Iran
Escalation With Iran Seemingly Over; Now We Have To Worry About Rafah
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/38fe97418d49cfe988ef563a14d32733/href
The imperial media are reporting that Israel launched a missile attack against Iran early Friday morning, with explosions also seen in Syria and Iraq. Tehran is denying there was any missile attack on Iran at all, with Iranian media reporting that the blasts were actually from drones that were successfully shot down over Iran. It doesn’t appear that any nuclear sites were struck.
A senior Iranian official has reportedly told Reuters that Iran has no plans for any immediate response to Israel, which is good because Tehran has previously stated that if Israel makes another “mistake” it will result in immediate retaliation. Israel’s extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted a word in Hebrew which roughly translates to “feeble” in an apparent reference to the Israeli attack, signaling his disapproval at Israel’s failure to ignite World War Three.
So as things stand right now it looks like the cycle of escalation between Iran and Israel has thankfully ended or at least paused, which means now all we have to worry about is a horrific massacre in southern Gaza. The Times of Israel reports that Washington has agreed to go along with Israel’s planned assault on the city of Rafah so long as Israel doesn’t launch a large attack against Iran in response to its unprecedented retaliatory drone and missile attack on Saturday, according to an Egyptian source speaking to a Qatari outlet. A White House spokesperson has denied this, but you’d expect them to.
Matthew Petti on Twitter: "Egyptian sources to The New Arab: "the US has accepted Israel's plan for an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in return for not carrying out a large strike in Iran in response to Tehran's unprecedented missile and drone attack." https://t.co/PA5A7EWixI / Twitter"
Egyptian sources to The New Arab: "the US has accepted Israel's plan for an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in return for not carrying out a large strike in Iran in response to Tehran's unprecedented missile and drone attack." https://t.co/PA5A7EWixI
Israel had reportedly notified the US earlier on Thursday that an attack on Iran was coming, and that nuclear sites would not be damaged. If all Israel did was launch a small attack on Iran that did no significant damage, that would certainly fit the bill for the kind of strike that was alleged by the aforementioned Egyptian source.
As Dr Assal Rad said on Twitter regarding this report, “If this is true, Biden is green lighting a massacre so that Israel doesn’t start a wider war with Iran.”
Iran’s retaliatory strike for Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus reportedly delayed Israel’s planned assault on Rafah, where according to CNN the IDF was ready to begin dropping leaflets on Monday. Israel has spent the last six months kettling the population of the Gaza Strip southward into Rafah, so now it’s extremely densely populated and a full-on attack could be deadlier than anything we’ve seen in Gaza so far.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Revealed: Israel’s Hidden History Of Attacks On Iran
Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel was framed in the West as a reckless attempt to spark a major regional war, but in reality, Israel has been attacking Iran for decades.
As is routinely the case with Western-backed wars, the corporate media’s timeline begins at the moment that suits their narrative. We have seen this play out recently, with the attempt to rob the Gaza war of all contexts before October 7, 2023. Similarly, when it comes to Israel’s conflict with Iran, the two have been embroiled in what is referred to as a “shadow war,” the details of which are pretty shocking.
While the international media’s attention was riveted on Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel, drawing great focus to some 300 drones and missiles used in the attack, no major deal was made of Israel’s strike on April 1 against the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed a dozen people, including seven Iranian officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In this unprecedented act of aggression against Iranian soil, breaking international diplomatic norms, the Israelis were shielded by the U.S. government at the United Nations Security Council, blocking any condemnation of this act.
Despite an admission from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that had the UK embassy been attacked similarly, they too would retaliate, the double-standard argument that Iran shouldn’t respond continues to dominate the airways.
This is as Iran’s IRGC has received condemnation for seizing a container ship in the Persian Gulf associated with the Zodiac Maritime shipping company of Israel billionaire Eyal Ofer and his family. In 2021, the Mercer Street oil tanker, which Zodiac Maritime also operated, was struck by Iranian drones, prompting similar condemnation. Yet, little was to be said regarding the Israeli-owned company’s role in collaborating with the Israeli military and intelligence establishment to ferry arms and operatives around the region and carry out assassinations or reconnaissance missions.
However, the Israel-Iran “Shadow War” did not begin with recent events. Israel has been carrying out brutal assassinations of civilian scientists on Iranian soil since 2010 while also carrying out acts of espionage that have endangered innocent civilians in the country.
As early as in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, Israeli Mossad agents have been planting viruses designed to cause malfunctions in Iranian oil and nuclear power facilities. Another kind of provocative action occurred in 2018, when it was reported that an Israeli Mossad team had raided an archive facility in Tehran, stealing documents that pertained to its nuclear power program.
In 2020, the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Israel planted bombs inside Iran’s Natanz Nuclear facility, which almost caused an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Later that year, the Israeli Mossad assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran. Then, in April of 2021, another explosion occurred at the Natanz facility, which the New York Times reported was Israel’s doing.
The Israelis have also trained members of the MEK terrorist group to carry out attacks on civilian targets inside Iran. The list of Mossad-linked cells that have been arrested by the Iranian authorities or carried out acts of espionage and sabotage is simply too numerous to cover at length. Early last year, U.S. officials even told Reuters that a suicide drone attack targeting a factory in the city of Isfahan was an Israeli attack.
More recently, in late December, Israel launched airstrikes on Damascus and assassinated IRGC official Seyed Razi Mousavi. And in January, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, murdering five Iranian military personnel members and Syrian citizens. Then, in early February, Israel was accused of blowing up gas pipelines in Iran. None of these actions, which would likely illicit a response by most nations, provoked Iran to launch a direct strike on Israel.
In addition to all of this, Israel has been the world’s top cheerleader for the West’s crushing sanctions that have significantly impacted Iran’s civilian population, specifically access to lifesaving medical supplies. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli Lobby group in the United States, worked hard to prevent the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal from passing, then pushed for the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw before pressuring the Biden administration to refrain from reviving the deal despite this being a campaign promise. Israel even played a role in the Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top general tasked with battling ISIS, Qassem Soleimani.
Yet, despite Israel’s long history of documented attacks against Iran and around 30 years of false predictions as to when Iran is supposedly going to develop a nuclear weapon, which is the premise for Western sanctions, the corporate media is still trying to sell the public on the lie that Israel is an innocent victim and that there was no justifiable reason for Iran to retaliate.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
The post Revealed: Israel’s Hidden History Of Attacks On Iran appeared first on MintPress News.
Israel’s Latest Lie Is That It Has ‘No Choice’ But To Attack Iran
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/7d211184966559667a062dac16ffab4f/href
In an article titled “Israel vows to retaliate against Iran for missile attacks,” Axios reports that the Israeli defense minister has informed his American counterpart that Israel “has no choice” but to attack Iran for the retaliatory strike it launched in response to Israel’s deadly attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
“Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Sunday that Israel has no choice but to respond to the unprecedented missile and drone attack launched by Iran over the weekend,” reports Axios, citing an anonymous US official and another unnamed source.
The state of Israel has been churning out massive lies on a daily basis for the last six months, but this whopper could wind up being the most consequential.
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "Report: Israel Tells US It Has No Choice But To Respond to IranIsraeli TV reports that Israel's War Cabinet has decided it will attack Iran, but it's unclear how or whenby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Israel #Iran #Gaza https://t.co/bcs6DQgDsb pic.twitter.com/x3C51NQcse / Twitter"
Report: Israel Tells US It Has No Choice But To Respond to IranIsraeli TV reports that Israel's War Cabinet has decided it will attack Iran, but it's unclear how or whenby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Israel #Iran #Gaza https://t.co/bcs6DQgDsb pic.twitter.com/x3C51NQcse
Obviously Israel has a choice as to whether it continues to escalate a conflict it initiated with an extreme act of aggression. This fraudulent apartheid ethnostate is so accustomed to crying victim every minute of every day that it will even pretend to be the victim of its own conscious decisions.
As professor Jason Hickel put it on Twitter, “People need to understand that Israel *does not* need to retaliate. Iran’s action was a telegraphed response to Israel’s bombing of its consulate, which killed 16 people and violated the Vienna Convention. Iran says they now consider the matter closed. Israel must de-escalate.”
Iran’s deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri has made it clear that if Israel launches another attack against Iran, this time Iran’s response will be instantaneous instead of a twelve-day grace period with Tehran giving neighboring countries and the United States a 72-hour advance warning to ensure minimal damage to Israel.
Abas Aslani on Twitter: "Iranian DepFM Ali Bagheri says that #Iran will respond to a new mistake by #Israel "in seconds, not in days or hours". He said, "This time, they will not have 12 days". https://t.co/nKzXZncz4P / Twitter"
Iranian DepFM Ali Bagheri says that #Iran will respond to a new mistake by #Israel "in seconds, not in days or hours". He said, "This time, they will not have 12 days". https://t.co/nKzXZncz4P
Predictably, the Biden administration is doing its usual phony schtick where it pretends to be a passive witness to all this, with National Security spokesman John Kirby telling the press that the White House plans to just “wait and see what the Israelis decide to do.”
But as foreign policy analyst Tariq Kenney-Shawa noted of Kirby’s statement, “Israel will be using US-supplied weapons, will have to coordinate with US forces throughout the region, and will depend on the US for missile defense when Iran responds.” So the fact that the US won’t be actively planning the attack with Israel doesn’t mean the US won’t be involved in it on a fundamental level.
If Israel’s escalatory attack happens, it will be because Washington allowed it to. If the US informed Israel that it will instantly lose its pricey US weapons supplies and Pentagon support if it attacks Iran, Israel would discover very quickly that it does in fact have a choice as to whether or not to proceed.
https://medium.com/media/497752da3cdc952f5ad9f7a4ea87bfea/href
In an article for Foreign Policy titled “Netanyahu Wants War With Iran. Biden Can Prevent It.”, Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi argues that while Biden’s unconditional support for Israel is often described as a continuation of longstanding US policy, it has actually been a rather dramatic break from the norm. Presidents like Reagan, both Bushes, and Obama have not hesitated to give Israel’s arm a twist whenever they found it necessary to advance US interests in the region; this new policy of just letting Tel Aviv do whatever it wants while providing unconditional support is actually without precedent in the White House.
Both Israel and the US are pretending to be powerless in this situation, when in reality they’re both anything but. They’re like two muggers getting ready to mug someone and saying “If only there was something we could do to stop this terrible mugging!”
Israel absolutely can choose not to accelerate toward a terrifying war between extremely powerful militaries, and the US absolutely can choose to pump the brakes. The fact that neither of them are doing so is just what it looks like when you live under a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by human blood.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Israeli media: Israel ‘totally defeated’ – and terrified of Iran
Source close to discussions about Iran says millions would be fleeing Israel if they knew what was being said
Israeli media are often far more honest about what their country is doing – and what is going on in it – than western ‘mainstream’ media are about the same issues. While UK ‘msm’ still maintain the lie that Hamas ‘beheaded babies’ and raped women on 7 October, Israeli media sometimes freely discuss the truth – and frequently and openly write about the ‘immense’ numbers of Israelis killed that day by the Israeli military.
And now, Israeli media are discussing two further truths that will not be aired by UK broadcasters or printed by UK papers.
First, Haaretz – one of Israel’s major dailies – has splashed a headline concluding that Israel has lost – totally lost – the ‘war’, the genocide, it has been raining down on the innocent civilians of Gaza. Lost so badly that Israel cannot be secure – and will not either regain by force the captives taken by Hamas, or end its pariah status:
And second, journalists with sources close to the Israeli regime’s discussions about Iran – which yesterday achieved a measured but compelling attack on Israel in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus – are saying openly that those discussions are so terrifying that if the Israeli populace knew what was being said, millions of them would be flooding Israel’s main international airport to try to get out of the country:
The UK government, opposition and media are incorrigibly dishonest about Israel’s genocide and its terrible consequences for the millions of innocents in Gaza and the West Bank – and the ruination of both Israel’s and the West’s always-thin pretence as democratic, humane and law-abiding. But the truth is out there – and will percolate through.
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Stop Pretending Biden Is Some Passive Witness To Israel’s Warmongering
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/976c0daf6cbe5cf0a4a73a4bc7bd7a81/href
The more I think about it the more obnoxious I find the Biden administration’s “Gee whiz, I sure hope Israel doesn’t drag us into a giant war in the middle east” posturing and the imperial media’s facilitation of it.
CNN has a new article out titled “As Iran attacks Israel, Biden confronts an escalating Middle East crisis he had hoped to avoid,” which is a genre of story that has been coming out in slightly different iterations again and again for the past six months. Every time Israel does something that makes things more dangerous in the middle east with the assistance of the United States, the American press fall all over themselves to inform the world that the president really doesn’t want this to happen and that his feelings are very upset about it.
“For President Joe Biden, an attack on Israel launched from Iranian soil amounts to a scenario he’d greatly sought to avoid since the start of the current Middle East conflict,” writes CNN, saying the strikes “heighten the risk of a wider regional conflict that could directly draw in the United States, along with other countries.”
“Israel will respond to Iran’s attack, but the scope of that response has yet to be determined,” CNN reports, citing an anonymous Israeli official.
Assal Rad on Twitter: "-Iran was *responding* to Israel's attack on its embassy, this framing makes it seem like Iran initiated an attack-If Biden wanted to avoid a crisis he could have supported a ceasefire, instead he gave Israel no red line, aided atrocities in Gaza and shattered international law pic.twitter.com/83bmPIDOgd / Twitter"
Iran was *responding* to Israel's attack on its embassy, this framing makes it seem like Iran initiated an attack-If Biden wanted to avoid a crisis he could have supported a ceasefire, instead he gave Israel no red line, aided atrocities in Gaza and shattered international law pic.twitter.com/83bmPIDOgd
And it’s just such an obscene insult to our intelligence to suggest that the Biden administration is some kind of passive witness to all this, sitting around wringing its hands hoping Israel doesn’t do something so horrible that the United States will have no choice but to leap into World War Three in defense of its dear ally. It’s insulting in that it asks us to believe the US would have no choice but to enter into a war of unimaginable horror if Israel acts belligerently enough, and it’s insulting in that it asks us to ignore the fact that Biden could have ended this insane cycle of escalation with one phone call to Israel at any time over the last six months.
Being asked to accept that the Biden administration is just standing there hoping Israel doesn’t ignite the worst war in middle eastern history is like seeing a dog owner letting their rottweiler run around biting people all over the neighborhood and saying “Yeah he just does what he likes, I just hope he doesn’t kill anybody.”
It’s like, no. Stop that. You’re not just crossing your fingers and hoping Israel doesn’t do something monstrous, you’re letting them do whatever they want because that’s what you’re choosing to do. Israel’s entire existence is as dependent on US support as a scuba diver is on their oxygen tank, and as such the White House has essentially limitless leverage it can use to make Israel do as it pleases — and it has done so in the past. Hell it’s done so during this very Gaza assault, successfully commanding Israel to stop cutting off Gazan telecommunications and to start letting more aid trucks in to the enclave.
If Biden truly didn’t want Israel to be turning the middle east into a hurricane of death and fire, he would stop it. He would put the damn dog on a leash.
Megan K. Stack on Twitter: "This administration's many leaks to the press about Israel always manage to make it sound like Biden is being held against his will and blinking twice to signal he needs help pic.twitter.com/qo0M1KUjOc / Twitter"
This administration's many leaks to the press about Israel always manage to make it sound like Biden is being held against his will and blinking twice to signal he needs help pic.twitter.com/qo0M1KUjOc
The western press have a well-established track record of consistently framing US wars as these traps that Washington just clumsily stumbles its way into, like there’s some giant Macaulay Culkin-like deity sneaking around laying tripwires to force the Pentagon to regime change Libya or whatever. After a certain number of wars you have to figure that a regime is starting a bunch of wars because it’s just a warmongering regime, though — and the US has been involved in a whole, whole lot of wars. Nobody’s that clumsy or that unlucky; it’s like believing your husband when he tells you he keeps slipping and falling with his man parts inside the lady parts of various coworkers.
The most powerful empire that has ever existed is not just passively sitting there praying that big bad Israel doesn’t force it to go to war with Iran. That is not happening. All the violence and chaos that’s happening in the middle east right now is happening because the US empire wants it to happen, and because the people who steer that empire are psychopathic ghouls. And don’t let the crooked manipulators of the western mass media tell you otherwise.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Feature image official White House photo (public domain).
Anyone Who Wants The US To Attack Iran Is An Enemy Of Humanity
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/e9f333f515876746ad6366a1304ce09b/href
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Anyone who wants the US and its allies to attack Iran is a psychopath. People who want to unleash a war of that scale upon our species should be rejected from our society as aggressively as child molesters and Nazis.
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A new CNN report says multiple Biden administration officials “saw Iran’s attacks on Israel Saturday as disproportionate to Israel’s strikes in Damascus that prompted the retaliation.”
There are zero reported fatalities as a result of the Iranian retaliation. The Israeli strikes on the Iranian embassy in Damascus killed 16 people, including multiple high-level Iranian military officials. To see Iran’s response as “disproportionate” is to admit you believe Israeli lives are worth literally orders of magnitude more than Iranian lives.
And it was at an embassy, for god’s sake. Israel can assassinate 16 people while shattering decades of diplomatic norms, and in the eyes of the US that’s still not as bad as Iran creating a few potholes in an Israeli street.
And anyway how obscene is it that these shitstains can babble about proportionality at all after backing Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza? When Iran attacks the response needs to be proportionate, but when Israel incinerates Gaza over October 7 it’s “LMAO fuck around and find out, laughcry emoji, Israeli flag.”
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "No no you don't understand, this time Germany is rounding up Jews to FIGHT antisemitism. https://t.co/uyhMBUmAfX / Twitter"
No no you don't understand, this time Germany is rounding up Jews to FIGHT antisemitism. https://t.co/uyhMBUmAfX
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After six months of mass murder and chaos the only thing that looks more absurd than the claim that Israel is morally superior to other nations in the middle east is the claim that the United States is morally superior to other nations in the world.
No matter how low your opinion was of western power structures and western civilization, if you’ve been watching events of the last six months with sincerity it will have sunk even lower by now.
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The Spectator Index on Twitter: "BREAKING: NBC News reports that 'President Joe Biden has privately expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. more deeply into a broader conflict' / Twitter"
BREAKING: NBC News reports that 'President Joe Biden has privately expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. more deeply into a broader conflict'
It’s so obnoxious how the mass media are helping the White House pretend this is something the Biden administration is just passively sitting around hoping doesn’t happen, as though the US hasn’t had the power to end all this every single day for the last six months.
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It’s just an easily quantifiable fact that the Trump administration was vastly less warlike and murderous than the Biden administration has been. This doesn’t mean Trump wasn’t warlike and murderous. It doesn’t even mean Trump wouldn’t have been doing more or less the same evil things that Biden has been doing if he’d won in 2020. But it does mean the entire mainstream liberal narrative about what Trump is and what Biden is has been complete bullshit this entire time, which necessarily means the whole mainstream narrative about the US political system is a lie.
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It’s possible that as the United States was first beginning to move toward planetary hegemony there were some empire managers operating in good faith who sincerely believed US unipolarity could be a force for achieving world peace. It’s doubtful that everyone constructing this monstrosity has been an evil, mustache-twirling cartoon villain who wanted to see nonstop violence, oppression and nuclear brinkmanship inflicted upon populations around the globe. But that’s what wound up happening.
And of course it did. The belief that a regime can take over the world by any amount of force necessary and create peace and prosperity for all was always a poorly reasoned fantasy of deeply unwise minds. Of course there are going to be populations who refuse to be subjugated, and some of them are going to have nuclear weapons, and others will have conventional weapons but defend their sovereignty tooth and claw. Most of the violence and cold war brinkmanship you see in international conflicts today is a direct result of this dynamic.
The US-centralized empire’s foreign policy is one long and unrelenting war against disobedience. It simply is not possible to bring the entire human species under one single power umbrella without copious amounts of violence and tyranny. If we keep going along this trajectory, the empire’s war on disobedience is going to lead to nuclear armageddon someday.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)
Pics/vid: Liverpool comes out three times for Gaza – Grand National, city and Waterloo
City sees whole weekend of solidarity and activism
Liverpool and Merseyside saw a whole weekend of solidarity with the Palestinians against Israel’s genocide over the last couple of days – beginning with a demonstration at Aintree racecourse for the Grand National.
Protesters, including members of Merseyside’s Jewish community, received a positive reaction from most racegoers as they braved windy weather to wave banners and Palestinian flags:
Sunday saw a large march through the city centre – numbers that have remained undiminished through the long months of Israel’s ongoing war crimes against Palestinian civilians – including a group of women holding ‘bloodied’ bundles representing the around eighteen thousand children murdered in Gaza:
And on Sunday night, around a hundred activists – gathered at Da Gurka restaurant in Waterloo to share food, lift spirits and raise thousands of pounds for Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Israel is losing the PR war badly, its murderousness and arrogance as it slaughters tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, and tries to starve two million more, appalling the world and prompting millions to turn out on the streets every week. The flailing of its far-right regime is now putting the whole world in danger as it tries to provoke a regional war and bring the US into open aggression against the Muslim nations around it.
Free Palestine. Justice for Gaza and the West Bank.
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US Declines Israel’s Invitation To Start WW3 (For Now)
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/588c286922d65afdd2aa03f1a2f6429d/href
Iran has carried out its long-promised retaliation for Israel’s attack on its consulate building in Damascus, launching a massive barrage of drones and missiles which it claims hit and destroyed Israeli military targets, while Israel says they dealt only superficial damage with a few injuries. The US and its allies reportedly helped shoot down a number of the Iranian projectiles.
Just as we discussed in the lead-up to the strike, the western political-media class are acting as though this was a completely unprovoked attack launched against the innocent, Bambi-eyed victim Israel. Comments from western officials and pundits and headlines from the mass media are omitting the fact that Israel instigated these hostilities with its extreme act of aggression in Syria as much as possible. Here in Australia the Sydney Morning Herald write-up about the strike didn’t get around to informing its readers about the attack on the Iranian consulate until the tenth paragraph of the article, and said only that Iran had “accused” Israel of launching the attack because Israel has never officially confirmed it.
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "UPDATED: Iran Launches Major Drone and Missile Attack on IsraelTel Aviv condemned the move as a "dangerous escalation" and claimed to have repelled most incoming projectilesby Will Porter@TheWillPorter #Iran #Israel #IRGC #drones https://t.co/GOjbAm3OqU pic.twitter.com/Q2PtxbMAjy / Twitter"
UPDATED: Iran Launches Major Drone and Missile Attack on IsraelTel Aviv condemned the move as a "dangerous escalation" and claimed to have repelled most incoming projectilesby Will Porter@TheWillPorter #Iran #Israel #IRGC #drones https://t.co/GOjbAm3OqU pic.twitter.com/Q2PtxbMAjy
In any case, Iran says the attack is now over. Given that we’re not seeing any signs of massive damage, Iran’s reported claim that its retaliation would be calibrated to avoid escalation into a full-scale regional war seems to have been accurate, as does Washington’s reported claim that it didn’t expect the strike to be large enough to draw the US into war.
A new report from Axios says Biden has personally told Netanyahu that the US will not be supporting any Israeli military response to the Iranian strike. An anonymous senior White House official told Axios that Biden said to Netanyahu, “You got a win. Take the win,” in reference to the number of Iranian weapons that were taken out of the sky by the international coalition in Israel’s defense. Apparently helping to mitigate the damage from the Iranian attack is all the military commitment the White House is willing to make against Iran at this time.
And thank all that is holy for that. A war between the US alliance and Iran and its allies would be the stuff of nightmares, making the horrors we’ve been seeing in Gaza these last six months look like an episode of Peppa Pig.
But Washington merely declining to get involved is nowhere near enough. As the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi quipped on Twitter, “Biden needs to PREVENT further escalation, not just declare his desire to stay out of it.”
Trita Parsi on Twitter: "Not significant enough. Biden needs to PREVENT further escalation, not just declare his desire to stay out of it. https://t.co/KQ0paadDtY / Twitter"
Not significant enough. Biden needs to PREVENT further escalation, not just declare his desire to stay out of it. https://t.co/KQ0paadDtY
Indeed, Israel has already made it clear that it is going to be moving forward with an escalation against Iran. Israel’s Channel 12 cites an unnamed senior official saying the Iranian counter strike is going to receive an “unprecedented response”.
“Israel has already informed the Americans and governments in the region that its response is inevitable,” The Economist reports. “Its military options include launching drones at Iran, and long-range airstrikes on Iran, possibly on military bases or nuclear installations.”
It’s unclear at this time how much the latest message from the Biden administration will affect the calculations of this position, but the mass media are reporting that White House officials are worried Israel is getting ready to do something extremely reckless that could draw the US into a war it would rather avoid.
NBC News reports the following:
“Some top U.S. officials are concerned Israel could do something quickly in response to Iran’s attacks without thinking through potential fallout afterward, according to a senior administration official and a senior defense official.
“Those concerns stem in part from the administration’s views of the approach Israel has taken to its war against Hamas, as well as the attack in Damascus.
“President Joe Biden has privately expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. more deeply into a broader conflict, according to three people familiar with his comments.”
Robert Wright on Twitter: "Read this piece on why Bibi chose to radically escalate with his April 1 strike on Iran's diplomatic compound. It's by Paul Pillar, who knows the territory--he was once in charge of analysis of the Middle East for CIA & all other US intelligence agencies. https://t.co/w4dZjkdy3w / Twitter"
Read this piece on why Bibi chose to radically escalate with his April 1 strike on Iran's diplomatic compound. It's by Paul Pillar, who knows the territory--he was once in charge of analysis of the Middle East for CIA & all other US intelligence agencies. https://t.co/w4dZjkdy3w
People have been raising this concern for some time now. Earlier this month Responsible Statecraft’s Paul Pillar wrote up a solid argument that Netanyahu stands a lot to gain personally from drawing the US into a war with Iran to help him with his legal and political troubles and take the focus off of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Whether that’s the case or not it’s pretty absurd for the Biden administration to just sit around passively hoping this doesn’t happen as though it wouldn’t have a say in the matter, and as though there’s nothing it can do to prevent such an occurrence right now. Biden has had the ability to end this insane cycle of escalation in the middle east since it started six months ago by demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and demanding that Israel rein in its murder machine, just as US presidents have done successfully in the past.
Biden could end all this with one phone call. The fact that he doesn’t means he’s a monster, and no amount of mass media reports about how “concerned” and “frustrated” he is regarding Israel’s actions will ever change that.
_______________
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Empire Managers Keep Acting Like Iran Is About To Attack Israel Without Provocation
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/5ad9bf314291fbcc4307b0bcb79ddfef/href
Iran appears to be poised to launch an attack on Israel in retaliation for the Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, which killed 16 people including multiple Iranian military officers. Iranian forces have already seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, and Tehran continues to vow that it will soon retaliate for the embassy attack at an undisclosed time.
Iran has reportedly said through Oman that the scope of the attack will be calibrated to avoid escalation into an all-out regional conflict. Reuters reports that Washington does not expect the retaliatory attack to be large enough to draw the US into war, so both Washington and Tehran appear to be saying basically the same thing about what’s coming. So as things stand right now it seems both sides see it as unlikely that this will be the spark to ignite a new war of profound horror in the middle east.
What’s really interesting about this situation right now is how western empire managers and propagandists have been framing the coming Iranian retaliation to suggest that Iran is about to attack Israel out of the blue, completely unprovoked. As though bombing an embassy would not be considered an extreme act of war by any nation anywhere on earth.
MSNBC on Twitter: "In response to a reporter asking President Joe Biden what his message to Iran is in this moment, Biden responded "Don't.""We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed," Biden said. pic.twitter.com/zfPkl4i71g / Twitter"
In response to a reporter asking President Joe Biden what his message to Iran is in this moment, Biden responded "Don't.""We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed," Biden said. pic.twitter.com/zfPkl4i71g
They’ve seriously just been talking about it as though the embassy strike didn’t happen, babbling about defending Israel and Israel’s right to defend itself like any attack by Iran would be coming completely out of the blue. On Friday President Biden warned Iran not to attack Israel when questioned about the coming strike, saying, “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed.”
“The threats from Iran are completely unacceptable and we, like the Americans, fully support Israel’s right to defend itself,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday.
“Australia is deeply concerned by indications Iran is preparing military action against Israel,” chimed in Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, saying Iran should “use its influence in the region to promote stability, not contribute to escalation.”
“Israel is under threat of imminent attack by Iran,” said US Senator Tom Cotton on Twitter. “President Biden needs to warn the ayatollahs immediately that the United States will back Israel to the hilt and the joint American-Israeli retaliation for any attack will be swift and devastating.”
“Iran will bear the consequences for choosing to escalate the situation any further,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said following the cargo ship seizure.
Alan MacLeod on Twitter: "You'd never guess from this biased headline that Israel just bombed Iran's embassy. https://t.co/lxKiQ5kWhQ / Twitter"
You'd never guess from this biased headline that Israel just bombed Iran's embassy. https://t.co/lxKiQ5kWhQ
Mass media headlines have also been framing this as an attack that’s coming completely out of nowhere by an irrational aggressor.
“Netanyahu meets top officials as fear of Iran attack on Israel grows,” reads a headline from the BBC.
“Israel braces amid fears of Iranian strike; U.S. shifts forces to region,” a headline from The Washington Post says.
“Israel Bracing for Unprecedented Direct Iran Attack in Days,” blares Bloomberg.
“Major Iranian attack on Israel believed to be imminent,” warns CBS News.
The casual news consumer would see all this and assume that Israel and its allies have received some intelligence that Iran is preparing an attack without provocation, and are doing everything they can to deter this maniacal regime from doing so.
This is ridiculous. If Iran had bombed a US embassy and killed multiple US military officials, the US would be raining bombs on Tehran within hours and everyone knows it. But Israel bombs an Iranian embassy and everyone acts like it didn’t happen and starts yelling at Iran instead.
It’s like if someone ran up and sucker-punched somebody at the bar, and then everyone started screaming at the guy who just got punched that he’d better leave the other guy alone and stop being a bully.
Iran is probably going to attack Israel, because at some point it does have to push back on Israeli violence to create some deterrence. Hopefully it will indeed be limited, hopefully the violence will not spiral into something nightmarish, and hopefully enough people are able to see through all the propaganda spin enough to understand what’s actually happening.
________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
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Yemen ‘promises Iran 400,000 troops’ in event of regional war
Fighters “ready to completely blockade the Red Sea and target US bases in Africa and the Middle East”, says Iran Observer
Image: Iran Observer
Yemen has promised Iran the support of 400,000 troops if regional war breaks out after Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria to murder a top Iranian military officer, Iran Observer Twitter/X account has said this afternoon. The account, which has 233,000 followers and appears to have access to a stream of information from within the region, notes that Yemen has recruited 200,000 additional fighters since Israel began its genocidal assault on the Palestinians in Gaza and says that the fighters are:
ready to completely blockade the Red Sea and target US bases in Africa and the Middle East.
The news came as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon appeared to warn that the group’s relative restraint so far in the face of Israel’s attacks on homes and bases in Lebanon had run out and that ‘all scenarios’ are possible. Yemen’s Houthis have been attacking – in response to the International Court of Justice’s findings against Israel – Israel-bound and -owned shipping off its coast, undeterred by attacks by the UK and US, whose governments continue to collude in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has killed and maimed well over 100,000 people so far, mostly women and children, and has put more than two million into famine.
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