunch opponent of Ansar Allah. Yet, he returned to Sana’a after announcing that he had joined Ansar Allah because of their support for Gaza. Today, he is one of the most vocal advocates for commemorating Al-Quds Day in Sana’a.
Masses of Yemenis mark Jerusalem Day (Al-Quds Day), in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, April 5, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
Ironically, the aggression against Gaza and the American participation in the ongoing massacres have made Yemenis more united than ever while increasing the popularity of Ansar Allah not only in Yemen but across the world. Activists, jurists and politicians have applauded and described them as heroes trying to stop genocide in Gaza. This is despite nine years and billions of dollars spent by Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and the U.S. to contain Ansar Allah.
This year’s Quds Day rallies fall three days after a pro-Palestine conference titled “Palestine the Central Cause of the Nation” was held in Sana’a. The four-day conference discussed the Quranic vision of the Palestinian cause, the struggle of Yemenis in Palestine throughout history, the importance of economic boycotts, and Yemen’s political, military, and popular role in supporting Gaza.
Participants from around the world who stand in solidarity with Palestine joined the conference remotely. On the first day, televised speeches were delivered by British politician and parliamentarian George Galloway, Russian philosopher and advisor to President Vladimir Putin Aleksandr Dugin, South African parliamentarian Zulivlele Mandela – grandson of late South African leader Nelson Mandela and Indian writer and political activist Tushar Gandhi, grandson of the spiritual leader of India Mahatma Gandhi. Representing Cuba was Elida Guevara, daughter of Che Guevara.
The conference comes as Ansar Allah is making preparations to host leaders of Palestinian resistance movements, particularly leaders from Hamas, in the event that they are expelled from Qatar due to American pressure.
Taking the war to the bank
The demonstrations were not just aimed at the Palestine issue. They challenged the U.S. role in Yemen, most recently attempts by the Biden Administration to force Yemeni banks to relocate their headquarters from the capital, Sana’a (where Ansar Allah is based), to Aden, home to a number of groups allied with the U.S. On Tuesday, the Central Bank of Aden, run by Washington’s allies, issued a decision requiring banks to transfer their headquarters to Aden, threatening to implement the Anti-Terrorist Financing Law against any bank that violates the decision.
The decision used the U.S. classification of Ansar Allah as a terrorist organization to justify the move, which allegedly came in response to a new 100 riyal coin issued by the Sana’a Central Bank to replace damaged 100 riyal bills. However, the justification is inconsistent with the decision of the Central Bank in Aden. The new currency issued by the Central Bank in Sana’a did not affect exchange rates. Economists have confirmed that it is not new money being created, but rather a substitute for damaged banknotes, and therefore, the banking system was not affected.
Abdul-Malik al-Ajr, a negotiator for the Yemeni delegation, said of the move, “What occurred was the normal process of replacing damaged currency, not printing a new one. This is a normal procedure that all governments carry out periodically, but because of the war and the siege, Yemen was unable to replace this damaged currency, and it became a problem for many residents, especially in grocery stores, taxis, public transportation, bakeries and water stations.”
Following the announcement of the new coin, citizens flocked to exchange points set up by the Central Bank in Sana’a. The currency was minted according to international standards, and the process of issuing it will not affect the exchange rates because its distribution will depend on replacing the damaged one by replacing each damaged 100 note with a 100 coin,” the Central Bank in Sana’a said in a statement.
Ansar Alla’s spokesperson, Muhammed Abdul Salam, said of the move, “Printing a one hundred riyal coin is not in vain, but rather a necessary step taken as a substitute for a damaged paper currency. We wonder why America and European countries are upset as a result of what the Central Bank of Yemen has done in partially addressing the situation of the national currency, which has been subjected and is [stll] being subjected to a brutal war by the coalition and by America itself.”
Ymenis protest marking Jerusalem Day in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, April 5, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
Yemeni financial experts told MintPress that the United States Agency for International Development recently supervised the development of new systems for the Central Bank in Aden, including the “Unified National Network,” a financial transfer system. The Central Bank in Aden has asked banks, exchange companies, and transfer companies to join that system exclusively. For the U.S., this means that it will be able to access financial and banking data and financial transfers.
Al-Tadamum Bank, the Bank of Yemen and Kuwait, the Al-Amal Microfinance Bank, the Shamil Bank of Yemen and Bahrain, and the Al-Kuraimi Islamic Microfinance Bank, which together comprise over 80% of Yemen’s bank accounts, have already joined the Unified National Network.
The decision by the Biden administration to designate Ansar Allah as a “Global Terrorist group” has already harmed thousands of Yemeni families, as many international banks, exchange shops, and firms have already ceased participating in commercial or financial transactions with Yemenis due to the fear of triggering U.S. sanctions. Nearly 80% of Yemenis live in areas under AnsarAllah’s control, including the country’s capital, Sana’a’a and the major port of al-Hodeida. Consequently, the U.S. economic pressure will inevitably push more Yemeni civilians closer to famine.
Feature photo | A Yemeni man holds a poster of Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas, during a protest marking Quds Day in support of Palestinians in Gaza, Sanaa, Yemen, April 05, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
The post Quds Day Rallies in Yemen Intensify Amid Biden’s Strategic Shift appeared first on MintPress News.
Israel’s Celebrity Charm Offensive: The Truth Behind the Glamorous Trips
Since Israel launched a war on Gaza in October, it’s been accused of genocide, been on trial for war crimes, and seen allies stop approving weapons shipments. Yet amid the storm of negative press and genocidal war, some organizations are attempting to shift the narrative in Israel’s favor by taking celebrities and social media influencers on propaganda-fueled trips to Israel.
According to the Israeli newspaper Globes, the Maccabee Task Force (MTF) and Rova Media are the organizations working to send celebrities to Israel. Israeli television production company Eight Productions helps document the trips for media purposes.
“We’re in contact with the IDF [Israeli military] and the hostage families, and also with the president of Israel and former prime minister Naftali Bennett. We simply produce the content together with the visiting celebrities, the whole goal being for them to come here and be our ambassadors to the world,” Eight Productions’ owner, Dafna Danenberg, told Globes.
Eight Productions confirmed to MintPress News that MTF and Rova Media fund the trips.
It turns out the organization that has been bringing celebrities such as Noah Schnapp, Nikita Dragun, Michael Rapaport, Scooter Braun, Tiffany Haddish, and Debra Messing on propaganda trips to Israel is the Maccabee Task Force, a right-wing Israel advocacy group.
— Josh Kadish (@kadish_josh) March 18, 2024
Who is going on these trips?
The list of celebrities who’ve toured with MTF includes Nathaniel Buzolic, Michael Rapaport, Debra Messing, Scooter Braun, James Maslow, Montana Tucker, Guy Nattiv, Eve Barlow, Lee Kern, Kosha Dillz and Matisyahu.
Even before the war, MTF was sending celebrities to Israel, but according to one of MTF’s media directors, Uriel Dison, these trips were less politically charged.
“But now we don’t bring people to travel around,” Dison told Globes. “They have to come and see with their own eyes the results of the war and become sort of wartime ambassadors.”
Dison added that it was challenging to convince high-profile individuals to come to Israel, but after a few trips, his “phone is bursting with requests from people. Influencers connect us to other influencers and celebrities to other celebrities, so it’s self-perpetuating.”
Rova Media hasn’t disclosed who it’s sending to Israel, only mentioning to Globes that “there are journalists, social media influencers, artists, and more.”
However, according to their social media accounts, they’ve partnered with social media influencer Caroline D’Amore to produce content in Israel and hosted Aboriginal Australian athlete and former politician Nova Peris and social media influencer Brooke Bello in Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post, the agency documented American singer Tucker’s trip.
.instagram-media {
margin: 0 auto !important;
max-width: 100% !important;
width: 100% !important;
}
.instagram-media {
margin: 0 auto !important;
max-width: 100% !important;
width: 100% !important;
}
MTF and Rova Media didn’t respond to requests for comment on these tours.
Who is behind the campaign?
Rova Media was founded in October 2023 by Dan Luxenberg and actor Buzolic with support from BZ Media to shape Israel’s image as the war began. The organization’s Facebook page was created on October 27, 2023.
Buzolic, who is a born-again Christian, has frequently traveled to Israel throughout the years and explained to the Times of Israel his mission with Rova Media:
My next-door neighbors, who are Lebanese and Palestinian, tell me how deluded I am. I speak to the people in the middle, I’m trying to shift them,” Buzolic said. “One thing I’ve learned about the pro-Palestinian narrative is they just have content, no context. We want to provide context for the content we’re providing.”
The company has partnered with entertainment firm Roc Nation, founded by rapper Jay-Z, and the Hostage and Missing Families Forum (“Bring Them Home”), the Israeli movement to free hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on October 7, 2023.
Rabbi Ari Lamm and Justin Hayet run the New York-based BZ Media and produce pro-Israel content targeting a Gen Z audience. Lamm founded SoulShop, a faith-focused entertainment company, where Rova’s Luxenberg is CEO. Hayet was a university campus fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media watchdog often targeting journalists for perceived anti-Israel coverage and paying students to write articles smearing pro-Palestine activists. He also worked for Danny Danon, a lawmaker with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, during his term as the ambassador to the United Nations.
MTF was founded by the late pro-Israel billionaire donor, Sheldon Adelson, in 2015 to combat the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses, harassing activist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and leading smear campaigns against pro-Palestine students and faculty.
A DEI program coordinator at the @UofMaryland DEFENDED Hamas terrorists and justified October 7. How are Jewish students supposed to lodge antisemitism complaints to the DEI office when the program coordinator is a hateful antisemite? pic.twitter.com/nIcIp2lmZk
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 18, 2024
Former Manhattan College professor Shellyne Rodriguez has made vile and dehumanizing propaganda targeting Jews and Zionists. And yet @Columbia invited her for a panel. https://t.co/G9eVIbUXyc
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 18, 2024
Instead of taking accountability for creating a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus, pro-Palestine, anti-Israel student groups at @Columbia have chosen to gaslight Jewish students, claiming that the university is “silencing” pro-Palestine voices. pic.twitter.com/ALvzKEbdhE
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 11, 2024
@Columbia supposedly one of the best Universities on the planet, allows a professor to falsely paint Israel as a “Settler Colonial State.”
Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, and rhetoric like this increases antisemitism on campus. pic.twitter.com/cLaOMjQBna
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 5, 2024
Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson’s wife, currently serves as MTF’s president, while infamous pro-Israel lawyer Alan Dershowitz is one of the organization’s directors. Miriam Adelson’s son-in-law and new owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, Patrick Dumont, serves as treasurer. David Brog, former head of Christians United for Israel, an evangelistic Israel lobby group, is the current executive director. The Adelson family primarily funds the organization, pumping over $10 million into MTF in 2022. Joseph Fisch, founder of United States Beverage, has also contributed to the organization.
MTF funds Hillels, Jewish student groups, and other Jewish life institutions on college campuses to find students for its tours. According to its most recent tax filings, it funds Jewish campus life groups at the following universities in the U.S. and Canada: American University, Arizona State University, Binghamton University, Boston University, Brandeis University, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, Florida International University, Florida State University, George Mason University, George Washington University, Hunter College, Indiana University, Kent State University, Michigan State University, Northeastern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Syracuse University, Temple University, University of Arizona, University of British Columbia, University of California Los Angeles, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Florida, University of Maryland, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Michigan, University of Missouri, University of Southern California, University of Vermont, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Vanderbilt University, Virginia Tech, Washington University, Wayne State University and Yale.
Its largest contribution in 2022 was to Chabad on Campus International, the campus educational arm of the Chabad Lubovitch movement. This movement consists of ultra-Orthodox radicals who often carry out revenge attacks on Palestinians. It also supports Jewish student unions in Australia, New Zealand, France, Austria, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. In 2022, it spent over $5 million on Jewish student groups and other related organizations.
While touting itself as a campus educational program, behind the scenes, MTF is financing several Israeli propaganda campaigns. The organization was one of the primary funders of Act.il, the now-defunct app set on creating an anti-BDS, pro-Israel troll army. MTF currently supports Students Supporting Israel, a pro-Israel movement working to pass university initiatives favoring Israel, like investment resolutions and stopping Israel divestment acts. MTF also funds Prager University, a billionaire-bankrolled media empire attempting to turn today’s youth into right-wing extremists.
The organization is notorious for taking non-Jewish university students on trips to Israel and returning them as brand ambassadors for Israel at their schools. MTF specifically targets student “influencers,” which often translates to individuals of color and those involved in Black and Asian student unions.
“They say they’re targeting ‘student leaders’ who they hope to convince to vote no on potential divestment resolutions,” University of Minnesota student Josh Spencer-Resnik told Jewish Currents in 2019. “[And it’s], especially leaders of minority student groups.”
According to MTF’s donation page, it sends 25 students to Israel yearly and has boosted its efforts amid the war, saying they’ve reached thousands of students since October 7, 2023. These trips are generously subsidized.
“[W]e are working to make sure campus anti-Israel groups face consequences for openly endorsing Hamas’ terror, and we are arranging a special Wartime Fact-Finding mission to Israel for some of our most influential non-Jewish MTF trip alumni,” MTF wrote on its website.
In January, the Times of Israel profiled a recent MTF student trip. According to the publication, the trip consisted of meeting with Israelis — but not Palestinians — on the current situation. The group visited bomb shelters in the southern Israeli city of Sderot and toured Kfar Aza, a kibbutz (Jewish commune) Hamas militants attacked in October. They met with Miri Eisin, a retired colonel and former political adviser, Jonathan Elkhoury, who uses his Lebanese-Israeli nationality to advocate for Israel on U.S. college campuses, survivors of the Hamas attacks at the Nova Music Festival, and a volunteer medic about sexual assault allegedly committed by Hamas militants during the October attacks.
“Campuses have become battlegrounds. We wanted students who document what life in Israel has been like since October 7 and who could make a difference on campus when they return,” MTF national director Ben Sweetwood told the Times of Israel.
MTF appears to be succeeding in its campaign — churning out Israeli propaganda puppets at universities while genocide rages in Gaza. Many of its recent wartime alums are now acting as Israeli state mouthpieces on social media.
.instagram-media {
margin: 0 auto !important;
max-width: 100% !important;
width: 100% !important;
}
.instagram-media {
margin: 0 auto !important;
max-width: 100% !important;
width: 100% !important;
}
.instagram-media {
margin: 0 auto !important;
max-width: 100% !important;
width: 100% !important;
}
Following his MTF trip, USC student Logan Barth wrote on Instagram, “[E]very IDF soldier I spoke to emphasized that the last thing they want are innocent Palestinians dead – they want peace. But that is difficult when the people who killed his family members are hiding behind Palestinian civilians.”
“This is NOT genocide,” Barth added.
Feature photo | Colombian singer Shakira visits the the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Oded Balilty | AP
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.
The post Israel’s Celebrity Charm Offensive: The Truth Behind the Glamorous Trips appeared first on MintPress News.
P Diddy Pedo Party Lawsuit Snags Another Pro-Israel Lobbyist: Music Exec Lucian Grainge
Billionaire Zionist Lucian Grainge is the Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, the largest music company in the world. But since February, he and his company have also been named ” defendants” in a lawsuit against hip-hop impresario P Diddy, whose legal name is Sean Combs.
As one of the most influential figures in one of the most popular musical genres of this century, Combs has many friends. Yet, among his closest are an outsized number of influential Zionists.
Combs has been hit with five civil lawsuits in four months, while the Department of Homeland Security raided his homes in Miami and Los Angeles in late March. Said to have hundreds of cameras inside his properties, and, naturally, footage of politicians and music industry executives, Combs’ role in a potential sexual blackmail operation with links to the Israel lobby bears shocking resemblance to the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy.
One of the most powerful men in music with ties to the “Friends of the IDF” organization has been accused of financing and attending parties held by the artist, which featured trafficked, underage sex workers. Meanwhile, A-list actor Ashton Kutcher and other entertainment industry honchos close to Combs have maintained longstanding ties to the Israel lobby.
One of the civil lawsuits was filed by Rodney Jones, a former producer hired by Combs. It accuses Diddy of sexual assault. In graphic detail, the lawsuit alleges an Epstein-style conspiracy that includes crimes ranging from the sex trafficking of minors to surreptitious druggings, sexual assault, and gun violence. According to the lawsuit, Combs’ “freak off” parties were paid for by Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge and former Motown Records CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam in cash to avoid detection by federal authorities.
“Defendants executed their RICO Enterprise with threats of isolation from the music and entertainment industry: parading powerful music industry executives… at his parties filled with sex workers, minors, and illegal drugs, such as ecstasy, cocaine, GHB, ketamine, marijuana, and mushrooms,” the lawsuit alleges.
Rodney Jones claims that Lucian Grainge and Sean Combs “would disappear for hours in Mr. Combs bedroom.”
“Mr. Combs had hundreds of cameras in his homes in LA, NYC, and Miami. Mr. Combs required the sex workers and underaged girls to sign NDAs prior entering his parties, and prior to being drugged and sex trafficked at these parties,” the lawsuit adds. Jones “believes that Mr. Combs has recordings of Defendants” – namely Grainge and Habtemariam – “as well as other celebrities, music label executives, politicians, and athletes.”
Grainge has supported pro-Israel initiatives, such as a fund for Israeli Olympic athletes. As noted previously by Palestine Declassified, Grainge was photographed at a glitzy Friends of the IDF gala in 2016, presumably after making a hefty donation to the pro-occupation NGO. According to UK government documents, Grainge’s wife, Caroline Grainge, also funds several Zionist organizations.
Lucian Grainge also happens to be a “close friend” of Haim Saban, a Democratic Party power player and mega-donor to Zionist causes like the Friends of the IDF. Saban is an independent non-executive director at Universal Music Group and last month held a fundraiser for President Joe Biden.
Another former Universal Music Group figure moonlighting as a lobbyist for Zionism is David Renzer, the former Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing. Renzer founded an organization called Creative Community for Peace, an Israeli government-linked front behind the headline-making October 12, 2023 open letter from celebrities that ran cover for Israel’s impending genocide in Gaza. The letter characterized criticism of the onslaught as “an orchestrated misinformation campaign spearheaded by Iran.” Signatories of the letter included a slew of A-list celebrities, several Universal Music Group executives, artists, and Haim Saban.
Another music industry executive with close ties to P Diddy, Clive Davis, has collaborated with Creative Community for Peace. In 1994, Davis bankrolled the 23-year-old Diddy’s Bad Boy Records. Rumors in the hip-hop community of a relationship between the two – extending beyond their business dealings – have swirled around for over a decade. More recently, comments by imprisoned Death Row Records boss Suge Knight and former P Diddy bodyguard Gene Deal have thrown fuel on the fire.
Both Knight and Deal have also accused Combs of cooperation with federal authorities. Knight wrote in a since-deleted post on X, “People the raids today wasn’t for Diddy. It was to destroy the incriminating stuff on powerful men. #epstien #Diddy #clivedavis.”
Meanwhile, in a recent interview, Deal claims that Combs was a confidential informant for the FBI. “Confidential informants get paid good. But Puff [Combs] was a millionaire. Him being a confidential informant, him getting money like that – it was favors. He [sic] been getting favors, and then paying law enforcement people for years to protect him … He had a budget for law enforcement. Now if something goes wrong, those people got friends in certain places. Then he tells his handler, ‘yo, can you make this go away for me?’”
The Rodney Jones lawsuit similarly makes references to Combs’ bribes to law enforcement, accusing Combs of “threatening to eat Plaintiff’s face, displaying and distributing guns in Plaintiff’s presence, bragging about having law enforcement under control, bragging about murdering people, and bragging about bribing witnesses, and jurors.”
In charge of the bribes, according to the lawsuit, was Kristina Khorram, who is compared in the lawsuit to Ghislaine Maxwell. She and the head of security at Combs Entertainment, Faheem Muhammad, are accused of handling the bribes to law enforcement and the cash payments to sex workers.
While Combs’ ties to federal law enforcement may not amount to much more than gossip at present, his close friend for over two decades, Ashton Kutcher, has maintained a very public partnership with federal authorities. Kutcher is reportedly expecting to be subpoenaed concerning the federal investigation around Combs.
Until recently, Kutcher was the chairman and co-founder of an anti-child sex trafficking organization called Thorn, which works closely with the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. “I’ve been on FBI raids where I’ve seen things that no person should ever see. I’ve seen video content of a child that’s the same age as mine being raped by an American man that was a sex tourist in Cambodia,” Kutcher testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2017, neglecting to explain why, exactly, his role as a leader of an anti-sex trafficking operation necessitated his viewing of child pornography.
Just sending out a morning shout to the men and woman of the intelligence community that keep us safe and protect our country. #gratitude #ty pic.twitter.com/Avi220aBh7
— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) July 23, 2018
In addition to his work with Thorn, Kutcher is a prolific investor in surveillance firms. Meanwhile, his pro-CIA comments and frequent musings on geopolitics have led even a reporter at the notoriously pro-Democrat deep state outlet Mother Jones to wonder “if Ashton Kutcher is a CIA Asset.”
Saban embraces Kutcher at a Friends of the IDF gala that raised $60 million for the IDF in 2018
Kutcher stepped down from his role at Thorn in disgrace last September after his letter in support of his friend, convicted rapist Danny Masterson, sparked massive backlash.
That the former head of this anti-child trafficking organization had spent two decades partying with a figure now accused of trafficking children at his parties may make for a situation of strange bedfellows, but if the lawsuits against him are to be believed, Sean Combs is quite used to that.
Kutcher claims that Israel has “embraced its neighbors” in a Creative Community for Peace advert
Asked whether he has any “Diddy party stories” in an interview on the Hot Ones podcast in 2019, Kutcher struggled: “I’ve got a lot I can’t tell. So – uhh – I can’t tell that one either,” Kutcher said, reflecting on his memories with Combs.
While the saga of Sean Combs may still be developing, the hip hop mogul and his case’s ties to some of the most influential figures in both entertainment and the Israel lobby, any news to come will surely be a far cry from music to Israel’s ears.
Feature photo | Alexander Rubinstein
Alexander Rubinstein is a former staff writer and current contributor to MintPress News based in Washington, DC. He writes about police, prisons, and protests in the United States and has previously reported for RT and Sputnik News.
The post P Diddy Pedo Party Lawsuit Snags Another Pro-Israel Lobbyist: Music Exec Lucian Grainge appeared first on MintPress News.
The US and ISIS: It’s Complicated
While ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the Moscow shooting, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that the United States might have been behind the attack.
Although he provided no evidence for his claim, it is true that ISIS and the United States government have a long and complicated relationship, with Washington using the group for its own geopolitical purposes and that former ISIS fighters are active in Ukraine, as MintPress News explores.
A Brutal Attack
On March 22, gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, killing at least 143 people. Authorities apprehended four suspects who they claim were fleeing towards Ukraine. The attack was only one of a number planned. After receiving international tip-offs, Russian police foiled several other operations.
ISIS-K, the Islamic State’s Afghanistan and Pakistan division, immediately took responsibility for the shooting, with Western powers – especially the United States – treating the matter as an open and shut case. Vladimir Putin, however, felt differently, implying that Ukraine or even the United States might have been somehow involved. “We know who carried out the attack. But we are interested in knowing who ordered the attack,” he said, adding: “The question immediately arises: who benefits from this?”
Moscow has long accused Ukrainian intelligence services of recruiting ISIS fighters to join forces against their common enemy. Far-right paramilitary group Right Sektor is believed to have trained and absorbed a number of ex-ISIS soldiers from the Caucuses region, and Ukrainian militias have been seen sporting ISIS patches. However, there are no clear and official links between the Ukrainian government and ISIS, and the suspects – all Tajiks – have no publicly known connections to Ukraine.
Last Year, Ukrainian militants wearing ISIS patches were pictured on camera by the press – probably unintentionally. pic.twitter.com/5SvfLD6pKJ
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) March 26, 2024
This is not the first time that ISIS has targeted Russia. In 2015, the group took responsibility for the attack on Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed 224 people. It was also reportedly behind the January 2024 attacks on Iran that killed more than 100 people, commemorating the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general responsible for crushing ISIS as a force in Iraq and Syria.
Giving Birth To A Monster
A host of U.S. adversaries have claimed that ISIS enjoys an extremely close working relationship with the U.S. government, sometimes acting as a virtual cat’s-paw of Washington. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, for instance, has accused the U.S. of ferrying ISIS fighters around the Middle East, from battle zone to battle zone. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated that he considers ISIS to be a “tool” of the United States, saying:
I do not differentiate at all between ISIS and America.”
And just this week, the Syrian Foreign Ministry demanded:
the U.S. should end its illegitimate presence on Syrian territory, and end its open support and fund for Daesh [ISIS] and other terrorist organizations.”
It was in Syria that the goals of ISIS and the United States most closely aligned. In 2015, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), lamented that ISIS arose out of a “willful decision” by the U.S. government. A declassified D.I.A. report says as much, noting that the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” were ISIS and Al-Qaeda. “There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria,” the report noted excitedly, adding that “[T]his is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition [i.e., the U.S. and its allies] want.”
A now-declassified DoD document shows US military officials believed backing AQ and ISIS in Syria could help defeat Assad
Throughout the 2010s, images of ISIS’ brutality consistently went viral and led to news bulletins around the world, providing the United States with a convenient enemy to justify keeping its troops in Iraq and Syria. And yet, throughout the decade, the U.S. and its allies were also using ISIS to weaken the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As then-Vice President Joe Biden said, Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were:
[S]o determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tonnes of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.”
This included ISIS, Biden said. He later apologized for his remarks after they went viral. Nevertheless, the U.S. also supported a wide range of radical groups against Assad. Operation Timber Sycamore was the most extensive and most expensive C.I.A. project in the agency’s history. Costing more than $1 billion, the agency attempted to raise, train, equip and pay for a standing army of rebels to overthrow the government.
It is now widely acknowledged that large numbers of those trained by the C.I.A. were radical extremists. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an email published by WikiLeaks:
AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”
Clinton herself was well aware of the situation in Syria, noting that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were:
providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”
While ISIS regularly attacked a wide range of enemies in the Middle East, it actually apologized to Israel in 2017 after its fighters mistakenly launched a mortar attack on the IDF in the occupied Golan Heights region of Syria.
That same year, the United States launched a significant attack on ISIS-K in Afghanistan, dropping the GBU-43/B MOAB bomb on a network of tunnels in Nangarhar Province. The bomb was the largest non-nuclear strike ever recorded and reportedly killed at least 96 ISIS operatives. Yet ISIS did not appear particularly interested in striking back at the U.S. Instead, it waited until the American departure from Afghanistan to launch a series of devastating attacks on the new Taliban government. This included a bombing at Kabul International Airport, killing more than 180 people, and the Kunduz Mosque Bombing two months later. The Taliban accused ISIS of carrying out a U.S.-ordered campaign of destabilization.
Global Terror Network
While the precise relationship between ISIS and the United States will surely never be known, what is clear is that, for decades, Washington has armed and trained terrorist groups around the world. In Libya, the U.S. joined forces with jihadist militias to topple the secular leader Muammar Gaddafi. Not only was Libya transformed from North Africa’s most prosperous country into a political and economic basket case, but the fighting unleashed a wave of destabilization across the entire region – something which continues to this day.
In Nicaragua, the U.S. sponsored far-right death squads in an attempt to overthrow the leftist Sandinistas. Those forces killed and tortured vast numbers of men, women and children; U.S.-trained groups are thought to have killed around 2% of the Nicaraguan population. The Reagan administration justified their intervention in Nicaragua by stating that the country represented a “mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States.” Oxfam retorted that the real “threat” Nicaragua posed was that it was a “good example” for other nations to follow.
Meanwhile, in Colombia, successive administrations helped to arm and train conservative paramilitary forces that prosecuted a brutal war against not only leftist guerilla forces but the civilian population as a whole. The extraordinary violence led to the internal displacement of more than 7.4 million Colombians.
Donald Trump once quipped that Barack Obama was “the founder of ISIS.” While this is not true, there is no doubt that the United States did indeed nurture the group, watching it expand into the force it is today. It has, at the very least, turned a blind eye to its operations and abetted it in its attack against their common enemies. In this sense, at least, with every ISIS attack, there is some blood on Washington’s hands.
Feature photo | A US-backed anti-government fighter mans a heavy machine gun next to a US soldier in al Tanf. Hammurabi’s Justice News | AP | Modification: MintPress News
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
The post The US and ISIS: It’s Complicated appeared first on MintPress News.
Exclusive: Behind the Scenes of Ansar Allah’s Operations aboard the Galaxy Leader Ship
Editor’s Note: Dear Readers, MintPress News’ YouTube channel was recently demonetized, and many of our videos made age-restricted. We would greatly appreciate your support by becoming a member of our Patreon page so that we can continue to bring you important stories like this one. Much of the work that we do is supported by viewers like you.
It was a daring raid that galvanized the world. These pivotal moments unfolded when Yemen’s Ansarrallah, recognized in the West as the Houthis, intercepted the Galaxy Leader, an Israeli-owned cargo vessel sailing through the Red Sea.
Donning traditional Yemeni attire and armed with their characteristic daggers, Ansarrallah boldly confronted Israel while neighboring Arab nations of Palestine offered only hollow words of solidarity.
Since November, Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, has enforced a blockade on vessels either wholly or partially owned by Israel, aiming to compel the apartheid state to cease its unlawful assaults on Gaza, which have resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 people, predominantly women and children.
Today, the Galaxy Leader, seized by Yemen’s resistance and held by the Yemeni military, stands as a tourist attraction on the shores of Hodeida in the Red Sea.
MintPress received an exclusive tour of the vessel and sat down with Brigadier General Mujib Shamsan, Head of the Military Spokesmen Committee in the Yemeni Army, to hear Yemen’s perspective on the matter.
Shamsan contended that Yemen’s military and Ansarrallah’s resistance adhere to international law by imposing a blockade in the Red Sea:
Americans have no right to speak about international law or on international customs and conventions, especially since they come from across the oceans thousands of miles away to the Red Sea, which is essentially not an open sea and is subject to the law of internal waters and closed seas. Regarding the Yemeni position’s compliance with international law, we know that Yemen declared an official position of entering into a war with Israel before making this decision.”
How could one of the world’s poorest nations, grappling with its own humanitarian crisis and enduring over a decade of US-Saudi aggression, stand up against one of the globe’s superpowers?
Following Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza after Hamas’ October 7 attack, Ansarrallah’s bold capture of the Galaxy Leader just a month later became a symbol of global resistance.
As images from Gaza portrayed Israel’s relentless attacks on children, hospitals, schools, aid centers, and fleeing civilians, conscientious observers pondered who would intervene on the international stage to defend Palestine as the usual so-called defenders of the free world were busy aiding, arming and abetting Israel.
While Israel persists in massacring women and children, with its political leaders and military generals openly advocating genocide, Yemen’s resistance maintains it acts within the bounds of international law to halt these atrocities, upholding Article One of the Genocide Convention, which states: “all States Parties recognize genocide as a crime under international law and undertake to prevent and punish it.”
Nevertheless, the Biden administration failed to intervene to halt Israel’s genocide, instead furnishing the apartheid state with arms and diplomatic immunity, including vetoing UN resolutions for a ceasefire.
Subsequently, Washington mobilized forces to the region to break the blockade, bombing Yemen anew and designating Ansarrallah as a terrorist entity. Ansarrallah warned that they would extend their blockade to include U.S. and British vessels if Washington and London persisted in aiding Israel’s war on Gaza. Brigadier General Shamsan told MintPress that:
When America failed to break the siege imposed by the Sanaa government on Israel and on ships heading to the occupied Palestinian ports, it tried to present the issue as a threat to international navigation and global trade for all countries. Therefore, the Sanaa government communicated through its foreign ministry with most maritime shipping companies and many other concerned countries to clarify that there is no threat or danger to them and that the threat only targets ships going to the occupied ports in Palestine and ships belonging to Israel only. Therefore, there is no danger to them.
Indeed, a large number of ships have passed, reaching 4684 in the latest statistics mentioned by Sayyed Abdulmalik Al-Houthi in a recent speech. During these days, all ships are passing through the Red Sea very normally, smoothly, and safely, especially Chinese and Russian ships and all ships unrelated to the Zionist entity.
There is no threat, and America is the one trying to pressure maritime shipping companies and other countries to present a picture to the world and the international public opinion that there is a threat to navigation in order to enable military intervention. However, all those conspiracies failed, and Sanaa continued to impose the maritime blockade on the Zionist entity.”
The blockade’s impact is evident. Thirty percent of global cargo ships traverse the Red Sea via the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, a vital maritime route valued at over $1 trillion annually.
However, Ansarrallah’s blockade compelled ships to circumnavigate Africa, disrupting global supply chains and incurring billions in losses and significant delays. Israel’s economy has already suffered billions in damages.
Shortly after its seizure, it emerged that the Galaxy Leader was owned by Abraham Ungar, an Israeli billionaire with ties to the Likud party and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
However, it is Israel’s Eilat port that bore the brunt, experiencing an 85% reduction in activity. Situated adjacent to Jordan’s sole coastal access point at Aqaba, Eilat offers Israel an eastern gateway without needing to go through the Suez Canal.
Though they initially disavowed ties to the vessel, Israel, along with the U.S. and U.K., undertook a military operation against Ansarrallah on Kamaran Island to reclaim the cargo ship. According to Brigadier General Shamsan:
There was indeed an attempt to carry out an airborne operation on the island of Kamaran as part of military plans aimed at penetrating the areas near and surrounding the Galaxy Leadership. However, those attempts failed, and the Americans and the British received harsh lessons in naval warfare. They now acknowledge the outcomes of those confrontations, which they had not experienced before, especially against forces that are still in their early stages or, rather, in the stage of restructuring and redevelopment.”
Kamaran Island, situated on the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, historically served as a strategic asset in controlling Red Sea access. It was occupied by the United Kingdom at the onset of World War I for this reason.
Despite diplomatic and military endeavors by Israel, the U.S., and the U.K. to recover the ship, Yemen maintained its steadfast blockade, refusing to return the Galaxy Leader until Israel ceases hostilities.
However, tensions between Yemen and Israel did not originate on October 7th.
Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, its founder and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, identified Yemen as a threat. Ben-Gurion emphasized the necessity of controlling the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, as Yemen was among the earliest Arab nations to oppose the European and British initiative to create the state ofIsrael in historic Palestine.
Consequently, diplomatic relations between Israel and Yemen have been nonexistent.
In 1982, Yemen extended support to Palestine, inviting the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to seek refuge after being expelled from Lebanon. After it was isolated by Arab neighbors following U.S.-mediated peace agreements with Israel, the PLO found sanctuary in Yemen’s strategic Kamaran Islands to bolster its liberation campaign.
A 1985 CIA document detailed Israel’s intentions and capabilities to strike the PLO on the Kamaran Islands after Yemen furnished naval assistance to empower their resistance.
Thus, Yemen views the state of Israel as a settler colonial project of the West and deems its support for Palestine as resistance against Western imperialism and colonialism.
Yemen’s military and Ansarrallah vigilantly monitor the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to determine their next course of action, entrusting the fate of the Galaxy Leader to Palestine’s resistance. Brigadier General Mujib Shamsan told MintPress that:
There were multiple attempts regarding the “Galaxy Leader”. Initially, the Americans, the British, and the Israelis all attempted to deny any connection between this ship and Israel. However, it has been confirmed that the ship has ties to an Israeli trader and businessman who is also linked to Israeli intelligence. There have been multiple attempts through diplomatic channels to return the ship, but they were rejected by the Sanaa government because this pressure tactic was fundamentally linked to what was happening in Gaza. The Yemeni leadership left this option to the Palestinian resistance. In other words, everything Yemen does, whether detaining the ship or hitting others, is closely related to the rhythm of the field operations in the battle of Gaza. Therefore, the option presented is the option of Palestinian resistance and its decision. All diplomatic offers will be rejected unless there is a green light from the Palestinian resistance regarding its negotiations with Israel and its position. All options, negotiations, and offers related to the ship will be rejected by any party, considering that Yemen’s position on the Gaza war is a principled, ethical, and humanitarian position that is not subject to compromise or bargaining.
While many countries in the region possess the means to inflict similar and even harsher economic repercussions as Yemen to end the Gaza conflict, they choose not to. Despite issuing stern statements, Palestine’s neighbors covertly assist Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan established land corridors to alleviate Israel’s pressure from the Ansarrallah Red Sea blockade. Egypt facilitates container shipments from its ports to Israel’s Ashdod port, ensuring uninterrupted Israeli commerce. Turkey maintains oil flow to Israel via its pipeline, and Morocco constructs a military base for Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems.
Consequently, while numerous neighboring states neglected to aid Gaza amid relentless Israeli bombardment, Yemen emerged as one of its most steadfast allies.
Yemen’s unwavering commitment to assisting Palestine, regardless of the cost, is especially noteworthy considering its dire humanitarian plight.
The UN estimates that 80% of Yemen’s population requires humanitarian assistance, with over 14 million people in acute need right now due to US-backed Saudi-led airstrikes and an illegal blockade.
Despite enduring incessant airstrikes, Yemenis continue to congregate every Friday in Sanaa’s streets, pledging unwavering support for Palestine, prepared to sacrifice everything for their Palestinian brethren.
As the U.S. and Saudi Arabia persist in bombarding Yemen, the prospect of a new American conflict in the Middle East looms, reminiscent of the devastating wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
Yemen’s recent calls for allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza as a famine grows during Ramadan have been ignored by Israel.
In response, Yemen announced it’s expanding the blockade to include banning Israeli ships from passing through the Indian Ocean. According to Brigadier General Shamsan, that may be just the beginning:
The biggest threat to regional and national security for all Arab countries bordering the Red Sea and in the region is the military presence of the United States and Britain. Before the recent events, it was the Americans who practiced extortion and were behind ship hijackings, meaning that when America creates justifications and pretexts, it creates an opportunity for itself to be present in the region. However, in light of the current transformations in the region, these data have become unacceptable, so America did not realize that the situation has changed, and there are new equations. Today, America has lost its ability to deter and at the same time, sees that the option of force is the most appropriate and what can be used to restore that image. However, the United States was surprised by the Yemeni stance that was not taken into consideration, especially after the historic decision to close the Bab-el-Mandeb strait. The Americans had a reading and estimation of the situation that a decision like closing the Bab-el-Mandeb strait required to be taken by collective Arab countries and armies. However, for a country like Yemen, which has been destroyed in its capabilities and potential over nine years, it was supposed to be very difficult to make such a decision.
But America, Britain, and Israel were surprised that Yemen made this decision and was able to implement it on the ground, and here were the ramifications at the strategic level and on the level of the region as a whole. We do not say that the impact of the decision to close the Bab-el-Mandeb strait is only related to the immediate battle, in the sense of its repercussions on the military and economic battle of Israel, America, or Britain, but on the contrary, a decision of the size of closing the Bab-el-Mandeb strait goes beyond the future security issue to the future and strategic horizon, because it means at the very least the restoration of Yemen’s regional and international role as a balanced sphere with political, military, and strategic weight. This is what the Zionist entity, America, and Britain feared because if a genuine Yemeni state is found that can regain the weight and importance of its strategic position, this will bring about a strategic transformation at the level of the entire region. Because all the components present in the region were given weight and importance at the expense of important countries like Yemen and Egypt, so in the event of the return of these countries to their forefront, other countries that were given a major role, like the Gulf countries, which were nothing but cantons and small states according to the Bernard Lewis plan for power and wealth divisions, will disappear.
Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh.
The post Exclusive: Behind the Scenes of Ansar Allah’s Operations aboard the Galaxy Leader Ship appeared first on MintPress News.
New Alliances and Military Strength Surge Amid Yemen’s Unwavering Support for Gaza
In his traditional Tuhamian clothing, Ali, a Yemeni fisherman from the coastal city of Hodeidah, stands in a gathering of thousands of Yemenis and chants, “With you, with you, O Al-Qassam Brigades… until victory or martyrdom.”
Ali told MintPress News that with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, he feels the suffering of his brothers in Gaza more than ever, so he decided to participate in today’s demonstration for the first time out of sympathy with Gaza and in rejection of what he described as the hideous practices carried out by the invaders in the Red Sea against fishermen.
At the beginning of Ramadan, he quit fishing in Yemen’s territorial waters for fear of his life. “Since the scary ships came, whoever goes out to fish will be killed or arrested, and whoever survives will not return with enough fish.”
Ali, a member of the Al-Hammadi family, who depend on fishing as their only source of income, says that one of his relatives, Qasim, was killed by foreign forces protecting Israeli ships at sea near the shores of Hodeidah. But Ali says he is happy that he now shares the suffering with the residents of Gaza.
Fishermen Rally Against Foreign Aggression
Qasim and seven other fishermen, all from the Al-Khawkha District in the coastal governorate of Hodeidah, lost their lives to the Western forces in the Red Sea while fishing in Yemen’s territorial waters. On January 26, 2024, a month after their disappearance, their bodies were found on the Dhu al-Harab Islands overlooking the waterway in the sea. The coalition allies control these islands. At that time, the Ministry of Fisheries, based in Sana’a, accused American coalition forces of the crime.
The murder of the eight fishermen: Qasim Hammadi, Ibrahim Mahnish, Zakaria Mansoub, Hamza Abdel Hafeez, Majed Bahidar, Ibrahim Salem, Ahmed Shaif, and Anwar Hattab is not an isolated case, but rather one of the dozens of incidents in which fishermen either lost their lives were injured or were arrested and disappeared, forcing other fisherman to stay in their homes starving rather than risk death or imprisonment.
The Ministry of Fisheries in Sana’a, which recorded dozens of violations against fishermen, including kidnapping and arrests carried out by the U.S. Navy, said in a previous statement that the U.S. Navy’s activity near the Yemeni coast and territorial waters threatens Yemeni fishermen, puts their lives in danger and causes them to lose their only source of income.
It mentioned that U.S. forces and their allies resort to the use of force and threats to prevent fishermen from exercising their right to fish, pointing to the tragic conditions experienced by thirty thousand Yemeni fishermen, who depend on the fishing profession as the only source of income for their families, due to the presence of American forces in the Red Sea.
It added that foreign forces also deplete and plunder fish stocks, leading to declining stocks and fishermen’s wages. “Sometimes we and our brothers in Gaza share the same suffering, siege, and killing,” Ali says.
Ali supports Ansar Allah’s blockade of Israeli ships from the Red Sea and likens his suffering to that of Palestinians. He does not hide his support for the targeting of American and British ships, describing it as a resistance operation against forces that came from the high seas, not to prevent them from fishing and polluting their waters, but rather to kill the people of Gaza. He says Israel, America and Britain should “drink from the same cup.”
Like the fishermen, residents still suffer from the repercussions of ten years of Saudi-led war and the U.S.-backed blockade, despite the relative cessation of bombing from 2022 until the start of the war on Gaza. Yemen is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with more than 21 million Yemenis in need of assistance and suffering from inadequate food, health care, and infrastructure and 6.1 million facing “emergency” levels of food insecurity, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch.
The situation has become much worse since the onset of the U.S. bombing campaign on the Yemeni mainland, the continuation of the blockade, and the prevention of any political settlement between warring factions in Yemen. The local population, however, does not appear ready to abandon Gaza and supports Ansar Allah’s operations against Israel, U.S. and British ships, even if it makes their own situation worse.
Residents in Hodeidah Governorate were not the only ones who took to the streets in massive demonstrations on Friday to express this sentiment. A massive demonstration took place in more than 140 governorates, cities, and regions, the most important of which was in the Al-Sabeen area in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and the cities of Saada, Dhamar, Al-Bayda, Hajjah, Al-Mahwit, Amran, Al-Dhale’, Taiz, Al-Jawf, and Marib governorates. The theme of the protests was “Our operations continue. Stop your aggression.”
Escalating Tensions: The Yemeni Response
Most Yemenis see the aid airdropped by the U.S. in Gaza and the construction of a floating port as little more than a hoax, and Yemen’s leadership intends to escalate its blockade of the Red Sea further. This week, an Israeli ship, the Pacific 1, was targeted for the first time since November 19, 2023, when Yemen announced military operations in support of Gaza.
Recently, the leader of Ansar Allah, Abdulmalik Al-Houthi, announced that Israeli or Israeli-linked ships would not only be prevented from crossing the Red and Arabian Seas but would also be prevented from crossing the Indian Ocean and Cape of Good Hope until the war against Gaza is stopped and the blockade is lifted.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the spokesperson of Ansar Allah, confirmed that Yemen has moved towards escalation by targeting Israeli ships in the Indian Ocean and preventing them from sailing towards the Cape of Good Hope. International shipping companies linked to Israel, he said, “must take this escalation very seriously and know that any Israel-linked ship will be exposed to Yemeni missiles.”
Ansar Allah’s Pursuit of Strategic Superiority
In response to U.S. attacks on Yemen, Ansar Allah has not only upgraded their missile and drone capabilities, modifying explosive warheads to double their destructive power but has now manufactured hypersonic missiles with high destructive capability. High-ranking military sources within Ansar Allah told MintPress that Yemen is close to adding hypersonic missiles to its arsenal following testing against sea targets. In early March, Yemeni rocket scientists tested a solid-fuel hypersonic missile that can reach speeds of up to 10,000 kilometers per hour (Mach 8).
In a recent interview with MintPress News, ِMohammed Ali al-Houthi, Ansar Allah’s second-in-command, gave explicit hints about a “surprise” that could change the equation in the Red Sea, even against targets inside of the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a televised speech, which he usually delivers every Thursday to announce the latest developments in Gaza and Yemen, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Ansar Allah, said, “There is a noticeable development in Yemeni missiles, among these developments is a missile that arrived to Eilat this week without being detected or intercepted by the enemy. Others reached to the Indian Ocean, however, behind these developments is something more advanced, but we leave it for action first.
Last Thursday, al-Houthi announced that Ansar Allah has used new weapons in recent operations in the Red and Arabian Seas, which “surprised the United States and the United Kingdom.” He added, “Our enemies, friends, and our people will see a level of achievement of strategic importance that will place our country in terms of its capabilities among the few countries in this world.”
Brigadier Abdul-Ghani Al-Zubaid, Brigadier in the Yemeni Army and researcher in political and military affairs said that al-Houthi’s allusion to missile development and failure of Israel’s advanced air defense systems, such as the Hatz system, confirmed that hypersonic missiles are already available, perhaps in significant quantities. He continued, “We may witness qualitative operations targeting the enemy’s depth in the coming days, American and British ships in the Indian Ocean and South Africa.”
Israel acknowledged in a statement released on Monday that “a cruise missile” coming from the direction of the Red Sea from Yemen circumvented Israeli anti-air systems and struck territories in southern occupied Palestine near Eilat.
Ballistic missiles fly on a trajectory, allowing anti-missile systems to anticipate and intercept their path. The more irregular a missile’s flight path, the more difficult it becomes to intercept. Hypersonic missiles fly at speeds greater than Mach 5 and can change directions during flight. Undoubtedly, Ansar Allah’s new hypersonic missiles could pose a formidable challenge to air defense systems employed by the U.S. and Israel due to their speed and maneuverability. Another development that was met with less fanfare but was no less significant than Ansar Allah’s hypersonic missiles was the development of its diplomatic relationship with Russia and China.
Yemen’s Geopolitical Rebalancing Act
Growing feelings of hostility towards the United States and the United Kingdom following their attacks on Yemen and support for Israel’s war in Gaza have not only prompted major countries such as Russia to strengthen their relationship with Ansar Allah to mire the U.S. in the Red Sea swamp, they have also prompted the group to enhance relations with Russia and China in a bid to bring about a strategic defeat for the U.S. in the region.
Member of Ansar Allah’s Political Bureau, Ali al-Qahoum, told MintPress that,
There is already development in relations between Yemen, Russia, China, and the BRICS countries, exchanging experiences and expertise in various fields. This serves a common interest with the goal of letting America, Britain, and the West sink into a quagmire in the Red Sea so that their unilateral polarity sinks, fades, and weakens.”
Al-Qahoum added,
This is not just my analysis but a clearly visible fact. Yemen is a state that has already succeeded in supporting Palestine and has been able to stabilize the Red Sea with great efficiency, representing a major strategic victory in the military, security and political spheres.”
“Thanks to God and our brave leader, Yemen was able to achieve this with unparalleled strength and pride,” he added, “To the point that major countries began coordinating and building relations with us on an equal footing, paving the way for the foreseeable future and laying the groundwork for the historic defeat of the United States, Britain and the West, and by extension, the collapse of the colonial project and Western hegemony over the region and the world.”
With the West, led by America and Britain, attacking Yemen and continuing to weave colonial conspiracies and preparing to expand their ongoing aggression against Yemen, and their failure to provide protection for Israel in the Red Sea, there is intensive work and movement by Yemen to support Palestine and continue useful and effective strategic military operations.”
Strategic Coordination: Palestinian Resistance
The strengthening of diplomatic ties with Russia, China, and the BRICS countries is no exception. Ansar Allah is also strengthening its relations with various Palestinian resistance factions, specifically the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement.
Nasr al-Din Amer, a leader in Ansar Allah and deputy head of the Ansar Allah Media Authority, told MintPress that Ansar Allah had given authority over the Israeli ship, the “Galaxy,” detained off of the coast of Yemen as well as its crew, to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Amer emphasized Ansar Allah’s cooperation and coordination with Palestinian resistance movements, most notably Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Feature photo | Asnar Allah recruits march during a rally of support for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and against the U.S. strikes on Yemen outside Sanaa, Jan. 22, 2024. Photo | AP
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
The post New Alliances and Military Strength Surge Amid Yemen’s Unwavering Support for Gaza appeared first on MintPress News.