Archive for February, 2019

TBR News February 18, 2019

Feb 18 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 18, 2019:”Excerpt, in translation, of a French intelligence document under date of I February: ‘The present American government is seen as a destabilizing element in world political circles. American President Trump appears to be an inflexible individual with absolutely no desire to seek any kind of diplomatic or negotiated solutions to serious problem that affect the entire world community…” “coupled with his single-minded determination to achieve any of his ends by force and not negotiation…is his complete domination by the ultra-right wing supporters of Israel. Their goals appear to be the idea that America has not only the right but the obligation to her people to dominate the entire world, by military force or the threat of it…The Israeli presence in the Administration determines that America will always support that state, even at the risk of alienating the rest of the world and, even greater, of starting a major war….Trump’s advisors, mostly Jewish, dislike Putin, the Russian President, and have been constantly agitating for the United States to force Russian into a confrontation. Given Russia’s still-formidable military capacity, this confrontational behavior could well lead to open warfare….’”

The Table of Contents

Donald Trump talks of ‘retribution’ after Alec Baldwin sketch on SNL

Trump lashes out at ‘treasonous’ officials after McCabe interview

Racism in Action: The Neo-Confederate Movement in American Politics

Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers

Theory Claims There’s A Lost Frozen City Under Antarctica

The Truth about Planet X

The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations Continue Reading »

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TBR News February 17, 2019

Feb 17 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 17, 2019:” The Kremlin has formed a  strategic military command to protect its interests in the Arctic. It’s part of a broader push from Moscow to establish military superiority at the top of the world. (Severny Flot- Obedinyonnoye Strategicheskoye Komandovaniye, SF-OSK)

The command comprises the Northern Fleet, Arctic warfare brigades, air force and air defense units as well as additional administrative structures.

The Russian Air Force re-opened the Temp airfield on the Kotelny Island, in October 2013  the first in a chain of similar bases all along the northern coast of Russia. The military has initiated deployment of aerospace defense units in the Arctic and construction of an early warning missile radar in Russia’s extreme north

A December 2013 order from Russian President Vladimir Putin to ramp up Russia’s military presence in the Arctic. Putin said Russia was returning to the Arctic and “intensifying the development of this promising region” and that Russia needs to “have all the levers for the protection of its security and national interests. “The new command will comprise the Northern Fleet, Arctic warfare brigades, air force and air defense units as well as additional administrative structures,” the source in Russia’s General Staff said.

The military structure, dubbed the Northern Fleet-Unified Strategic Command, (Северная Объединенная флотом Стратегическая Команда,) is responsible for protecting Russia’s Arctic shipping and fishing, oil and gas fields on the Arctic shelf, and the country’s national borders in the north, the source said. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the military to boost its presence in the Arctic and complete the development of military infrastructure in the region with all urgent rapidity.

The Russian military has deployed  aerospace defense units in the Arctic and construction of an early warning missile radar in Russia’s extreme north, according to the commander of the Aerospace Defense Forces.

Arctic territories are believed to hold vast untapped reserves of oil and gas. They have increasingly been at the center of disputes between the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark as rising temperatures lead to a reduction in sea ice and make energy reserves more accessible. Russia has made claims to several Arctic shelf areas and plans to defend its bid at the United Nations.

As Arctic ice has melted, companies from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States — the five countries that have a border with the Arctic — have been rushing to secure rights to drill for oil and natural gas in places that are now accessible.

Under international law, no country currently owns the North Pole or the region of the Arctic Ocean surrounding it. The five surrounding Arctic countries, the Russian Federation, the United States (via Alaska), Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) adjacent to their coasts. The waters beyond the territorial waters of the coastal states are considered the “high seas” (i.e. international waters). The sea bottom beyond the exclusive economic zones and confirmed extended continental shelf claims are considered to be the “heritage of all mankind” and administered by the UN International Seabed Authority.”

The Table of Contents

  • East Antarctica’s ice is melting at an unexpectedly rapid clip, new study suggests
  • Trump policies unite allies against him at European security forum
  • France to investigate anti-Semitic insults at ‘yellow vest’ protest
  • The Timmerrman letters
  • What To Know About The Mueller Investigation Into Russian Election Interference
  • California tells Trump that lawsuit over border wall is ‘imminent’
  • California tells Trump that lawsuit over border wall is ‘imminent’
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

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TBR News February 16. 2019

Feb 16 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 16, 2019 :” In 1996, the FBI set up an organization they called the Infragard, which very closely followed the German Gestapo’s ‘V-Leute’ program:

, ….” the protection of our nation’s infrastructure cannot be accomplished by the federal government alone. It requires coordinated action from numerous stakeholders – including government, the private sector, law enforcement and concerned citizens.” And that: “Each InfraGard chapter is geographically linked with an FBI Field Office, providing all stakeholders immediate access to experts from law enforcement, industry, academic institutions and other federal, state and local government agencies”.

One of the publicly stated aims of this project is that:  “(b)y utilizing the talents and expertise of the InfraGard network, information is shared to mitigate threats to our nation’s critical infrastructures.” This is nearly identical in wording to Müller’s own description of his national informers program and what follows here was lifted, almost verbatim, from his own period analysis: “An InfraGard member is a private-sector volunteer with an inherent concern for national security. Driven to protect their own industry and further motivated to share their professional and personal knowledge to safeguard the country, InfraGard members connect to a national network of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) communicate with federal law enforcement and government agencies through their local InfraGard chapters, and contribute to the security and protection of our national infrastructure from threats and attacks.”

“Critical infrastructures are physical and cyber-based systems that are essential to the minimum operations of the economy and the government (as defined in Presidential Decision Directive/NSC 63, May 1998) Key resources are individual targets whose destruction would not endanger security on a national scales, but would create local disaster or profoundly damage national morale (as defined in Homeland Security Presidential Directive-7, December 2003) Together, critical infrastructures and key resources are so vital that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on the defense, economic security, public health or national confidence of the United States.

“InfraGard has SMEs around the country in each of the following 17 categories of critical infrastructures and key resources, as recognized by the National Infrastructure Protection Plan:”

 

The Table of Contents

  • What is a national emergency – and does it mean Trump can build his wall?
  • Trump and the Numbers Game
  • What is a national emergency – and does it mean Trump can build his wall?
  • Trump wall non-deal requires scraping for funds
  • Trump Declared a Border Emergency. Here’s How It Could Be Undone in Court.
  • Roger Stone: Mueller discloses evidence Trump adviser communicated with Wikileaks
  • ‘Islamic State’ in Syria shrunk to half a square kilometer: commander
  • Real ‘obscene masquerade’: How BBC depicted staged hospital scenes as proof of Douma chemical attac
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

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TBR News February 15, 2019

Feb 15 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 15, 201 “In an age when a growing dissatisfaction with systems of governance, the public has become more and more interested in conspiracy theories that purport to expose the various misdeeds of governance and its various organs and purported accomplices.

We have seen an enormous body of revisionist listerature arise dealing with the assassination of President Kenedy and as that topic slid down from public viewing, another topic of interest, speculation and fictive writing arose around the September 11 attacks on various American targets in and around the nation’s capitol.

Invented stories about “robot aircraft,”  “’Nano-Thermite’ controlled explosions,” and other theories, many verging on the lunatic, sprang up and proliferated. While most of these entertainments were the product of inventive minds and eagerly accepted by a public that felt betrayed by their government and the upper levels of the national economic structure, a number were very obviously clever insertions of deliberate disinformation from the same power elite.

Anent the 911 attacks, a story made the rounds  that the filmed scenes of the aircraft smashing into the two buildings and the many pictures of the subsequent fires (jet fuel is very volatile and burns much hotter than standard gasoline) in addition to the dramatic collapses of both buildings as the intense heat weakened the steel supports, were all shot in a Hollywood sound stage weeks before and then run on national television while real shots of robot planes and rockets crashing into the buildings were ruthlessly suppressed by High Level Government plotters.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Is the national emergency a big deal and will it get Trump his wall?
  • Trump to declare emergency over Mexico border wall
  • Trump set to declare border emergency, sign shutdown-averting bill
  • Trump declares U.S.-Mexico border emergency; Democrats protest
  • Florida is drowning. Condos are still being built. Can’t humans see the writing on the wall?
  • A history of the Swedish people 
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

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TBR News February 14, 2019

Feb 14 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

 

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 14, 2019:” The strategy of the Christian based Republican Party is simple.

First, enact a permanent tax cut which will eliminate $6 trillion in revenue over the next 20 years. This will in effect starve the federal government so it will be unable to fund many liberal and essentially anti-Christian governmental functions instituted since the Communist-inspired New Deal.

Second, fill the liberal and secular federal judiciary with Christian advocates whose judicial philosophy will reverse the disastrous trends on civil rights, environmental protections, religious liberty, reproductive rights and privacy and so much more.

Third, mandate the teaching of Divine Creationism in all public and private schools and remove from all school curriculums the Secular Humanist false theories of Darwin and others.

Fourth, revise the Federal Constitution so that it better reflects Divine Will and strips away false secularism entirely.

A Constitution that conforms to Biblical Law will rely on the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament as its guiding source. Therefore, the Ten Commandments hold a special meaning. The New Christian lawmakers are going to pass legislation in various state legislatures that will mandate government posting of the Ten Commandments in all public buildings.

Rev. Joseph Morecraft is pastor of the Reconstructionist Chalcedon Presbyterian Church in Marietta, Georgia and he states his belief in the persecution of nonbelievers and those who are insufficiently orthodox is crystal clear. Reverend Morecraft describes democracy as “mob rule,” and states that the purpose of “civil government” is to “terrorize evil doers. . . to be an avenger!” and “To bring down the wrath of God to bear on all those who practice evil!”

“And how do you terrorize an evil doer?” he asks. “You enforce Biblical law!” The purpose of government is “to protect the church of Jesus Christ,” and, “Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody’s pseudo-right to worship an idol!” “There is no such thing” as religious pluralism, he declared. Further, “There has never been such a condition in the history of mankind. There is no such place now. There never will be.”

“When God brings Noah through the flood to a new earth, He re-establishes the Dominion Mandate but now delegates to man the responsibility for governing other men in order to protect human life. He does this by instituting capital punishment – the backbone of civil government.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Donald Trump’s Art of the Climbdown
  • S. judge rules ex-Trump campaign chief breached plea deal
  • S. retail sales post largest drop since 2009; jobless claims rise
  • S. Congress poised to vote on border measure without Trump wall
  • Why did the Airbus A380 fail?
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • CORRUPTION IN THE NORTHERN NEIGHBOR: REPORT IN THE PEOPLE’S DUMA OF RUSSIA

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TBR News February 13, 2019

Feb 13 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40

 

 

Washington, D.C. February 13, 2019: ”By his actions in revealing top secret data about personal information of American, and foreign, citizens, , young Mr. Snowden has done irreparable damage to America’s national defense and protection programs.

Until he violated his oath of secrecy, we were able to watch, and track not only the all-pervasive and deadly Muslim terrorists world-wide but also keep a close watch on domestic American trouble-makers such as infested this country during the Vietnam war. Now, his actions have severely compromised various American computer companies who, until this week, were able and willing to assist our protective measures.

These companies are now being attacked by their millions of users and I am assured that many of them are losing customers at an alarming rate.

One of our most important resources for compiling files on any person expressing negative or anti-government views, Facebook, is having serious troubles.

When the FBI became involved in that project, they could clearly see how valuable an intelligence asset it could be. Their control of Internet II and their strong, on-going relationship with search engine Google paled into insignificance beside the trove of valuable data that Facebook was able to provide tem.

Now, all of this valuable sourcing is destroyed, due solely to the misguided youth who, quite literally, stabbed all of us in the intelligence community in the back.

But we also suffered even worse damage when it was revealed that many other countries eagerly assisted our NSA (and the CIA, the FBI and the DHS) in allowing us to also keep records, and conduct discreet surveillance, on citizens of other countries, such at the UK, France, Germany, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sweden, Switzerland, China and Russia.

Just recently, Snowden surfaced documents to the effect that the United States had hacked many hundreds of targets in outwardly neutral Hong Kong, to include state officials, many businesses and schools and students both in that city as well as identical targets on the PRC mainland. He made the claim that these were only part of the annual 60,000 NSA interdiction operations.

One of the worst hit countries was our long-time ally, Great Britain.

The British face domestic problems even more accentuated than those of the United States. They have a large and very restive black population as well as a larger Muslim one (approximately 1.6 million) and many of these are the young, dissatisfied types so easily recruited by the imams bent on furthering religious attacks on Christian communities that are perceived as “oppressing” Muslim countries. And in the black population, many of the younger members are also targets for Muslim fanaticism.  The Muslim population percentages in larger UK cities, for example are: Greater London – 17% (1.3 million of 7.5 million) and the industrial city of Birmingham 14.3% (139,771)

Their authorities are absolutely in full cooperation with American identification projects and we have had the total support of the following UK internet providers:

BT Group: operates the BT Total Broadband brand and has 4.6 million customers.The company has broadband to other ISPs through the Openreach brand. It also operates under the Plusnet brand. Plusnet was founded in 1997..

Sky Broadband: a digital TV provider that also provides broadband and home phone services. Launched in 2006, it has its headquarters in London, UK. It offers bundle services with TV, home phone and broadband services. It has operated the Be Unlimited brand since February 2013. In 2013 it acquired O2’s home broadband business

Virgin Media: offers consumers a quadruple play bundle of TV, broadband, home phone and mobile. The UK ISP has approximately 10 million customers.The company also provides fibre optic broadband of up to 100Mb, with 120Mb

TalkTalk: TalkTalk offers broadband service to consumers in the UK. Launched in 2004, the ISP has a customer base of 4.12 million. The ISP offers broadband and landline phone services, primarily through LLU. TalkTalk also operates the AOL Broadband brand.

Updata : – Updata Infrastructure UK is a broadband provider focusing on public sector markets with a customer base covering schools, local authorities and primary care trusts.

EE: Operates home broadband under the EE brand, previously operated as Orange Broadband.

Also working closely with U.S. identification/interdiction programs are several top UK domestic intelligence agencies. These are: The British government’s eavesdropping agency GCHQ. GCHQ, has had access to the system since June, 2010. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6), which  is the agency which supplies Her Majesty’s Government with foreign intelligence.

Prism programme allowed GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to obtain personal material, such as emails, photographs and videos, from internet companies based outside the UK.

The JTLS (Joint Technical Language Service) is a small department and cross-government resource responsible for mainly technical language support and translation and interpreting services across government departments. It is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.

GCHQ has contacted the PRISM program of the National Security Agency (NSA) more than 19,785 times with requests for information on the citizens of the UK since 2007 and cross-government resource responsible for mainly technical language support and translation and interpreting services across government departments. It is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.

The FBI and the NSA can tap directly into the central servers of nine leading internet companies.

The Director of US National Intelligence has officially stated that American law ensures that only ‘non-US persons outside the US are targeted’

Mr. Snowden’s untimely revelations have caused political upheaval in the upper governmental levels of the UK and these agencies are now making extraodinary efforts to distance themselves from American intelligence gathering efforts.

Mr. Snowden has, in fact, done terrible damage, not only to UK relations but threatened additional revelations stand well to create even more serious problems with the governments of both Germany and France.

While the intelligence agencies of these countries are both involved, heavily, in mutually satisfactory exchanges of information, like the political figures in the UK, they fear the Snowden revelations would cause serious problems with their electorates and are making efforts to terminate their hitherto very successful, complete assistance in the matter of observing all of their populations.

While many countries are eager to identify potential, and actual, Muslim terrorists in their own country, political constraints will prevent them from either acknowledging or participating in further such interdictions of their own people.

For this reason, bringing Mr. Snowden to public trial, with a conviction and a subsequently long prison sentence would certainly be in order, and one must weigh the deterrent factor with the probable adverse publicity attendant upon such a trial. And, as has been discussed, simply terminating him with extreme prejudice might prove to be the most effective course, but again, public perceptions must be taken into consideration.

Further, we have reason to believe that Mr. Snowden in all probability has taken out an “insurance policy” against termination by removing many sensitive and potentially highly damaging documents and again, this must be taken into consideration.

It is to be regretted that many of our most secret computer programs are staffed by young techinical experts who do not have the world-outlook that our older agents possess and often involve themselves in so-called ethical problems that, in point of fact, are none of their business.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • California Governor Newsom swipes at Trump, cuts water, rail projects
  • How the Government Shutdown Caused a Foreclosure — and Could Cause More
  • Trump’s Iran summit shows just how far he is from the rest of the west
  • EU members and leaders agree on compromise for Nord Stream 2
  • Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline – What is the controversy about?
  • Nothing stopping Russian-German trade turnover’s rapid growth
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • Comment: Flying Saucers of the Third Reich

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TBR News February 12, 2019

Feb 12 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 12, 2019:”The constant flood of easily disproven perverications uttered by our Presdent is absolutely amazing. If he ever made an accurate statement abut anything, the sun would stand still over Washington and the moon over Mar l Largo. His constant falsifications resonate with the dimwitted Red Hat brigades that infest is public meetings like some kind of a chronic skin eruptions but the general pubic is slowly becoming aware that their president is, to be kind, not an honest man. Not only is he not honest but he has never told the truth when a lie would suffice”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Donald Trump Responds to Beto O’Rourke’s March for Truth in El Paso With Flagrant Lies
  • Donald Trump has said 4325 false things as U.S. president
  • Trump Says ISIS Is Defeated. He Is Ignoring the Bigger Picture
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

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TBR News February 11, 2019

Feb 11 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 11, 2019:”Stubborn and arrogant, Trump is bound and determined to force Congress to built a very expensive, and useless, wall across the American southern border to keep out the Central American immigrants so loathed by his far-right suppoters. He has caused terrible economic hardship to thousands of government employees but he does not care about this as long as he can force Congress to bend to his will. He will not succeed, of course, but until he is decisively beaten, he will never stop.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Trump offers socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else
  • Cohen hired firm to rig polls, only paid part of bill with bag of cash: report
  • Russian diplomat warns of Israel-Lebanon conflict, slams U.S. for ‘incitement’
  • On the border, Trump builds a wall of lies
  • California to pull troops from U.S.-Mexico border in rebuke to Trump
  • S. lawmakers to hold border security talks in bid to avert shutdown
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • As ice melts, Greenland could become big sand exporter: study
  • Methodology of Internet Spying on the Pubic

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TBR News February 10, 2019

Feb 10 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 10, 2019:” US naval commanders operating in the Persian Gulf face serious challenges that are unique to the littoral, i.e., coastal, environment.  A glance at a map shows why: The Gulf is nothing but a large lake, with one narrow outlet, and most of its northern shore, i.e., Iran, consists of mountainous terrain that affords a commanding tactical advantage over ships operating in Gulf waters. The rugged northern shore makes for easy concealment of coastal defenses, such as mobile missile launchers, and also makes their detection problematic. Although it was not widely reported, the US actually lost the battle of the Scuds in the first Gulf War ––  termed “the great Scud hunt” –– and for similar reasons. Saddam Hussein’s mobile Scud launchers proved so difficult to detect and destroy –– over and over again the Iraqis fooled allied reconnaissance with decoys –– that during the course of Desert Storm the US was unable to confirm even a single kill. This proved such an embarrassment to the Pentagon, afterwards, that the unpleasant stats were buried in official reports. But the blunt fact is that the US failed to stop the Scud attacks. The launches continued until the last few days of the conflict.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Artworks allegedly by Adolf Hitler fail to sell at Nuremberg auction
  • Counterfeit Hitler
  • In revering Trump, the religious right has laid bare its hypocrisy
  • What are the End Days? A study in deception
  • Floods, fire and drought: Australia, a country in the grip of extreme weather bingo
  • What Happened in Douma? Searching for Facts in the Fog of Syria’s Propaganda War
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

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TBR News February 9, 2019

Feb 09 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. February 9, 2019:” The strait of Hormuz is the kink in the hose of the Gulf’s oil supply to the world. A small amount of pressure can have a disproportionate effect, sending world crude prices soaring and starving the world’s oil-dependent economies.

At its narrowest point, between the Oman peninsula and the Iranian islands off Bandar Abbas, the strait is 20 miles wide, but the channels down which more than a third of the world’s ocean-borne oil flows – 17m barrels a day – are even more tenuous. The tanker lanes going in each direction are just 2 miles wide in parts, through the deep water off Oman and then again, further west, inside Iranian territorial waters.

This is where oil tankers are most vulnerable to an Iranian attempt to turn off the global petrol pump. It was enough for an Iranian official to simply raise the prospect of closing the strait, in retaliation for the threat of sanctions, for the world price of crude to rise to $115 (£74) a barrel. Maintained over the long term, that is costly enough to strangle any hint of a global economic recovery.

That is what makes Iranian naval action in the Gulf such a potent weapon. But it is a decidedly double-edged one, potentially more lethal to Iran than its adversaries. For, while Saudi Arabia can bypass the strait by pipeline, all of Iran’s oil terminals are west of the choke point. Iran would cut off its own lifeblood, which accounts for more than 60% of its economy.

Furthermore, the US has made clear that interruption to sea traffic in the Gulf would be a “red line”, triggering an overwhelming military response in which Iran’s nuclear facilities would be on the target lists. Until now, the US military has ruled out strikes on the nuclear programme, as the costs of starting a war with Iran outweigh the gains of setting the programme back, in defence secretary Leon Panetta’s estimation, one or two years at most. But if the US was going to war anyway over oil, that cost-benefit analysis would change.

So closing the strait outright would be – if not suicidal – an exercise in extreme self-harm for Iran. But the choice facing Tehran is not a binary one.

There is a spectrum of options falling well short of total closure; forms of harassment of the oil trade that would drive the price of crude up and keep it up, very much to Iran’s benefit, but fall short of a casus belli for war. However, exercising such options requires subtlety and fine judgment on all sides and that is by no means a given.

In a period of sustained high tension, an over-zealous Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander could seize his moment to start a war, or a nervous American captain, his vessel just seconds from Iran’s anti-ship missiles, could just as easily miscalculate. The last time Iran and America played chicken in this particular stretch of water, in 1988, a missile cruiser called the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians including 66 children.

The shadow of Iran Air 655 hangs over the current standoff, as a reminder of how even the world’s mightiest and most advanced militaries cannot necessarily control a situation in which tensions have been allowed to escalate.

US military options

There is no doubting the overwhelming firepower at America’s disposal. The US Fifth Fleet, whose job it is to patrol the Gulf, is expected to be beefed up from one to two aircraft carriers. Meanwhile, as it has pulled its troops out of Iraq, the Pentagon has quietly boosted its army’s presence in Kuwait. The Los Angeles Times reported that it now has 15,000 troops there, including two army brigades and a helicopter unit. The US is also bolstered by the significant naval presence of its British and Gulf allies.

The Iranian military looks puny by comparison, but it is powerful enough to do serious damage to commercial shipping. It has three Kilo-class Russian diesel submarines which run virtually silently and are thought to have the capacity to lay mines. And it has a large fleet of mini-submarines and thousands of small boats armed with anti-ship missiles which can pass undetected by ship-borne radar until very close. It also has a “martyrdom” tradition that could provide willing suicide attackers.

The Fifth Fleet’s greatest concern is that such asymmetric warfare could be used to overpower the sophisticated defences of its ships, particularly in the narrow confines of the Hormuz strait, which is scattered with craggy cove-filled Iranian islands ideal for launching stealth attacks.

In 2002, the US military ran a $250m (£160m) exercise called Millennium Challenge, pitting the US against an unnamed rogue state with lots of small boats and willing martyr brigades. The rogue state won, or at least was winning when the Pentagon brass decided to shut the exercise down. At the time, it was presumed that the adversary was Iraq as war with Saddam Hussein was in the air. But the fighting style mirrored that of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

In the years since, much US naval planning has focused on how to counter “swarm tactics” – attacks on US ships by scores of boats, hundreds of missiles, suicide bombers and mines, all at once.

“Every couple of weeks in Washington you can go to a different conference on swarming,” said Sam Gardiner, a retired US air force colonel who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College. “War games have shown that swarming, missiles and mines all together put a strain on the capacity of ships to defend themselves. Your challenge is how to protect your minesweepers from swarming techniques.”

One of the US naval responses has been to develop a new kind of fighting vessel, the littoral combat ship (LCS), tailor-made for countering Iran’s naval tactics. The LCS is sleek, small and agile with a shallow draft and high speeds, allowing it to operate along island-pocked coastlines.

At the low-tech end of the scale, the Fifth Fleet is reported to have deployed a significant number of dolphins trained to seek out mines.

Ultimately, the US response to swarming will be to use American dominance in the air and multitudes of precision-guided missiles to escalate rapidly and dramatically, wiping out every Iranian missile site, radar, military harbour and jetty on the coast. Almost certainly, the air strikes would also go after command posts and possibly nuclear sites too. There is little doubt of the effectiveness of such a strategy as a deterrent, but it also risks turning a naval skirmish into all-out war at short notice.

Iranian tactics

For that reason, most military analysts argue that if Iran does decide to exact reprisals for oil sanctions, it is likely to follow another route. Gardiner believes the most likely model will be the “tanker war” between Iran and Iraq from 1984 to 1987. The aim would be to raise insurance premiums and other shipping costs, and so boost oil prices as a way of inflicting pain on the west and replacing revenues lost through the embargo.

“They wouldn’t necessarily do anything immediately. If they do what they did in the tanker war, a mine would be hit and it wouldn’t be clear exactly how long it had been there. Things like that push up the price of oil. People talk about a spike in oil prices, but it might be more like a plateau,” Gardiner said.

“The answer is not to escalate. You start protecting tankers and searching for mines.”

Even if Iran decides on retaliation, there is no reason for it to be confined to an immediate response in the strait. It could target the oil price with acts of sabotage aimed at Arab state oil facilities along the southern shore of the Gulf, or western interests could be targeted anywhere around the world, months or years after the imposition of an embargo.

Adam Lowther, of the US air force’s Air University, pointed out recently on the Diplomat blog that Iran’s “ministry of intelligence and national security (MOIS), Iran’s espionage service, is among the most competent in the world”.

“Over the past 30 years, MOIS agents have successfully hunted down and assassinated dissidents, former officials of the shah’s government, and real or perceived threats to the regime. MOIS is still capable of carrying out assassinations, espionage, and other kinetic attacks against government and civilian targets. The spy service is also likely to have covert agents in the United States,” Lowther said.

Ehsan Mehrabi, an Iranian journalist specialising in military and strategic issues who recently left the country, wrote on the Inside Iran website: “I recall a famous Iranian idiom that was quite popular among the military officials: ‘If we drown, we’ll drown everyone with us’. They were pretty clear about their intention. If attacked by a western power, the war would not be contained within the Iranian borders. The entire world would become Iran’s battleground – at least this was their thinking.”

Obama administration officials believe that last year’s Washington bomb plot, in which Revolutionary Guard officials are alleged to have planned to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US by blowing up his favourite restaurant in the American capital, could have been an attempt to settle scores for some past incident.

Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA official said recently at a seminar in Washington organised by the Atlantic Council: “One of the ways Iran can hurt us which is not often talked about is Iranians’ capacity to hurt us in Obama’s war, in Afghanistan. The Iranians are already superbly placed to make the war in the Afghanistan – which is already difficult – impossible.”

All these options however represent high-risk strategies, fraught with risks of miscalculation. In the tanker war scenario, maintaining the line between war and peace would, in effect, be delegated to relatively junior officers, forced to make high-stakes decisions in a matter of seconds, the exact set of circumstances that led to the 1988 Airbus disaster. Even if Washington and Tehran remain determined to avoid an all-out war, with every passing month there is a rising chance of one breaking out by accident.”

The Table of Contents

  • Nicht gut: Nearly 85 percent of Germans see U.S-German ties as negative
  • A Cruel War on Immigrants
  • Do New York prosecutors pose the greatest threat to Donald Trump?
  • Negotiators on U.S. border security funds eye deal by Monday: lawmakers
  • ‘Presidential harassment’ may be Trump’s easiest phrase to repurpose
  • America’s bewildering imperialism
  • ‘Dangerous’ Antarctic glacier has a hole roughly two-thirds area of Manhattan, scientists warn
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

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