TBR News May 11, 2018
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. May 11, 2018: “It is well-known in Washington that Donald Trump is a very vocal racist. He uses the ‘nigger’ word constantly, hates Obama and is determined to ‘root out’ Mexican, Central American and Muslims from the United States. His frantic staff is terrified that Trump will use ‘inappropriate’ language concerning these groups in front of members of the media or other inconvenient people. As Trump has very little self-control and his often irrationally outspoken, their fears are not unfounded.”
Table of Contents
- The anti-Obama: Trump’s drive to destroy his predecessor’s legacy
- Are Bibi and Bolton in the Wheel House Now?
- Trump’s Ten Lies: A Response to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Speech
- Europe Must Resist the US to Salvage the Iran Nuclear Deal
- Business Is Booming for the U.K.’s Spy Tech Industry
- Department of Defense
- Iran denies attacking Israeli positions
The anti-Obama: Trump’s drive to destroy his predecessor’s legacy
From the Iran deal to TPP to climate change, ‘the whole thing that animates and unites his policy views is antipathy towards Obama’
May 11, 2018
by David Smith in Washington
The Guardian
When Donald Trump pulled out of the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, hardline conservatives celebrated, European leaders winced and Barack Obama made a rare, lengthy public statement.
Trump’s decision was “misguided” and “a serious mistake”, Obama said, as his signature foreign policy achievement was tossed away.
It was just the latest example of Trump’s all-out assault on the Obama legacy. From climate change to criminal justice to international relations, rarely has one occupant of the Oval Office appeared so obsessed with taking a chainsaw to the work of another.
Tommy Vietor, a former national security council spokesman under Obama, told the Guardian: “The whole thing that animates and unites his policy views is antipathy towards Obama. It’s fucking pathetic. He’s a vindictive person so there is an element of this that is about sticking it to Obama. He knows, probably better than anyone, how to find all the Republican erogenous zones because he spent years whipping people into a frenzy and telling lies about Obama.”
From the start, it has been hard to imagine two men more different than Obama, 56, a mixed-race intellectual married to one woman for a quarter of a century, and Trump, 71, a white, thrice married businessman and reality TV star who has boasted about grabbing women’s private parts. One reads books voraciously; the other, it is said, barely reads at all. There were few reasons for their paths to ever cross except, perhaps, on a golf course, their one common passion.
But then came the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Trump, pushing a racially charged conspiracy theory questioning whether the president was born in America, was among the tuxedo-wearing guests. Obama mocked his nascent political ambitions without mercy. “Obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,” he said, recalling an episode of Celebrity Apprentice in which the men’s cooking team fell short and Trump fired actor Gary Busey.
“And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night,” the president continued to roars of laughter. “Well handled, sir. Well handled. Say what you will about Mr Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House. Let’s see what we’ve got up there.”
The room erupted as Obama pointed to a Photoshopped image of the then fantastical idea of a Trump White House, with three extra storeys, a giant “TRUMP” sign, a hotel, casino and golf course, a giant crystal chandelier, four gold columns and two women in swimwear drinking cocktails in the north lawn fountain.
Four years later, Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker magazine would recall: “Trump’s humiliation was as absolute, and as visible, as any I have ever seen: his head set in place, like a man in a pillory, he barely moved or altered his expression as wave after wave of laughter struck him … he sat perfectly still, chin tight, in locked, unmovable rage.”
Future historians may well ask: was this the moment that Trump resolved to storm the White House and tear down the Obama legacy?
For sure, from the day he formally launched his election campaign in June 2015, branding Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, he cast himself as the anti-Obama in style and substance. His act enraptured rightwing media and the Republican base, who saw Trump as a vessel into which they could pour their hopes and frustrations. David Litt, a former speechwriter for Obama, said this week: “It’s not only Trump who says, ‘If Obama is for it, I’m against it.’ This was the guiding philosophy for eight years of the Obama administration. Trump is a catalyst of the movement but he’s also a product of it.”
During his battle with Hillary Clinton, Trump duly promised to unravel Obama’s accomplishments. He described the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed free trade deal with Asia, as “a rape of our country”. He said he is “not a great believer in manmade climate change” and vowed to cancel the Paris agreement. He called the Iran nuclear accord a “disaster” and “the worst deal ever negotiated” and warned that it could lead to a “nuclear holocaust”.
John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “The president ideologically disagrees with much of what President Obama accomplished but it’s important to remember these were campaign promises. It’s not out of nowhere. It’s what his voters wanted. Very little of what the president is doing is shocking, considering his campaign rhetoric.”
Soon after the stunning election outcome, Obama hosted Trump at the White House for about an hour and a half. Trump seemed surprised and a little impressed by the welcome, Obama appeared to be walking on eggshells.
But extraordinarily, since inauguration day, the men have not spoken. Hudak described this as “odd”, noting a past example: the first person Obama called after the killing of Osama Bin Laden was George W Bush.
“But it’s important to remember President Trump doesn’t like to hear ideas that he does not believe. If he called President Obama and said, ‘Can you talk me through this Iran deal?’ he would hear things that wouldn’t fit with that mindset. He could call Bill Clinton or George Bush, but why waste their time?”
At the recent funeral of former first lady Barbara Bush, the Bushes, Clintons and Obamas were joined by the first lady, Melania Trump, but the current president was conspicuously absent.
In the meantime, Trump is working through his Obama checklist at a rapid clip. He made good on his promises to withdraw from the TPP, Paris and Iran agreements. He partially reversed what he called a “terrible and misguided deal” with Cuba, reinstating some travel and commercial restrictions. He ordered the Pentagon to reverse an Obama-era policy that allowed transgender people to serve in the military.
Trump has also struck a radically different tone from the 44th president, expressing admiration for strongmen, confounding America’s longstanding allies and apparently viewing international relations through the prism of personal chemistry. The steady hand of “no drama Obama” has been replaced by chaos, unpredictability and Twitter diplomacy.
Domestically, his tone on abortion rights, gun control and race relations represents another 180-degree turn. He announced plans to scrap Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a programme created under Obama to allow people brought to the US illegally as children the temporary right to live in America. He has rolled back hundreds of government regulations in areas such as immigration, net neutrality and clean air and water.
Some reversals have gained less public attention but could have more lasting consequences. Whereas the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors to be less aggressive in charging non-violent drug offenders, Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has reverted to a hardline stance, raising the prospect of a resurgence in mass incarceration just as the prison population had begun to dip.
Lanhee Chen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, said: “It’s not unusual for a president to want to do things differently from his predecessor. I will say the scope and ambition of Trump’s effort to do that is breathtaking. Whether it’s breathtakingly good or breathtakingly bad depends on your point of view.”
But there have been setbacks in the anti-Obama crusade. Trump was unable to steer Republicans to agree on a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, the flagship of Obama’s domestic programme, though critics argue they have since done their best to sabotage it through a sweeping tax reform and other measures.
Some believe the effort failed because Trump has little grasp of or interest in policy details. Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist, said: “His only guiding principle seems to be to undo what Obama did. His driving motivation seems to be his animosity towards Obama. We know he has no deep convictions of his own so Obama became his negative reference point.”
Are Bibi and Bolton in the Wheel House Now?
May 11, 2018
by Patrick J. Buchanan
AntiWar
Brushing aside the anguished pleas of our NATO allies, President Trump Tuesday contemptuously trashed the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions.
Prime Minister Theresa May of Great Britain, President Emmanuel Macron of France and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were put on notice that their ties to Iran are to be severed, or secondary sanctions will be imposed on them.
Driving the point home, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin ordered Airbus to cancel its $19 billion contract to sell 100 commercial planes to Iran.
Who is cheering Trump’s trashing of the treaty?
The neocons who sought his political extinction in 2016, the royals of the Gulf, Bibi Netanyahu, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC had warned Iranians that the Americans were duplicitous.
When Trump finished speaking, Bibi launched strikes on Iranian bases in Syria, and flew to Moscow to persuade Vladimir Putin not to give the Iranians any air defense against Israeli attacks.
Iranian forces responded with 20 missiles fired at the Golan, which ignited a massive Israeli counterstrike Thursday night, a 70-missile attack on Iranian bases in Syria.
We appear to be at the beginning of a new war, and how it ends we know not. But for Bibi and National Security Adviser John Bolton, the end has always been clear – the smashing of Iran and regime change.
Tuesday, Trump warned that Iran is on “a quest for nuclear weapons,” and “if we do nothing … in just a short period of time, the world’s worst sponsor of state terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapon.”
And where is the evidence for this Bush-like assertion?
If Iran is on a “quest” for nukes, why did 17 U.S. intel agencies, “with high confidence,” in 2007 and 2011, say Iran did not even have a nuclear weapons program?
Saddam Hussein could not convince us he had no WMD, because the nonexistent WMD were the pretext, the casus belli, for doing what the War Party had already decided to do: invade Iraq.
We were lied into that war. And how did it turn out?
Why has the Foreign Relations committee not called in the heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies and asked them flat out: Does Iran have an active nuclear bomb program, or is this a pack of lies to stampede us into another war?
If Iran is on a quest for nukes, let the intel agencies tell us where the work is being done, so we can send inspectors and show the world.
Efforts to pull us back from being dragged into a new war have begun.
The Europeans are begging Iran to abide by the terms of the nuclear deal, even if the Americans do not. But the regime of Hassan Rouhani, who twice defeated Ayatollah-backed candidates, is in trouble.
The nuclear deal and opening to the West were the reasons the children of the Green Movement of 2009 voted for Rouhani. If his difficulties deepen because of reimposed U.S. and Western sanctions, his great achievement, the nuclear deal, will be seen by his people as the failed gamble of a fool who trusted the Americans. Should Rouhani’s regime fall, we may get a Revolutionary Guard regime rather less to the liking of everyone, except for the War Party, which could seize upon that as a pretext for war.
What happens next is difficult to see.
Iran does not want a war with Israel in Syria that it cannot win.
Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, which just swept democratic elections in Lebanon, does not want a war with Israel that would bring devastation upon the nation it now leads.
The Russians don’t want a war with Israel or the Americans.
But as Putin came to the rescue of a Syria imperiled by ISIS and al-Qaida, to save his ally from a broad insurgency, he is not likely to sit impotently and watch endless air and missile strikes on Syria.
Trump has said U.S. troops will be getting out of Syria. But Bolton and the generals appear to have walked him back.
There are reports we are reinforcing the Kurds in Manbij on the west bank of the Euphrates, though President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded that the Kurds vacate all Syrian border towns with Turkey.
Americans are also reportedly on the border of Yemen, assisting Saudi Arabia in locating the launch sites of the rockets being fired at Riyadh by Houthi rebels in retaliation for the three years of savage Saudi assault on their country.
Meanwhile, the news out of Afghanistan, our point of entry into the Near East wars almost a generation ago, is almost all bad – most of it about terrorist bombings of Afghan troops and civilians.
Is the foreign policy that America Firsters voted for being replaced by the Middle East agenda of Bibi and the neoconservatives? So it would appear.
Trump’s Ten Lies: A Response to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Speech
May 11, 2018
by Ted Snider
AntiWar
After listening to Trump’s speech explaining his decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that Trump’s speech contained “over ten lies.” Khamenei didn’t go on to name the lies.
So, what were the lies Trump told?
Lie #1
“The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror”
The United States has long known that its ally, Saudi Arabia, and not its enemy, Iran, is the leading state sponsor of terror. All recent attempts to link Iran to terrorism have failed. Even America’s own reports on terrorism don’t list Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism. The State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorisms “rarely identifies a terrorist incident as an act by or on behalf of Iran.” And, the most recent Global Terrorism Index from the Department of Homeland Security clearly states that, not Iran, but “ISIL, Boko Haram, the Taliban and al-Qaeda” are the biggest terrorist threats. None of these four groups is Shiite and none is aligned with Iran, but combined they are “responsible for 74 per cent of all deaths from terrorism.” The Index also clearly identifies “ISIL,” not Iran “as the deadliest terrorist group.”
As The U.S. well knows, Saudi Arabia is the leading state sponsor of terror. As early as 2009, the State Department had already declared that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban . . . and other terrorist groups.” A widely circulated 2012 classified Defense Intelligence Agency Information Intelligence Report identified the “supporting powers” of ISIS to be “Western countries, the Gulf States and Turkey.” Two years later, Vice President Biden was still making the same case against, not Iran, but Saudi Arabia: “[O]ur allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria . . .. They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis.” Point 4 of a memo written by Hillary Clinton on September 17, 2014 confesses that based on “western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region, “the US knew that “the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia . . . [were] providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region.” And, in 2015, President “Obama and other US officials urged Gulf leaders who are funding the opposition to keep control of their clients, so that a post-Assad regime isn’t controlled by extremists from the Islamic State or al-Qaeda.”
Lie #2
“The Iranian regime . . . supports . . . the Taliban and Al Qaeda”
After 9/11, Iran immediately sided with the U.S. against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Northern Alliance, who provided many of the anti-Taliban fighters once the Americans and her allies invaded Afghanistan, was largely put together by Iran, who placed it in the hands of the Americans. Iran offered its air bases to the US and permitted the US to carry out search and rescue missions for downed US planes. The Iranians also supplied the US with intelligence on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets. Iranian diplomats were secretly meeting with US officials as early as October 2001 to plan the removal of the Taliban and the creation of a new government in Afghanistan. At the Bonn Conference of December 2001, Iran was absolutely crucial in setting up Afghanistan’s post-Taliban government.
Iran also arrested hundreds of the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who escaped into her borders. Iran documented the identity of more than two hundred al-Qaeda and Taliban escapees to the United Nations and sent many of them back to their homelands. For many others who couldn’t be sent back to their own countries, Iran offered to try them in Iran. Iran also followed up on an American request to search for, arrest and deport several more al-Qaeda operatives that the US identified.
Lie #3
“Over the years, Iran and its proxies have bombed American Embassies and military installations, murdered hundreds of American service members, and kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured American citizens.”
The claim that Iran has been responsible for the bombing of American military installations is highly questionable. The 1983 Hezbollah bombing of the American barracks in Beirut that killed 241 members of the American military was an attack on a military base in Beirut belonging to a foreign invader that was actively and currently bombing Lebanon.
As for the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex for American military personnel in Saudi Arabia, the case against Iran rests largely on information provided by their enemy, Saudi Arabia. Michael Scheuer, director of the Bin Laden unit, says that “a substantial body of evidence” pointed, not to Iran, but to al-Qaeda. Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett say that by 1998, even the Saudis were admitting that the bombing “was executed by Saudi hands. No foreign party was involved”. Then Secretary of State Warren Christopher also declared that “there was never any adequate proof” that Iran was involved. Clinton’s defense secretary, William Perry, said clearly that “al-Qaeda rather than Iran was behind” the bombing.
As for kidnapping American citizens, that was 39 years ago, and the charge ignores the context. As the Americans had used a coup against the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 to thwart Iran’s first attempt to remove the Shah, so Iranians saw the US providing sanctuary to the Shah in 1979 as another American attempt to midwife the same fate again. As professor Vali Nasr of Tufts University has said, “In the popular mind, the hostage crisis was seen as justified by what happened in 1953”.
Lie #4
“No action taken by the regime has been more dangerous than its pursuit of nuclear weapons – and the means of delivering them.”
Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said repeatedly that “We have never pursued or sought a nuclear bomb, and we are not going to do so”. Both Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his predecessor, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, have insisted that Iran would never pursue nuclear weapons because nuclear weapons are against the precepts of Islam. Khamenei has insisted that “from an ideological and fiqhi [Islamic jurisprudence] perspective, we consider developing nuclear weapons as unlawful. We consider using such weapons as a big sin.”
And no one really believes otherwise: not US intelligence and not Israeli intelligence.
Former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asked, “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon?” and succinctly and pointedly answered: “No”. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), representing the collective conclusions of all of America’s many intelligence agencies, said with “high confidence” that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The 2011 NIE said that “the bottom-line assessments of the [2007] N.I.E. still hold true. We have not seen indications that the government has made the decision to move ahead with the program”.
Yuval Diskin, the man who headed Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, for six years, accused Prime Minister Netanyahu of “misleading the public on the Iran issue.” And Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, then Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, insisted that Iran has not “made the decision” to pursue a nuclear weapons program. Then Defense Minister Ehud Barak, clearly stated that “it is not the case” that “Iran is determined to . . . attempt to obtain nuclear weapons . . . as quickly as possible.” He added rhetorically, “To do that, Iran would have to announce it is leaving the inspection regime . . .. Why haven’t they done that?”
Former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei told investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that “[d]uring my time at the agency, we haven’t seen a shred of evidence that Iran has been weaponizing”.
The bottom line is that no one – not the United States, not Israel, not the International Atomic Energy Agency – ever really believed Iran was developing nuclear weapons.
Lie #5
“The deal lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for very weak limits on the regime’s nuclear activity”
They were not weak limits. Iran vastly reduced the number of its centrifuges and bricked in its heavy water reactor at Arak. Iran destroyed its entire stockpile of medical uranium enriched to 19.5% and no longer enriches beyond 3.67%, leaving them a legal civilian nuclear program for electricity: and even the amount of low enriched uranium Iran can keep is strictly limited to under 300kg. Its Fordow nuclear facility was converted into a nuclear, physics and technology center.
Iran agreed to submit to a highly intrusive regime of inspections and monitoring by the IAEA, including spot inspections to ensure that these goals were being met. Iran also agreed to the “use of IAEA approved and certified modern technologies including on-line enrichment measurement and electronic seals.”
The agreement even limited some research and development for a specified period of time.
Lie #6
“The deal lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran . . .. at the point when the United States had maximum leverage”
Trump’s assessment of the efficacy of the sanctions is a fantasy. There is no evidence that the Iranian regime was on the brink of collapse or that they were forcing the termination of Iran’s civilian nuclear program. On the contrary, the sanction strategy had reached its limit and Iran was now winning the sanctions versus nuclear program enlargement battle. Trita Parsi says that, though “US intelligence services had predicted that mass demonstrations and riots would occur within months after the imposition of sanctions . . .. the government in Tehran never lost control.” Enrichment of uranium for peaceful civilian purposes is legal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Iran’s right to exercise the same rights as every other country became a point of profound national pride for Iranians who stood by the Rouhani administration.
Sanctions actually had an effect opposite to the desired one. Iran escalated its building of centrifuges and grew its stockpile of low- and medium-enriched uranium to prove to the US that pressuring them through sanctions wouldn’t work. Witnessing this pattern, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper brought the Senate back to reality with the assessment that “sanctions as imposed so far have not caused [Iran] to change their behavior or policy.” He added that “Iran’s economic difficulties probably will not jeopardize the regime.”
The problem for the US was that there was only so many targets they could sanction. But Iran could keep building centrifuges and keep enriching uranium. So, while the US strategy had an endpoint, the Iranian response did not: the US ran out of things to sanction; Iran kept enriching. Sanctions wasn’t going to work. They were leading to a dilemma: accept Iran’s nuclear program or go to war. That led Obama to the negotiation option. And that is the concern now.
Contrary to Trump’s version of history, sanctions were not bringing about the inevitable collapse of the Islamic Republic and were not producing the desired change.
Lie #7
“Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie. Last week, Israel published intelligence documents – long concealed by Iran – conclusively showing the Iranian regime and its history of pursuing nuclear weapons.”
As his only evidence that Iran violated the JCPOA, Trump cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent revelation to the world of proof that “Iran lied, big time, after signing the nuclear deal in 2015.” Netanyahu displayed binders with over 50,000 paper files and a wall of CDs that he said were packed with the proof. But the documents were not “long concealed by Iran,” and they were not conclusive proof that Iran pursued nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu’s “significant new revelations” were not new at all. The binders and discs contained nothing that the IAEA hadn’t seen and dismissed the first time around. Those old attempts to discredit Iran have been carefully discredited by many experts, including Gareth Porter in Manufactured Crisis. The IAEA was finished with them by December of 2015.
Olli Heinonen, the chief inspector of the IAEA at the time of the JCPOA negotiations – and not someone who was in any way soft on Iran – said that the IAEA first saw the “significant new” evidence that Netanyahu revealed in 2005. Watching Netanyahu’s revelation, Heinonen could only say, “I just saw a lot of pictures I had seen before.”
Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy said that, based on first reports of Netanyahu’s presentation, it “has not put into question Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA.” Mogherini said that the final word had to go to the IAEA. The day after Netanyahu’s presentation, the IAEA said that there was “no credible indications” of Iran working on a nuclear weapons program for several years before the JCPOA.
Lie #8
“The agreement was so poorly negotiated that even if Iran fully complies, the regime can still be on the verge of a nuclear breakout in just a short period of time. The deal’s sunset provisions are totally unacceptable.”
The most commonly called upon criticism by those hostile to the JCPOA, the “sunset” objection is a chimera. And not just because most non-proliferation agreements have the same fifteen year term this one has. The objection is disingenuous because it is based on a misreading of the agreement, or, perhaps, on not having read it at all. Many of the key restrictions referred to last much more than fifteen years. The text of the agreement specifies that Iran agreed to allow the IAEA to monitor its entire uranium supply chain for twenty-five years and all centrifuge production facilities for twenty. More importantly, though, Trita Parsi points out that “the most important restrictions and inspections instruments are permanent, according to the Additional Protocol to the Nonproliferation Treaty.” Iran commits in the JCPOA to a schedule for ratifying the Additional Protocol.
Lie #9
“Making matters worse, the deal’s inspection provisions lack adequate mechanisms to prevent, detect, and punish cheating and don’t even have the unqualified right to inspect many important locations, including military facilities.”
The JCPOA clearly states that inspectors can get access to military sites if the IAEA has credible evidence that suspicious activity is occurring on the site. The IAEA says that there has been no credible evidence of suspicious activity and that “Washington has not provided such indications to back up its pressure on the IAEA to make such a request.”
IAEA chief Amano Yukiya defended the inspections as the world’s “most robust nuclear verification regime.”
Lie #10
“Not only does the deal fail to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but it also fails to address the regime’s development of ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads.”
The deal was never meant to address Iran’s ballistic missiles, and their ballistic missiles are incapable of delivering nuclear warheads.
Resolution 2231, approved in support of the JCPOA, “calls upon” Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons” for a defined period of time. Iran insists they are in compliance with this requirement because the missiles are defensive and are designed to carry a conventional payload: the missiles are not capable of being nuclear armed. Iran expert Gareth Porter says that Iran’s “ballistic missiles were not designed for nuclear weapons.” Porter cites experts who say that “Iran’s medium-range missiles have been designed for conventional deterrence,” and that “Iran would have to redesign at least the internal components of the missile to adapt it to carrying nuclear weapons.”
Besides, since Iran verifiably does not have a nuclear weapons program, that the missile cannot carry a nuclear weapon becomes tautological. Similar earlier American claims about Iranian nuclear missiles have all been embarrassingly discredited.
Lie #11
“It has now been almost 40 years since this dictatorship seized power and took a proud nation hostage.”
Leaving aside that the revolution almost forty years ago seized power from an American/British imposed dictatorship that the Americans and British brought to power with a coup against the overwhelmingly popularly elected Mohammad Mosaddeq, the Iranian regime did not take “a proud nation hostage.” Iran experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett say that “at every step along the way – from an initial referendum on the establishment of an Islamic republic, through elections for a constituent assembly to draft its constitution, to the ratification of that constitution – Khomeini would ask for and receive the Iranian public’s overwhelming support.” They go on to show just how great support for the new government was in 1979: “less than two months after the revolution’s triumph, a referendum was held to decide whether a postrevolutionary Iranian state should be, as Khomeini had pledged, an Islamic republic. Well over 90 percent of eligible voters turned out: 98.2% of them voted yes.”
Ooops, that’s eleven!
Europe Must Resist the US to Salvage the Iran Nuclear Deal
May 9, 2018
Patrick Cockburn
The Independent/UK
“Iraq is at the muzzle of the gun,” says Ali Allawi, Iraqi historian and former minister, speaking of the increased turmoil expected to follow the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement.
It is not only Iraq which is in danger: an escalating confrontation between the US and Iran will affect the whole region, but its greatest impact will be in Syria and Iraq where wars have long been raging and Washington and Tehran are old rivals.
The US will rely at first on the reimposition of economic sanctions on Iran to force it to comply with US demands and hopefully bring about regime change in Tehran. But, if this does not work – and it will almost certainly fail – then there will be a growing risk of military action either carried out directly by the US or through “green-lighting” Israeli airstrikes.
Iran is for the moment reacting cautiously to Trump’s denunciation of the 2015 accord, portraying itself as the victim of arbitrary action and seeking to spur the EU states into taking practical steps to resist imposing draconian sanctions along the lines of those that were imposed before 2015. Even if this does not happen, it will be important for Iran that the Europeans should only grudgingly cooperate with the US in enforcing sanctions, particularly on Iranian oil exports.
A problem for the US is that Trump has made the Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama the issue on which he will test the limits of US power which he had pledged to expand. But the agreement is internationally popular and is seen to be working effectively in denying Iran the ability to develop a nuclear device. The US is therefore becoming self-isolated, with full support only from Israel and Saudi Arabia, in the first weeks of a crisis that could go on for years.
Already Trump’s determination to sink the deal forever has involved marginalising and humiliating France, Germany and UK. They had pleaded for it to be preserved but made more palatable to the US by separate agreements on ballistic missiles and other issues. Trump seems to have enjoyed the procession of European leaders from Emmanuel Macron to Boris Johnson asking for compromise, only to go away empty-handed.
If the European leaders now go along with sanctioning Iran, there will be even less reason for Trump to take their views seriously in future. They have already seen their attempt to appease him on climate change fail to produce anything, so they either have to accept that they have less influence and a reduced role in the world or make a serious attempt to preserve the nuclear accord.
But even if they do so, the US will be able to put intense economic pressure on Iran and its trading partners. Banks and companies are terrified of incurring the ire of the US Treasury and facing massive fines for even an unintentional breach of sanctions. Even if EU governments want their companies to go on investing in Iran, they may consider the risk too great.
Sanctions are a powerful but blunt instrument, take a long time to work and usually do not produce the political dividends expected by those who impose them. The Iranian rial may fall and hyperinflation return to 40 per cent, but this will most likely not be enough if Iran returns to enriching uranium. It has already said that it is not going to keep abiding by its part of the nuclear agreement if it is not getting any of the economic benefits promised.
What will the US do then? This is the crucial question for the Middle East and the rest of the world. Trump has just torpedoed any diplomatic solution to what he sees as the threat of Iran developing a nuclear bomb. The only alternative is a military response, but this would have to be more than a few days of intense airstrikes. Anything less than total war would not win for Trump the kind of results he says he wants.
Iran may be weak economically, but politically and militarily it is in a strong position in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the countries likely to provide the main arena for the coming crisis. In all three places it is Iran’s fellow Shia who are in control and see the US as an ally of the Sunni states in what is in large part a sectarian Shia-Sunni conflict.
Has the Trump administration thought any of this through? The crisis is beginning to feel very much like that in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some of the same figures, such as the national security adviser John Bolton, are the very same neoconservatives who believed that invading and occupying Iraq would be an easy business. They sound as if they are bringing the same blend of arrogance and ignorance to their coming confrontation with Iran.
Business Is Booming for the U.K.’s Spy Tech Industry
May 11 2018
by Matt Kennard
The Intercept
Driving into Cheltenham from the west, it is hard to miss the offices of Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the United Kingdom’s surveillance agency. The large, doughnut-shaped building sits behind high-perimeter fencing with barbed wire and many levels of security. The facility – used to eavesdrop on global emails and phone calls – is located on the edge of the sleepy Gloucestershire town, which feels like an incongruous location for one of the world’s most aggressive spy agencies.
Cheltenham has a population of just 117,000 people, and GCHQ’s presence has turned the area into one of Europe’s central hubs for companies working in the fields of cybersecurity and surveillance. GCHQ says it employs almost 6,000 people in Cheltenham and at some smaller bases around the U.K., although the agency has in recent years secretly expanded its workforce, reportedly employing thousands more staff.
People in the area are now talking of a cyber “corridor” that stretches for 50 miles from Malvern, just north of Cheltenham, all the way to Bristol, where the Ministry of Defence has its equipment and support headquarters at Abbey Wood. Many quaint English towns, known for their farming and country pubs, have seen an influx of companies dealing in cybersecurity and electronic spying. Even office space on former farms is being used for this burgeoning industry.
Chris Dunning-Walton, the founder of a nonprofit called Cyber Cheltenham, or Cynam, organizes quarterly events in the town attended by politicians and entrepreneurs. “Historically, there has been a need for the companies that are working here to be very off the radar with their relationships with GCHQ and to some extent, that does exist,” says Dunning-Walton. But since Edward Snowden leaked information in 2013 about GCHQ’s sweeping surveillance activities, the agency has been forced to come out of the shadows and embrace greater transparency. One consequence of this, according to Dunning-Walton, is that GCHQ is now more open to partnering with private companies, which has helped fuel the cyber industry around the Cheltenham area.
Northrop Grumman, the world’s fifth-largest arms manufacturer, has located its European cyber and intelligence operations in Cheltenham, where it has two offices in the center of the town. In the nearby city of Gloucester, a 20-minute drive west of Cheltenham, Raytheon, the world’s third-largest arms company, in 2015 opened a Cyber Innovation Centre that it says is focused on “big data, analytics and network defense.” BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, the cyber arm of the world’s fourth-largest arms company, also has offices in Gloucester, where it says it “delivers information intelligence solutions to government and commercial customers.”
Many of these companies are secretive about the work they do – especially when it concerns surveillance technology – and refuse to speak to the media. But L3 TRL Technology – which is based in Tewkesbury at the northern tip of this new cyber corridor – does grant an interview via email.
L3 says it provides “electronic warfare” equipment that can jam communication signals and gather intelligence. A spokesperson for the company says it plays “a crucial role in counter terrorism and the protection of military forces with our electronic warfare solutions.” He declines to provide any information about any of the company’s customers. But a video posted on YouTube by a Middle Eastern news agency reveals one potential client: It documents a recent meeting between L3’s parent company and Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy commander of the UAE military.
According to government records, the U.K. has sold weapons and other equipment worth £7.3 billion ($9.9 billion) to the UAE in the past decade, including components for telecommunications eavesdropping technology and “intrusion software,” which is used to hack into targeted phones and computers.
Another Cheltenham-based company is CommsAudit, whose flagship product is a surveillance system called Spectra Black, a portable device that can monitor cellphone calls and other wireless communications. CommsAudit did not respond to a request for comment and does not publicly disclose the identities of its customers. The company was, however, showcasing its products at the 2017 DSEI arms fair in London, which was attended by government delegations from across the world.
Latching onto this wave of innovation, last year, the British government pledged £22 million ($30 million) in funding for a new cyber business park on a patch of land close to GCHQ’s headquarters. “It will act as a ‘honeypot’ for cyber security and high tech supply chain businesses,” the promotional literature said, creating 7,000 jobs, while boosting the number of private companies in the area that can then potentially become GCHQ’s clients. There is a lot of largesse to go around. GCHQ takes the majority of the share of the roughly £2.8 billion ($3.8 billion) budget for Britain’s intelligence services and has twice the number of personnel of MI5 and MI6 combined.
David Woodfine, a former head of the Ministry of Defence’s Security Operations Centre, worked inside GCHQ’s Cheltenham headquarters for two years. He left in September 2013 to found Cyber Security Associates, a Gloucestershire-based company providing cyber consultancy services to the public and private sector.
Woodfine says toward the end of his tenure at GCHQ, there was a realization that the agency needed to partner more with private industry. “From a GCHQ perspective, I think their whole attitude has changed from quite a hard approach – ‘we’ll keep everything in-house’ – to ‘actually, we need to open up.’ They changed their recruiting, their apprenticeship schemes, so they are attracting more young talent into their organization.”
The National Cyber Security Centre – which opened in 2016 under the remit of GCHQ – is currently piloting new “Cyber Schools Hubs” in Gloucestershire. The idea is to send staff into local schools to “encourage a diverse range of students into taking up computer science,” in effect grooming the next generation of cyber-competent spies.
GCHQ offers meager salaries compared to the private sector, but the agency can offer prospective employees the chance to work with technologies that they could not use anywhere else – because if they did, they would be breaking the law. “That’s a good way of retaining people on public sector pay,” says Woodfine. “So you can argue that they don’t join for the money, they join for the ability to learn and to test their techniques and their abilities.”
A GCHQ employee can work with the agency for a few years, learn about its tools and methods, and then take that knowledge with them to a job in the more lucrative private sector, where there are plenty opportunities for surveillance innovation. According to the London-based advocacy group Privacy International, the U.K. has 104 companies producing surveillance equipment for export to foreign governments and corporations. Only the United States – with 122 companies – has more.
Since 2013, sales of surveillance and hacking technology have been controlled under the Wassenaar Arrangement, which was signed by 42 countries, including the U.S. and most of Europe. The arrangement is intended to prevent authoritarian regimes from obtaining arms and sophisticated spy tools that could be used to commit human rights violations. However, it is not legally binding. And the U.K. has continued to sell eavesdropping equipment to a number of countries with questionable human rights records, such as Honduras, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, China, and Qatar.
Inside the bustling Victoria train station in central London, Digital Barriers, the world’s premier video analytics company, has its offices. Video analytics sounds like an arcane branch of the high-tech industry, but in terms of surveillance technology, it is a field that has rapidly advanced in recent years. Zak Doffman, chief executive at Digital Barriers, founded the company in 2010 after recognizing that in the area of video intelligence, there was a gap in the international market. Digital Barriers’s technology is designed to analyze video – and identify people’s faces – in real time, where the cameras are placed, rather than having to rely on retrospective analysis.
In its London offices, the company demonstrates to this reporter how even with a scarf wrapped around a person’s face, its software can successfully identify them within a few seconds using a standard surveillance camera. Facial-recognition technology is notoriously inaccurate and can produce false positives, but Digital Barriers claims its software can pick out obscured and blurred faces in crowds and match them with photographs that are held on databases or published on the internet. It is, the company says, most useful for counterterrorism operations. But in the wrong hands, wired up to a nationwide camera network, the technology could potentially be used to trace the movements of millions of people in real time. “We built the business primarily in the public sector working for government agencies,” says Doffman. “We are now working increasingly in the private sector with the commercial customers.”
Digital Barriers’s website boasts that it has clients in more than 50 countries. Doffman won’t reveal the names of his customers, and when questioned about the export licensing process, he says the company’s products are exempt. “It’s not export control per se,” he says, “so there’s no formal restrictions on the technology.” What would he do if countries with authoritarian governments wanted to buy the system? Doffman says only that Digital Barriers has a “moral code on this stuff.”
People within this industry want the technology to remain uncontrolled; they argue that countries with authoritarian governments don’t want this type of video surveillance anyway. “Countries where you have a lot of corruption, the last thing they want is facial recognition,” says one industry source, because of elite factionalism. But that seems scant reassurance for dissidents living in dictatorships that can now freely access this technology at the right price.
Department of Defense
NUMBER 2905.17
June 13, 2016 USD(I)
SUBJECT: DoD Domestic Military Order-Counterinsurgency Overview : See Enclosure 1
Domestic Military Order – Counterinsurgency Overview
Understanding Insurgency
Domestic insurgencies date to the earliest forms of government and will continue to exist as long as the governed harbor grievances against authority that they believe cannot be resolved by peaceful means.
What is a domestic insurgency? The Department of Defense (DOD) defines domestic insurgency as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict.” Simply put, a domestic insurgency is a struggle between a non-ruling group and their ruling authority. Domestic insurgents use political resources, to include the increased use of the media and international opinion, as well as violence to destroy the political legitimacy of the ruling authority and build their own political legitimacy and power. Examples of this type of warfare range from the American Revolution to the previous situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The conflict itself can range from acts of terrorism to the more conventional use of the media to sway public opinion. Whatever form the insurgency takes, it serves an ideology or political goal.
Some of the motivating factors in the current politico/sociological situation are:
Massive and continuing unemployment in all levels of American business and industry. Only those who are technically proficient, i.e. in fields of computer science, are employable. Another point of contention is the huge influx of illegal foreign immigrants and the perception that these prevent Americans from obtaining work and also are perceived as draining the national welfare rolls. Also, a growing functional illiteracy in the American public, which has sharply diminished the reading of newspapers and increased the popularity of the Internet with its brief “sound bites.”A growing public perception of both disinterest and corruption on the part of National and State legislators has caused massive disillusionment on the part of the people. The recent revelations that the American (and foreign) public is closely watched and spied upon by governmental organs at the behest of the President has created a very volatile and very negative attitude towards any and all official programs.An insurgency is defined as an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict It is a protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken government control and legitimacy while increasing insurgent control. Political power is the central issue in an insurgency.
Each insurgency has its own unique characteristics based on its strategic objectives, its operational environment, available resources, operational method, and tactics For example, an insurgency may be based on mass mobilization through political action or the FOCO theory. Insurgencies frequently seek to overthrow the existing social order and reallocate power within the country.
The goal of an insurgency is to mobilize human and material resources in order to form an alternative to the state. This alternative is called the counterstate. The counterstate may have much of the infrastructure possessed by the state itself, but this must normally be hidden, since it is illegal. Thus the counterstate is often referred to by the term “clandestine infrastructure.” As the insurgents gain confidence and power, the clandestine infrastructure may become more open, as observed historically in communist regions during the Chinese Revolution, in South Vietnam after the North Vietnamese 1972 Easter Offensive, and in Colombia in the summer of 1998.
Successful mobilization provides active and passive support for the insurgency’s programs, operations, and goals. At the national level, mobilization grows out of dissatisfaction by some elite members with existing political, economic, or social conditions. At the regional level, members of an elite have become marginalized (that is, they have become psychologically alienated from the system), and have established links with followers by bringing them into the counterstate. At the local, district and province-levels, local movement representatives called the cadre address local grievances and do recruiting. The cadre gives credit to the insurgent movement for all local solutions. Loyalty to the insurgent movement is normally won through deeds but may occur through appeal to abstract principles. Promises to end hunger or eliminate poverty may appeal to a segment of the population, while appeals to eliminate a foreign presence or establish a government based on religious or political ideology may appeal to others. Nonetheless, these promises and appeals are associated with tangible solutions and deeds.
What are the root causes of a domestic insurgency? For a domestic insurgency to flourish, a majority of the population must either support or remain indifferent to insurgent ideals and practices. There must be a powerful reason that drives a portion of the populace to armed opposition against the existing government. Grievances may have a number of causes, such the lack of economic opportunity, restrictions on basic liberties, government corruption, ethnic or religious tensions, excessivly large number of illegal immigrants, especially those from Central America who clog national welfare rolls and are perceived to take jobs from entry-level Americans,or an unassimilitable religious and ethnic minority such as the Muslims who are seen to harbor domestic terrorists. It is through this line of thought or ideal that insurgents attempt to mobilize the population.
Understanding Counterinsurgency
What is counterinsurgency?—DOD defines counterinsurgency as “those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency.” Also called “COIN” The United States government intends to use a wide breadth of national capabilities to defeat any domestic insurgencies through a variety of means. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) use special teams to generate strategic objectives and assist the sitting government. The military will support those efforts by employing conventional forces, in combination with Special Operations Forces (SOF), in a variety of activities aimed at enhancing security and/or alleviating causes of unrest.
ELEMENTS OF THE INSURGENCY
CADRE
The cadre is the political activists and local political leaders of the insurgency. They are referred to as militants since they are actively engaged in struggling to accomplish insurgent goals. The insurgent movement provides guidance and procedures to the cadre, and the cadre use these to assess the grievances in local areas and carry out activities that satisfy those grievances. They then attribute the solutions they have provided to the insurgent movement itself. Deeds are the key to making insurgent slogans meaningful to the population.
Larger societal issues facilitate such action, because these larger issues may be blamed for life’s smaller problems. Insurgents, however, may have no regard for popular dissent or local grievances. The insurgents play by no rules, and they will use fear as a means to intimidate the populace and thereby prevent cooperation with the military or local law enforcement..
MASS BASE
The mass base consists of the followers of the insurgent movement that are the population of the counterstate. Mass base members are recruited and indoctrinated by the cadre, who implement instructions and procedures provided by the insurgent leadership. Though they do not actively fight for the insurgency, mass base members provide intelligence and supplies. Mass base members may continue in their normal positions in society, but many will either lead second, clandestine lives for the insurgent movement, or even pursue new, full-time positions within the insurgency. Combatants normally begin as members of the mass base before becoming armed manpower.
The insurgent leadership thus provides organizational and managerial skills to transform regions into an effective base for armed political action, while the cadre accomplishes this same transformation at the community and mobilized individual level. What results, as in any armed conflict, is a contest of resource mobilization and force deployment. A state is challenged by a counterstate. No objective force level guarantees victory for either side. It is frequently stated that a 10 to 1 or 20 to 1 ratio of counterinsurgents to insurgents is necessary for counterinsurgency victory. In reality, research has demonstrated time and again there are no valid ratios that, when met, guarantee victory. As in conventional war, correlation of forces in an insurgency depends upon the situation. Though objective and valid force-correlation ratios do not exist, counterinsurgency has been historically manpower intensive. Time, which often works on the side of the insurgent, just as often places serious constraints upon counterinsurgent courses of action.
ORIGINS AND CAUSES
Rising up against constituted authority has been present throughout history. The causes for such uprisings have been as numerous as human conditions. Uprisings against indigenous regimes have normally been termed “rebellions.” Uprisings against an external occupying power have normally been termed “resistance movements.” Historical particulars can at times combine the two.
Rebellions and resistance movements are transformed into an insurgency by their in-corporation into an armed political campaign. A popular desire to resist is used by an insurgent movement to accomplish the insurgents’ political goal. The insurgency thus mounts a political challenge to the state through the formation of, or desire to, create a counterstate.
The desire to form a counterstate grows from the same causes that galvanize any political campaign. These causes can range from the desire for greater equity in the distribution of resources (poverty alone is rarely, if ever, sufficient to sustain an insurgency) to a demand that foreign occupation end. Increasingly, religious ideology has become a catalyst for insurgent movements. The support of the people, then, is the center of gravity. It must be gained in whatever proportion is necessary to sustain the insurgent movement (or, contrariwise, to defeat it). As in any political campaign, all levels of support are relative.
Violence is the most potent weapon available to insurgents. Nonetheless, violence can alienate when not linked to a vision of a better life. Violence is often accompanied by a variety of nonviolent means that act as a potent weapon in an external propaganda war and assist recruiting. Historically, astute movements have recognized the efficacy of both means to the extent they have fielded discrete units charged with nonviolent action (for example, strikes in the transportation sector) to supplement violent action. The insurgents in Algeria rarely defeated French forces in the field; they employed indiscriminate violence, success fully initiated nonviolent strikes, developed associated propaganda for external use, and thereby handily won their war. “People’s war” in its Chinese and Vietnamese variants did this also.
Insurgency Development
Insurgent movements begin as “fire in the minds of men.” Insurgent leaders commit themselves to building a new world. They construct the organization to carry through this desire. Generally, popular grievances become insurgent causes when interpreted and shaped by the insurgent leadership. The insurgency grows if the cadre that is local insurgent leaders and representatives can establish a link between the insurgent movement and the desire for solutions to grievances sought by the local population.
Insurgent leaders will exploit opportunities created by government security force actions. The behavior of security forces is critical. Lack of security force discipline leads to alienation, and security force abuse of the populace is a very effective insurgent recruiting tool. Consequently, specific insurgent tactical actions are often planned to frequently elicit overreaction from security force individuals and units.
LEADERSHIP
Leadership figures engage in command and control of the insurgent movement. They are the idea people and planners. They see solutions to the grievances of society in structural terms. They believe that only altering the way the institutions and practices of society fit together will result in real change. Reforms and changes in personalities are deemed insufficient to “liberate” or “redeem” society. Historically, insurgencies have coalesced around a unifying leader, ideology, and organization. However, this precedent can no longer be assumed. It is possible that many leaders at the head of several organizations with different ideologies but united by a single goal of overthrowing the government or ridding the country of a foreign presence will emerge.
Leadership is critical to any insurgency. Insurgency is not simply random political violence. It is directed and focused political violence. It requires leadership to provide vision, direction to establish and set the long-term way ahead, short-term guidance, coordination, and organizational coherence. Insurgent leaders must make their cause known to the people and gain popular support. Although, theoretically, the insurgent leader desires to gain popular support for the cause, that desire is often accompanied by a terror campaign against those who do not support the insurgents’ goals. Their key tasks are to break and supplant the ties between the people and the government, and to establish legitimacy for their movement. Their education, family, social and religious connections, and positions may contribute to their ability to think clearly, communicate, organize, and lead an insurgency; or their lack of education and connections may delay or impair their access to positions where they are able to exercise leadership.
Insurgencies are dynamic political movements, resulting from real or perceived grievance or neglect that leads to alienation from an established government. Alienated elite members advance alternatives to existing conditions. (Culture defines elites. For example, in most of the world educators and teachers are members of the elite; in Islamic and many Catholic nations, religious leaders are elite members.) As their movement grows, leaders decide which body of “doctrine” to adopt. In the mass mobilization approach, leaders recruit, indoctrinate, and deploy the cadre necessary to carry out the actions of the movement. In the armed action approach, there is often a much more decentralized mode of operations, but this is usually guided by a central organization. Extreme decentralization results in a movement that rarely functions as a coherent body but is nevertheless capable of inflicting substantial casualties and damage.
COMBATANTS
The combatants do the actual fighting and are often mistaken for the movement itself. This they are not. They exist only to carry out the same functions as the police and armed forces of the state. They only constitute part of the movement, along with the planners and idea people. In many insurgencies the combatants maintain local control, as well as protect and expand the counterstate. Combatants who secure local areas are the local forces. The local forces use terror initially to intimidate and establish local control and later to enforce the will of the leadership. They conduct limited ambushes of government forces and police, also. Combatants who link local areas and provide regional security are the regional forces. Both of these elements normally are tied to specific AO. Main forces, in contrast, are the “heavy” units of the insurgent movement and may be deployed in any AO. Rather than employing terror (local forces) and guerrilla warfare (the main activity of regional forces), they engage in mobile warfare and positional warfare, both subsumed under the “conventional warfare” rubric but different in emphasis when used by insurgents. Due to the growing possibility of separate leaders in different regions with various goals, this force-role linkage may not be present. Instead, independent insurgent leaders may carry on military operations, to include terror, independent of other insurgent forces.Conventional warfare may be minimized. Ultimately, time is on the side of the insurgent. Fear, intimidation and violence—coupled with the television and internet—may achieve the social upheaval the insurgent seeks and force foreign powers to abandon the sitting government because of pressures from their own people at home.
INSURGENT DOCTRINE
Insurgent doctrine determines how insurgents actually implement the two types of insurgency. A defensive insurgency has much in common with a resistance movement, since the counterstate already exists and will normally adopt overt techniques necessary for self-defense. An offensive insurgency, on the other hand, is faced with the task of creating the counterstate from scratch. To do this, there are two basic approaches.
Mass mobilization. A first approach is to emphasize mobilization of the masses. This course places a premium upon political action by the cadre in local areas, with strategic and operational directives coming from above. Emphasizing mass mobilization results in a hierarchical, tightly controlled, coordinated movement. The insurgent movement that results will resemble a pyramid in its manpower distribution, with the combatants the smallest part of the movement (the apex of the pyramid).
Armed action. A second approach emphasizes armed action. This course favors violence rather than mass mobilization and normally results in an inverted pyramid, with the combatants themselves the bulk of the movement. This was the approach taken by Castro in Cuba during the 1950s and may be an approach some insurgents in Iraq have taken against the post-Saddam government, although some efforts to mobilize have been reported.
Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.
The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.
Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:..
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to seize all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports, and waterways.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10999 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has broad powers in every aspect of the nation. General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA’s Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA’s role as a “new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis.” FEMA’s powers were consolidated by President Carter to incorporate the…
National Security Act of 1947 allows for the strategic relocation of industries, services, government and other essential economic activities, and to rationalize the requirements for manpower, resources and production facilities.
1950 Defense Production Act gives the President sweeping powers over all aspects of the economy.
Act of August 29, 1916 authorizes the Secretary of the Army, in time of war, to take possession of any transportation system for transporting troops, material, or any other purpose related to the emergency.
International Emergency Economic Powers Act enables the President to seize the property of a foreign country or national. These powers were transferred to FEMA in a sweeping consolidation in 1979.
Iran denies attacking Israeli positions
Iran has denied involvement in rocket attacks on the Golan Heights that led to Israeli strikes on Iranian sites in Syria. The UN has called for an end to “hostile acts” amid fears of further escalation.
May 11, 2018
DW
Iran on Friday rejected accusations by Israel that it had fired rockets at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, describing them as “freely invented and baseless” charges designed to justify Israel’s own attacks on Syria.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi also criticized the international community for not condemning Israeli airstrikes in Syria on Thursday which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a retaliation against Iran’s aggression.
Its silence “only gives the Zionist regime (Israel) the green light for further aggressions that serve only to make the region more insecure and unstable,” he said.
The defense committee of Iran’s parliament also said Iranian forces had nothing to do with the attacks on Israeli positions.
“This is another lie from the Zionist regime for propaganda purposes,” said committee spokesman Mohammad Nobandegani. Nobandegani also denied that Iran had any military forces in Syria at all.
Dangerous development
Israel announced early on Thursday that its forces had hit “almost all” Iranian infrastructure sites in Syria during airstrikes carried out in retaliation for Iran’s firing of 20 rockets into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Netanyahu said that Iran had “crossed a red line” with the rocket attacks.
The attacks were some of the worst direct violence between arch rivals Israel and Iran in years and have raised fears of a wider conflict in the region. Israel has long expressed concern that Iran could establish a military presence in Syria amid the instability caused by Syria’s long-running civil war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed fears of further escalation in a tweet in which he called for an end to “all hostile acts and any provocative actions.”