Nuclear

  About an hour after President Trump had announced another US withdrawal – this time from the Summit with North Korea on June 12 – I commented on RT (formerly Russia Today) and got quite a long time until we were broken off by Trump appearing in the White House lawn to speak about it.      

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will chart the way forward in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.   Click here, scroll down to the video Full transcript here BREAKING NEWS After the Deal: A New US #Iran Strategy. This speech equals a declaration of war. The US and #Pompeo here raises demands that no country could ever accept. Therefore, it means war in a variety of ways including military action against Iran – sooner or later. The US hatred of Iran is irrational beyond words and built on lies. This Hitlerist foreign policy speech is obscene and should – must – be met by complete, worldwide condemnation. Click here, scroll down to the video and if you are only interest in the demands, Mr. Pompeo starts listing them around 13 minutes into the video.

  White paper pushes bid to help Iranians topple already weak hardline regime   By Adam Kredo May 10, 2018 3:35 pm The Trump administration is examining a new plan to help Iranians fighting the hardline regime in Iran following America’s exit from the landmark nuclear deal and reimposition of harsh economic sanctions that could topple a regime already beset by protests and a crashing economy, according to a copy of the plan obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Originally published by The Washington Free Beacon on May 10, 2018 here   The three-page white paper being circulated among National Security Council officials in the White House offers a strategy by which the Trump administration can actively work to assist an already aggravated Iranian public topple the hardline ruling regime through a democratization strategy that focuses on driving a deeper wedge between the Iranian people and the ruling regime. The plan,...

    Farhang Jahanpour Against the advice of practically the whole world, including many American scientists, politicians and diplomats, and contrary to the Security Council Resolution 2231 that has given the Iran Nuclear Deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) the backing of international law, last night President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement. Not only did he withdraw America from the deal, but he also threatened to impose sanctions on all countries and companies that trade with Iran. He also issued a warning that he would do to Iran what that country has never experienced before. That statement by itself is in clear violation of International law. His short statement that was meant to justify his action was full of clear errors and inaccuracies and the reversals of known facts. He implied that Iran had violated the terms of the agreement. This is not true....

  – all about this agreement and its text here). Noteworthy is that the nuclear deal is incorporated into international law by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, even though the U.S. already at that point stated – as an exceptionalist state – that it did not consider the deal binding for it. With the exception of Germany, the deal was negotiated – cynically, of course – by countries which have themselves thousands of nuclear weapons. It never mentioned the only state in the region that possesses them, against international law in the form of UN resolutions and, additionally, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That state is Israel whose nuclear weapons Western politicians and their loyal, politically correct media omit mention of – as systematically and uniformly as if orchestrated by an invisible hand from above. Back in 2014-15, many of us stated that the alternative to a negotiated...

By John Buell May 7, 2018 Recently there was an extraordinary moment on corporate TV. Late last month CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Does Israel have nuclear capabilities and nuclear weapons, yes or no?” Netanyahu responded evasively, claiming: “we’ve always been the first to say we wouldn’t introduce it so we haven’t introduced it.” After Cuomo continued to press for a “yes or no answer,” Netanyahu said, “That’s as good an answer as you’re going to get.” As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald noted in response to the exchange between Cuomo and Netanyahu, “Kudos to @ChrisCuomo for pressing Netanyahu on that little uncomfortable fact that is typically ignored: the only country in the Middle East with a proven, clandestine nuclear weapons stockpile is . . . Israel. And the rogue state refuses to join the NPT.” Originally published by Informed Comment on May 7, 2018, here While...

  By Gareth Porter* May 3, 2018 The still-unscheduled Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit offers the opportunity for a denuclearization deal that would avoid a possible nuclear war, but that potential deal remains vulnerable to a hostile corporate media sector and political elites in the United States. At the center of this hostility is national security adviser John Bolton, who’s not just uninterested in selling a denuclearization deal to the public. He’s working actively to undermine it. Originally published by Truthdig on April 30, 2018, here     Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that he leaked intelligence to a Washington think tank sympathetic to his views in order to generate media questioning about the president’s announced plan to reach an agreement with North Korea’s leader. Bolton made no secret of his visceral opposition to such a deal before Trump announced that Bolton would become national security adviser, arguing that Kim Jong...

  The next few days are fraught with danger. One of the most momentous decisions of the century is about to be made. Will President Donald Trump certify or not that Iran is honouring the agreement made with the US and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council to end its nuclear enrichment research, which some observers argued (but not the CIA) was leading to an Iranian nuclear bomb? Danger number one is that it will push Iran to break its side of the bargain and the fear of nuclear bomb manufacture will provoke Saudi Arabia to emulate Iran. Already the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, has charged that “Iran is on a rampage”. Danger number two is that Israel, no longer constrained by the negotiations led by John Kerry, President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, will launch a preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Already there is...

Please watch the video below carefully. You’ll see what could – could, and most likely will – become a piece of world peace history. Note the body language of the two leaders – warm smiles and long handshakes. In spite of being one and the same nation, they meet at the hardest border in the world. Why is it so? Because everybody else around – the US, Japan, Russia, China – to varying degrees want them to be divided and feel threatened by their possible unification. And yes, a unified Korea would be a formidable economic power but a huge, dangerous conflict would be gone, the US could withdraw, Japan would get a chance to reconciliate in substantive terms. What is most amazing in this clip is that Kim first steps over the border line into the South. Then – seemingly surprising Moon – invites Moon to step into the...

  By Gareth Porter Published on Apr 3, 2014     National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship” Presentation at the National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship” on March 7, 2014 at the National Press Club. Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian who specializes in U.S. national security policy. He writes regularly for IPS and has also published investigative articles on Salon.com, the Nation, the American Prospect, Truthout and The Raw Story. His blogs have been published on Huffington Post, Firedoglake, Counterpunch and many other websites. Porter was Saigon bureau chief of Dispatch News Service International in 1971 and later reported on trips to Southeast Asia for The Guardian, Asian Wall Street Journal and Pacific News Service. He is the author of four books on the Vietnam War and the political system of Vietnam. His most recent book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story...

  By Gareth Porter, TFF Associate March 30, 2018 Via theamericanconservative.com In my reporting on U.S.-Israeli policy, I have tracked numerous episodes in which the United States and/or Israel made moves that seemed to indicate preparations for war against Iran. Each time – in 2007, in 2008, and again in 2011 – those moves, presented in corporate media as presaging attacks on Tehran, were actually bluffs aimed at putting pressure on the Iranian government. But the strong likelihood that Donald Trump will now choose* John Bolton as his next national security advisor creates a prospect of war with Iran that is very real. Bolton is no ordinary neoconservative hawk. He has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic, calling repeatedly for bombing Iran in his regular appearances on Fox News, without the slightest indication that he understands the consequences of such a policy. His is not...

  Like it not we find that we’re having to get used to the paradoxes, contradictions and confusions of the Trump era. None is more apparent than his attack on the landmark Iran de-nuclearisation agreement, fashioned by the Obama Administration and the Iranian government. President Donald Trump wants to unwind it, even though it has the 100% support of the UN Security Council which in an unanimous vote enshrined the agreement in international law. At the same time he is trying to lure the North Koreans into a de-nuclearization policy, at the least into a nuclear freeze to stop it developing its rocket science any further, so that it’s incapable of hitting the US with a nuclear-tipped missile. But, given Iran, why should the North Koreans go along with such a deal? Why should it make such a deal when it knows there is a chance that the US might...