3 a.m. There is a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Who do you want answering the phone? Hillary Clinton ad (2008)
The assassination of Iran Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani is an extremely dangerous and foolish escalation. The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism. Mohammad Javad Zarif (Iranian Foreign Minister)
Le président Trump vient de jeter un bâton de dynamite dans une poudrière, et il doit au peuple américain une explication. C’est une énorme escalade dans une région déjà dangereuse. Joe Biden
Iraqis — Iraqis — dancing in the street for freedom; thankful that General Soleimani is no more. Mike Pompeo
Qassem Soleimani was an arch terrorist with American blood on his hands. His demise should be applauded by all who seek peace and justice. Proud of President Trump for doing the strong and right thing. Nikki Haley
To Iran and its proxy militias: We will not accept the continued attacks against our personnel and forces in the region. Attacks against us will be met with responses in the time, manner and place of our choosing. We urge the Iranian regime to end malign activities. Mark Esper (US Defense Secretary)
At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months – including the attack on December 27th – culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week. This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world. US state department
In March 2007, Soleimani was included on a list of Iranian individuals targeted with sanctions in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747. On 18 May 2011, he was sanctioned again by the U.S. along with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and other senior Syrian officials due to his alleged involvement in providing material support to the Syrian government. On 24 June 2011, the Official Journal of the European Union said the three Iranian Revolutionary Guard members now subject to sanctions had been « providing equipment and support to help the Syrian government suppress protests in Syria ». The Iranians added to the EU sanctions list were two Revolutionary Guard commanders, Soleimani, Mohammad Ali Jafari, and the Guard’s deputy commander for intelligence, Hossein Taeb. Soleimani was also sanctioned by the Swiss government in September 2011 on the same grounds cited by the European Union. In 2007, the U.S. included him in a « Designation of Iranian Entities and Individuals for Proliferation Activities and Support for Terrorism », which forbade U.S. citizens from doing business with him. The list, published in the EU’s Official Journal on 24 June 2011, also included a Syrian property firm, an investment fund and two other enterprises accused of funding the Syrian government. The list also included Mohammad Ali Jafari and Hossein Taeb. On 13 November 2018, the U.S. sanctioned an Iraqi military leader named Shibl Muhsin ‘Ubayd Al-Zaydi and others who allegedly were acting on Soleimani’s behalf in financing military actions in Syria or otherwise providing support for terrorism in the region. Wikipedia
The historic nuclear accord between a US-led group of countries and Iran was good news for a man who some consider to be the Middle East’s most effective covert operative. As a result of the deal, Qasem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods Force and the general responsible for overseeing Iran’s network of proxy organizations, will be removed from European Union sanctions lists once the agreement is implemented, and taken off a UN sanctions list after eight or fewer years. Iran obtained some key concessions as a result of the nuclear agreement, including access to an estimated $150 billion in frozen assets; the lifting of a UN arms embargo, the eventual end to sanctions related to the country’s ballistic missile program; the ability to operate over 5,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges and to run stable elements through centrifuges at the once-clandestine and heavily guarded Fordow facility; nuclear assistance from the US and its partners; and the ability to stall inspections of sensitive sites for as long as 24 days. In light of these accomplishments, the de-listing of a general responsible for coordinating anti-US militia groups in Iraq — someone who may be responsible for the deaths of US soldiers — almost seems gratuitous. It’s unlikely that the entire deal hinged on a single Iranian officer’s ability to open bank accounts in EU states or travel within Europe. But it got into the deal anyway. So did a reprieve for Bank Saderat, which the US sanctioned in 2006 for facilitating money transfers to Iranian regime-supported terror groups like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. As part of the deal, Bank Saderat will leave the EU sanctions list on the same timetable as Suleimani, although it will remain under US designation. Like Suleimani’s removal, Bank Saderat’s apparent legalization in Europe suggests that for the purposes of the deal, the US and its partners lumped a broad range of restrictions under the heading of « nuclear-related » sanctions. Suleimani and Bank Saderat are still going to remain under US sanctions related to the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses and support for terrorism. US sanctions have broad extraterritorial reach, and the US Treasury Department has turned into the scourge of compliance desks at banks around the world. But that matters to a somewhat lesser degree inside of the EU, where companies have actually been exempted from complying with certain US « secondary sanctions » on Iran since the mid-1990s. (…) Some time in the next few years, Qasem Suleimani will be able to travel and do business inside the EU, while a bank that’s facilitated the funding of US-listed terror group’s will be allowed to enter the European market. As part of the nuclear deal, the US and its partners bargained away much of the international leverage against some of the more problematic sectors in the Iranian regime, including entities whose wrongdoing went well beyond the nuclear realm. The result is the almost complete reversal of the sanctions regime in Europe. Iran successfully pushed for a broad definition of « nuclear-related sanctions, » and bargained hard — and effectively — for a maximal degree of sanctions relief. And the de-listing of Bank Saderat and Qasem Suleimani, along with the late-breaking effort to classify arms trade restrictions as purely nuclear-related, demonstrates just how far the US and its partners were willing to go to close a historic nuclear deal. Armin Rosen
This was a combatant. There’s no doubt that he fit the description of ‘combatant.’ He was a uniformed member of an enemy military who was actively planning to kill Americans; American soldiers and probably, as well, American civilians. It was the right thing to do. It was legally justified, and I think we should applaud the president for his decision. We send a very powerful message to the Iranian government that we will not stand by as the American embassy is attacked — which is an act of war — and we will not stand by as plans are being made to attack and kill American soldiers. I think every president who had any degree of courage would do the same thing, and I applaud our president for doing it, and the members of the military who carried it out, risking their own lives and safety. I think this is an action that will have saved lives in the end. The president doesn’t need congressional authorization, or any legal authorization … The president, as the commander-in-chief of the army is entitled to take preventive actions to save the lives of the American military. This is very similar to what Barack Obama did with Ben Rhodes’s authorization and approval — without Congress’s authorization — in killing Osama bin Laden. In fact, that was worse, in some ways, because that was a revenge act. There was no real threat that Osama bin Laden would carry out any future terrorist acts. Moreover, he was not a member of an official armed forces in uniform, so it’s a fortiori from what Obama did and Rhodes did that President Trump has complete legal authority in a much more compelling way to have taken the military action that was taken today. Alan Dershowitz
Trump in full fascist 101 mode-,steal and lie – untill there’s nothing left and start a war – He’s so idiotic he doesn’t know he just attacked Iran And that’s not like anywhere else. John Cusak
Dear #Iran, The USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people. 52% of us humbly apologize. We want peace with your nation. We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime. We do not know how to escape. Please do not kill us. #Soleimani. Rose McGowan
On se réveille dans un monde plus dangereux (…) et l’escalade militaire est toujours dangereuse. Amélie de Montchalin (secrétaire d’État française aux Affaires européennes)
C’est d’abord l’Iranienne qui va vous répondre et celle-là ne peut que se réjouir de ce qui s’est passé. Je parle en mon nom mais je peux vous l’assurer aussi au nom de millions d’Iraniens, probablement la majorité d’entre eux : cet homme était haï, il incarnait le mal absolu ! Je suis révoltée par les commentaires que j’ai entendus venant de certains pseudo-spécialistes de l’Iran, le présentant sur une chaîne de télévision comme un individu charismatique et populaire. Il faut ne rien connaître et ne rien comprendre à ce pays pour tenir ce genre de sottises. Pour l’Iranien lambda, Soleimani était un monstre, ce qui se fait de pire dans la République islamique. (…) Soleimani en était un élément essentiel, aussi puissant que Khameini et ce n’est pas de la propagande que d’affirmer que sa mort ne choque presque personne. (…) Je ne suis pas dans le secret des généraux iraniens mais une simple observatrice informée. Le régime est aux abois depuis des mois, totalement isolé. Ils savent qu’ils n’ont pas d’avenir, la rue et le peuple n’en veulent plus, ils ne peuvent pas vraiment compter sur l’Union européenne et pas plus sur la Chine. Ils n’ont aucun avenir et c’est ce qui rend la situation particulièrement dangereuse car ils sont dans une logique suicidaire. (…) En réalité, ils ont tout perdu et ne peuvent plus sortir du pays pour s’installer à l’étranger car des mandats ont été lancés contre la plupart d’entre eux. Les sanctions ont asséché la manne des pétrodollars et c’est essentiel car il n’y avait pas d’adhésion idéologique à ce régime. (…) Donald Trump (…) a considérablement affaibli ce régime, comme jamais auparavant, et peut-être même a-t-il signé leur arrêt de mort. Nous verrons. Lors des manifestations populaires, à Téhéran et dans d’autre villes, les noms de Khameini, de Rohani, de Soleimani étaient hués. Il n’y a jamais eu de slogans anti-Trump ou contre les Etats-Unis. (…) [Mais] hélas ils n’abandonneront pas le pouvoir tranquillement, j’en suis convaincue. Mahnaz Shirali
The whole “protest” against the United States Embassy compound in Baghdad last week was almost certainly a Suleimani-staged operation to make it look as if Iraqis wanted America out when in fact it was the other way around. The protesters were paid pro-Iranian militiamen. No one in Baghdad was fooled by this. In a way, it’s what got Suleimani killed. He so wanted to cover his failures in Iraq he decided to start provoking the Americans there by shelling their forces, hoping they would overreact, kill Iraqis and turn them against the United States. Trump, rather than taking the bait, killed Suleimani instead. I have no idea whether this was wise or what will be the long-term implications. But (…) Suleimani is part of a system called the Islamic Revolution in Iran. That revolution has managed to use oil money and violence to stay in power since 1979 — and that is Iran’s tragedy, a tragedy that the death of one Iranian general will not change. Today’s Iran is the heir to a great civilization and the home of an enormously talented people and significant culture. Wherever Iranians go in the world today, they thrive as scientists, doctors, artists, writers and filmmakers — except in the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose most famous exports are suicide bombing, cyberterrorism and proxy militia leaders. The very fact that Suleimani was probably the most famous Iranian in the region speaks to the utter emptiness of this regime, and how it has wasted the lives of two generations of Iranians by looking for dignity in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways. (…) in the coming days there will be noisy protests in Iran, the burning of American flags and much crying for the “martyr.” The morning after the morning after? There will be a thousand quiet conversations inside Iran that won’t get reported. They will be about the travesty that is their own government and how it has squandered so much of Iran’s wealth and talent on an imperial project that has made Iran hated in the Middle East. And yes, the morning after, America’s Sunni Arab allies will quietly celebrate Suleimani’s death, but we must never forget that it is the dysfunction of many of the Sunni Arab regimes — their lack of freedom, modern education and women’s empowerment — that made them so weak that Iran was able to take them over from the inside with its proxies. (…) the Middle East, particularly Iran, is becoming an environmental disaster area — running out of water, with rising desertification and overpopulation. If governments there don’t stop fighting and come together to build resilience against climate change — rather than celebrating self-promoting military frauds who conquer failed states and make them fail even more — they’re all doomed. Thomas L. Friedman
It is impossible to overstate the importance of this particular action. It is more significant than the killing of Osama bin Laden or even the death of [Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi. Suleimani was the architect and operational commander of the Iranian effort to solidify control of the so-called Shia crescent, stretching from Iran to Iraq through Syria into southern Lebanon. He is responsible for providing explosives, projectiles, and arms and other munitions that killed well over 600 American soldiers and many more of our coalition and Iraqi partners just in Iraq, as well as in many other countries such as Syria. So his death is of enormous significance. The question of course is how does Iran respond in terms of direct action by its military and Revolutionary Guard Corps forces? And how does it direct its proxies—the Iranian-supported Shia militia in Iraq and Syria and southern Lebanon, and throughout the world? (…) The reasoning seems to be to show in the most significant way possible that the U.S. is just not going to allow the continued violence—the rocketing of our bases, the killing of an American contractor, the attacks on shipping, on unarmed drones—without a very significant response. Many people had rightly questioned whether American deterrence had eroded somewhat because of the relatively insignificant responses to the earlier actions. This clearly was of vastly greater importance. Of course it also, per the Defense Department statement, was a defensive action given the reported planning and contingencies that Suleimani was going to Iraq to discuss and presumably approve. This was in response to the killing of an American contractor, the wounding of American forces, and just a sense of how this could go downhill from here if the Iranians don’t realize that this cannot continue. (…) Iran is in a very precarious economic situation, it is very fragile domestically—they’ve killed many, many hundreds if not thousands of Iranian citizens who were demonstrating on the streets of Iran in response to the dismal economic situation and the mismanagement and corruption. I just don’t see the Iranians as anywhere near as supportive of the regime at this point as they were decades ago during the Iran-Iraq War. Clearly the supreme leader has to consider that as Iran considers the potential responses to what the U.S. has done. It will be interesting now to see if there is a U.S. diplomatic initiative to reach out to Iran and to say, “Okay, the next move could be strikes against your oil infrastructure and your forces in your country—where does that end?” (…) We haven’t declared war, but we have taken a very, very significant action. (…) We’ve taken numerous actions to augment our air defenses in the region, our offensive capabilities in the region, in terms of general purpose and special operations forces and air assets. The Pentagon has considered the implications, the potential consequences and has done a great deal to mitigate the risks—although you can’t fully mitigate the potential risks. (…) Again what was the alternative? Do it in Iran? Think of the implications of that. This is the most formidable adversary that we have faced for decades. He is a combination of CIA director, JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] commander, and special presidential envoy for the region. This is a very significant effort to reestablish deterrence, which obviously had not been shored up by the relatively insignificant responses up until now. (…) Obviously all sides will suffer if this becomes a wider war, but Iran has to be very worried that—in the state of its economy, the significant popular unrest and demonstrations against the regime—that this is a real threat to the regime in a way that we have not seen prior to this. (…) The incentive would be to get out from under the sanctions, which are crippling. Could we get back to the Iran nuclear deal plus some additional actions that could address the shortcomings of the agreement? This is a very significant escalation, and they don’t know where this goes any more than anyone else does. Yes, they can respond and they can retaliate, and that can lead to further retaliation—and that it is clear now that the administration is willing to take very substantial action. This is a pretty clarifying moment in that regard. (…) Right now they are probably doing what anyone does in this situation: considering the menu of options. There could be actions in the gulf, in the Strait of Hormuz by proxies in the regional countries, and in other continents where the Quds Force have activities. There’s a very considerable number of potential responses by Iran, and then there’s any number of potential U.S. responses to those actions. Given the state of their economy, I think they have to be very leery, very concerned that that could actually result in the first real challenge to the regime certainly since the Iran-Iraq War. (…) The [Iraqi] prime minister has said that he would put forward legislation to [kick the U.S. military out of Iraq], although I don’t think that the majority of Iraqi leaders want to see that given that ISIS is still a significant threat. They are keenly aware that it was not the Iranian supported militias that defeated the Islamic State, it was U.S.-enabled Iraqi armed forces and special forces that really fought the decisive battles. Gen. David Petraeus
[Qasem Soleimani] was our most significant Iranian adversary during my four years in Iraq, [and] certainly when I was the Central Command commander, and very much so when I was the director of the CIA. He is unquestionably the most significant and important — or was the most significant and important — Iranian figure in the region, the most important architect of the effort by Iran to solidify control of the Shia crescent, and the operational commander of the various initiatives that were part of that effort. (…) He sent a message to me through the president of Iraq in late March of 2008, during the battle of Basra, when we were supporting the Iraqi army forces that were battling the Shia militias in Basra that were supported, of course, by Qasem Soleimani and the Quds Force. He sent a message through the president that said, « General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qasem Soleimani, control the policy of Iran for Iraq, and also for Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. » And the implication of that was, « If you want to deal with Iran to resolve this situation in Basra, you should deal with me, not with the Iranian diplomats. » And his power only grew from that point in time. By the way, I did not — I actually told the president to tell Qasem Soleimani to pound sand. (…) I suspect that the leaders in Washington were seeking to reestablish deterrence, which clearly had eroded to some degree, perhaps by the relatively insignificant actions in response to these strikes on the Abqaiq oil facility in Saudi Arabia, shipping in the Gulf and our $130 million dollar drone that was shot down. And we had seen increased numbers of attacks against US forces in Iraq. So I’m sure that there was a lot of discussion about what could show the Iranians most significantly that we are really serious, that they should not continue to escalate. Now, obviously, there is a menu of options that they have now and not just in terms of direct Iranian action against perhaps our large bases in the various Gulf states, shipping in the Gulf, but also through proxy actions — and not just in the region, but even in places such as Latin America and Africa and Europe. (…) I am not privy to the intelligence that was the foundation for the decision, which clearly was, as was announced, this was a defensive action, that Soleimani was going into the country to presumably approve further attacks. Without really being in the inner circle on that, I think it’s very difficult to either second-guess or to even think through what the recommendation might have been. Again, it is impossible to overstate the significance of this action. This is much more substantial than the killing of Osama bin Laden. It’s even more substantial than the killing of Baghdadi. (…) my understanding is that we have significantly shored up our air defenses, our air assets, our ground defenses and so forth. There’s been the movement of a lot of forces into the region in months, not just in the past days. So there’s been a very substantial augmentation of our defensive capabilities and also our offensive capabilities. And (…) the question Iran has to ask itself is, « Where does this end? » If they now retaliate in a significant way — and considering how vulnerable their infrastructure and forces are at a time when their economy is in dismal shape because of the sanctions. So Iran is not in a position of strength, although it clearly has many, many options available to it, as I mentioned, not just with their armed forces and the Revolutionary Guards Corps, but also with these Quds Force-supported proxy elements throughout the region in the world. (…) I think one of the questions is, « What will the diplomatic ramifications of this be? » And again, there have been celebrations in some places in Iraq at the loss of Qasem Soleimani. So, again, there’s no tears being shed in certain parts of the country. And one has to ask what happens in the wake of the killing of the individual who had a veto, virtually, over the leadership of Iraq. What transpires now depends on the calculations of all these different elements. And certainly the US, I would assume, is considering diplomatic initiatives as well, reaching out and saying, « Okay. Does that send a sufficient message of our seriousness? Now, would you like to return to the table? » Or does Iran accelerate the nuclear program, which would, of course, precipitate something further from the United States? Very likely. So lots of calculations here. And I think we’re still very early in the deliberations on all the different ramifications of this very significant action. (…) I think that this particular episode has been fairly impressively handled. There’s been restraint in some of the communications methods from the White House. The Department of Defense put out, I think, a solid statement. It has taken significant actions, again, to shore up our defenses and our offensive capabilities. The question now, I think, is what is the diplomatic initiative that follows this? What will the State Department and the Secretary of State do now to try to get back to the table and reduce or end the battlefield consequences? [The flag that Donald Trump posted last night, no words] (…) I think relative to some of his tweets that was quite restrained. Gen. David Petraeus
Washington gave Israel a green light to assassinate Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Monday. Al-Jarida, which in recent years had broken exclusive stories from Israel, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that « there is an American-Israeli agreement » that Soleimani is a « threat to the two countries’ interests in the region. » It is generally assumed in the Arab world that the paper is used as an Israeli platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East. (…) The agreement between Israel and the United States, according to the report, comes three years after Washington thwarted an Israeli attempt to kill the general. The report says Israel was « on the verge » of assassinating Soleimani three years ago, near Damascus, but the United States warned the Iranian leadership of the plan, revealing that Israel was closely tracking the Iranian general. Haaretz (2018)
Most revered military leader’ now joins ‘austere religious scholar’ and ‘mourners’ trying to storm our embassy as word choices that make normal people wonder whose side the American mainstream media is on. Buck Sexton
Make no mistake – this is bigger than taking out Osama Bin Laden. Ranj Alaaldin
The reported deaths of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani and the Iraqi commander of the militia that killed an American last week was a bold and decisive military action made possible by excellent intelligence and the courage of America’s service members. His death is a huge loss for Iran’s regime and its Iraqi proxies, and a major operational and psychological victory for the United States. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), led by Suleimani, was responsible for the deaths of more than 600 Americans in Iraq between 2003-2011, and countless more injured. He was a chief architect behind Iran’s continuing reign of terror in the region. This strike against one of the world’s most odious terrorists is no different than the mission which took out Osama bin Laden – it is, in fact, even more justifiable since he was in a foreign country directing terrorist attacks against Americans. Lt. Col. (Ret.) James Carafano (Heritage Foundation)
This is a major blow. I would argue that this is probably the most major decapitation strike the United States has ever carried out. … This is a man who controlled a transnational foreign legion that was controlling governments in numerous different countries. He had a hell of a lot of power and a hell of a lot of control. You have to be a strong leader in order to get these people to work with you, know how and when to play them off one another, and also know which Iranians do I need within the IRGC-QF, which Lebanese do I need, which Iraqis do I need … that’s not something you can just pick up at a local five and dime. It takes decades of experience. (…) It’s an incredible two-fer. This is another one of those old hands. These guys don’t grow on trees. It takes time. Iran has been at war with the United States since the Islamic Revolutionary regime took power in Tehran in 1979. To say that we are going to war or that this is yet another American escalation — I think we need to be a little more detailed. Over the past year, Kata’ib Hizballah, was launching rockets and mortars at Americans in Iraq and eventually killed one. Over the past couple of years we’ve had a number of issues in the Gulf, we’ve had a number of issues in different countries, we’ve had international terrorism issues, you name it, you can throw everything at the wall, and the Iranians have in some way been behind some of it. Even arm supplies to the Taliban … so this didn’t just appear in a vacuum because ‘we didn’t like the Iranians. What the administration must offer now is firm diplomacy backed by the continuing, credible threat of the use of military force. President Trump has wisely shown that he will act with the full powers of his office when American interests are threatened, and the extremist regime in Tehran would be wise to take notice. Phillip Smyth (Washington Institute)
From a military and diplomatic perspective, Soleimani was Iran’s David Petraeus and Stan McChrystal and Brett McGurk all rolled into one. And that’s now the problem Iran faces. I do not know of a single Iranian who was more indispensable to his government’s ambitions in the Middle East. From 2015 to 2017, when we were in the heat of the fighting against the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq, I would watch Soleimani shuttle back and forth between Syria and Iraq. When the war to prop up Bashar al-Assad was going poorly, Soleimani would leave Iraq for Syria. And when Iranian-backed militias in Iraq began to struggle against the Islamic State, Soleimani would leave Syria for Iraq. That’s now a problem for Iran. Just as the United States often faces a shortage of human capital—not all general officers and diplomats are created equal, sadly, and we are not exactly blessed with a surplus of Arabic speakers in our government—Iran also doesn’t have a lot of talent to go around. One of the reasons I thought Iran erred so often in Yemen—giving strategic weapons such as anti-ship cruise missiles to a bunch of undertrained Houthi yahoos, for example—was a lack of adult supervision. Qassem Soleimani was the adult supervision. He was spread thin over the past decade, but he was nonetheless a serious if nefarious adversary of the United States and its partners in the region. And Iran and its partners will now feel his loss greatly. Soleimani was at least partially, and in many cases directly, responsible for dozens if not hundreds of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq going back to the height of the Iraq War. Andrew Exum
Soleimani is responsible for the Iranian military terror reign across the Middle East. Many Arab Muslims across the region are celebrating today. Unfortunately, many US Democrats are not. Instead, they are criticizing President Trump. If the death of Soleimani leads to any escalation, it is the Islamic regime of Iran that is to blame. The same Islamic terror regime that past President Obama wanted to align as the US closest ally in the Middle East, handing them the disastrous nuclear deal, as well as billions of dollars in cash. As Iran considers the US “big satan” and Israel as “little satan”, Israel is on high alert for any Iranian attacks in retaliation. Iran has always viewed an attack on Israeli interests as an attack on the USA. Avi Abelow
The successful operation against Qassem Suleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is a stunning blow to international terrorism and a reassertion of American might. (…) President Trump has conditioned his policies on Iranian behavior. When Iran spread its malign influence, Trump acted to check it. When Iran struck, Trump hit back: never disproportionately, never definitively. He left open the possibility of negotiations. He doesn’t want to have the greater Middle East — whether Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, or Afghanistan — dominate his presidency the way it dominated those of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. America no longer needs Middle Eastern oil. Best to keep the region on the back burner and watch it so it doesn’t boil over. Do not overcommit resources to this underdeveloped, war-torn, sectarian land. The result was reciprocal antagonism. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated by his predecessor. He began jacking up sanctions. The Iranian economy turned to a shambles. This “maximum pressure” campaign of economic warfare deprived the Iranian war machine of revenue and drove a wedge between the Iranian public and the Iranian government. Trump offered the opportunity to negotiate a new agreement. Iran refused. And began to lash out. Last June, Iran’s fingerprints were all over two oil tankers that exploded in the Persian Gulf. Trump tightened the screws. Iran downed a U.S. drone. Trump called off a military strike at the last minute and responded indirectly, with more sanctions, cyber attacks, and additional troop deployments to the region. Last September a drone fleet launched by Iranian proxies in Yemen devastated the Aramco oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. Trump responded as he had to previous incidents: nonviolently. Iran slowly brought the region to a boil. First it hit boats, then drones, then the key infrastructure of a critical ally. On December 27 it went further: Members of the Kataib Hezbollah militia launched rockets at a U.S. installation near Kirkuk, Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers were wounded. An American contractor was killed. Destroying physical objects merited economic sanctions and cyber intrusions. Ending lives required a lethal response. It arrived on December 29 when F-15s pounded five Kataib Hezbollah facilities across Iraq and Syria. At least 25 militiamen were killed. Then, when Kataib Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias organized a mob to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, setting fire to the grounds, America made a show of force and threatened severe reprisals. The angry crowd melted away. The risk to the U.S. embassy — and the possibility of another Benghazi — must have angered Trump. “The game has changed,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said hours before the assassination of Soleimani at Baghdad airport. (…) Deterrence, says Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, is credibly holding at risk something your adversary holds dear. If the reports out of Iraq are true, President Trump has put at risk the entirety of the Iranian imperial enterprise even as his maximum-pressure campaign strangles the Iranian economy and fosters domestic unrest. That will get the ayatollah’s attention. And now the United States must prepare for his answer. The bombs over Baghdad? That was Trump calling Khamenei’s bluff. The game has changed. But it isn’t over. Matthew Continetti
D’un point de vue fonctionnel, [Soleimani] était responsable de la force al-Qods des Gardiens de la Révolution, c’est-à-dire de l’ensemble des opérations menées par l’Iran dans toute la région. Cet homme avait beaucoup de secrets. Il était l’un des vecteurs, sinon le vecteur principal, du déploiement de l’influence de l’Iran. Je ne suis pas de ceux qui pensent qu’il y a une volonté expansionniste de l’Iran, mais Téhéran a développé des réseaux d’influence et c’est probablement Soleimani qui avait la haute main sur ceux-ci. Sur tous les terrains chauds de la région où l’Iran a une influence, on retrouve le général Soleimani. Il avait été localisé en Syrie ces dernières années, ce qui indique que la coordination des opérations des milices chiites dans le pays était sous sa responsabilité. Le fait qu’il ait été assassiné à Bagdad cette nuit prouve qu’il avait une importance logistique sur la coordination des milices en Irak. (…) Il ne faut pas sous-estimer l’importance de cette décision irresponsable de Donald Trump. Depuis le retrait unilatéral des Etats-Unis de l’accord sur le nucléaire, en mai 2018, les tensions avec l’Iran se sont accrues. Ce qui était très important, c’est que ces tensions étaient mesurées, sous contrôle. Elles avaient un fort impact sur la vie quotidienne des Iraniens. Pour autant, il n’y avait pas beaucoup de dérapages militaires : quelques incidents dans le golfe, le bombardement de sites pétroliers en Arabie-Saoudite. C’était un combat à fleuret moucheté. Personne ne franchissait la ligne rouge. Je crains fort qu’elle ait été franchie par cette décision, en raison de la qualité de la cible et de son importance dans le dispositif régional iranien. Les tensions s’étaient ravivées au cours des dernières heures, avec le siège de l’ambassade américaine à Bagdad, sans nul doute mené par les milices iraniennes. Il est évident que Soleimani a tenu un rôle. Cette prise d’assaut venait à la suite d’attaques ciblées des Etats-Unis. (…) Cela s’explique par le manque de sang-froid de Donald Trump. Ce matin, les démocrates s’insurgent, car cette décision a été prise sans concertation. C’est une décision à l’emporte-pièce, il a été sans doute un peu excité par les va-t-en-guerre de son camp, comme le secrétaire d’Etat Mike Pompeo, qui prône une ligne dure contre l’Iran. On y est presque. (…) Les Iraniens ne vont pas rester les deux pieds dans le même sabot. Je ne sais pas de quelles manières ils réagiront, ni où et quand. Ce ne sera sans doute pas tout de suite, mais nul doute qu’ils réagiront. Nous sommes dans une nouvelle séquence, ouverte par cet assassinat ciblé, réalisé au mépris de toutes les conventions internationales. Je ne maîtrise pas tous les paramètres, mais, à chaud, je peux imaginer qu’il y aura une recrudescence d’action militaire contre des objectifs américains, des bases militaires, des ambassades ou des intérêts sur place. Il y a également des risques pour Israël, qui sera peut-être une cible. Les milices pro-iraniennes déployées en Syrie ont une capacité de feu contre des villes israéliennes. Dans la région, il va y avoir un regain de mobilisation de toutes les forces proches de l’Iran, en Irak, au Liban et en Syrie. Je ne veux pas dire qu’il y a un risque d’embrasement général, je n’en sais rien, ce n’est pas la peine d’alimenter le fantasme. Mais la situation est infiniment préoccupante. Il y aura des conséquences, même si on ne sait pas bien les mesurer. (…) Une action sur le détroit d’Ormuz [où transitent de nombreux pétroliers] peut faire partie des mesures mises en œuvre par les Iraniens. Ils peuvent bloquer ou menacer de bloquer. Je ne pense pas qu’ils feront un blocage complet : les Iraniens font de la politique et ils savent que cela se retournerait contre eux. Mais il peut y avoir quelques arraisonnements de navires pétroliers et les cours du pétrole pourraient monter, même si cela n’avait pas été le cas après les incidents de l’été dernier dans le détroit. Didier Billion
Attention: une décision irresponsable peut en cacher une autre !
A l’heure où …
Après les attaques de pétroliers, la destruction d’installations pétrolières saoudiennes et les roquettes sur des bases américaines ayant entrainé la mort d’un citoyen américain …
Et avant sa brillante élimination par les forces américaines …
Le cerveau du dispositif terroriste des mollahs au Moyen-Orient préparait une possible deuxième attaque de l’ambassade américaine à Bagdad …
Pendant que la rue arabe comme la rue iranienne peinent à cacher leur joie …
Devinez quelle « décision irresponsable » dénoncent le parti démocrate américain, nos médias ou nos prétendus spécialistes ?
Mort du général Soleimani : « C’est une décision irresponsable de Donald Trump », estime un spécialiste de la région
Interrogé par franceinfo, Didier Billion, directeur adjoint de l’Institut de relations internationales et stratégique (Iris), spécialiste du Moyen-Orient, redoute qu’une « ligne rouge » ait été franchie.
Propos recueillis par Thomas Baïetto
France Télévisions
03/01/202
Qassem Soleimani est mort. Cet influent général iranien a été tué, vendredi 3 janvier, par une frappe américaine contre son convoi qui circulait sur l’aéroport de Bagdad (Irak). Cette élimination, ordonnée par le président américain Donald Trump, fait craindre une nouvelle escalade militaire dans la région.
Pour franceinfo, Didier Billion, directeur adjoint de l’Institut de relations internationales et stratégiques (Iris) et spécialiste du Moyen-Orient, analyse les possibles conséquences de cette mort.
Franceinfo : Pouvez-vous nous rappeler le rôle de Qassem Soleimani dans le régime iranien ?
Didier Billion : D’un point de vue fonctionnel, il était responsable de la force al-Qods des Gardiens de la Révolution, c’est-à-dire de l’ensemble des opérations menées par l’Iran dans toute la région. Cet homme avait beaucoup de secrets. Il était l’un des vecteurs, sinon le vecteur principal, du déploiement de l’influence de l’Iran. Je ne suis pas de ceux qui pensent qu’il y a une volonté expansionniste de l’Iran, mais Téhéran a développé des réseaux d’influence et c’est probablement Soleimani qui avait la haute main sur ceux-ci.
Sur tous les terrains chauds de la région où l’Iran a une influence, on retrouve le général Soleimani.à franceinfo
Il avait été localisé en Syrie ces dernières années, ce qui indique que la coordination des opérations des milices chiites dans le pays était sous sa responsabilité. Le fait qu’il ait été assassiné à Bagdad cette nuit prouve qu’il avait une importance logistique sur la coordination des milices en Irak.
Comment analysez-vous la décision des Etats-Unis de le tuer ?
Il ne faut pas sous-estimer l’importance de cette décision irresponsable de Donald Trump. Depuis le retrait unilatéral des Etats-Unis de l’accord sur le nucléaire, en mai 2018, les tensions avec l’Iran se sont accrues. Ce qui était très important, c’est que ces tensions étaient mesurées, sous contrôle. Elles avaient un fort impact sur la vie quotidienne des Iraniens. Pour autant, il n’y avait pas beaucoup de dérapages militaires : quelques incidents dans le golfe, le bombardement de sites pétroliers en Arabie-Saoudite. C’était un combat à fleuret moucheté. Personne ne franchissait la ligne rouge.
Je crains fort qu’elle ait été franchie par cette décision, en raison de la qualité de la cible et de son importance dans le dispositif régional iranien. Les tensions s’étaient ravivées au cours des dernières heures, avec le siège de l’ambassade américaine à Bagdad, sans nul doute mené par les milices iraniennes. Il est évident que Soleimani a tenu un rôle. Cette prise d’assaut venait à la suite d’attaques ciblées des Etats-Unis.
Tout indiquait une montée en tension, mais là, ce n’est pas seulement un mort de plus, c’est très important.à franceinfo
Cela s’explique par le manque de sang-froid de Donald Trump. Ce matin, les démocrates s’insurgent, car cette décision a été prise sans concertation. C’est une décision à l’emporte-pièce, il a été sans doute un peu excité par les va-t-en-guerre de son camp, comme le secrétaire d’Etat Mike Pompeo, qui prône une ligne dure contre l’Iran. On y est presque.
A quelles réactions peut-on s’attendre de la part de l’Iran ?
Les Iraniens ne vont pas rester les deux pieds dans le même sabot. Je ne sais pas de quelles manières ils réagiront, ni où et quand. Ce ne sera sans doute pas tout de suite, mais nul doute qu’ils réagiront. Nous sommes dans une nouvelle séquence, ouverte par cet assassinat ciblé, réalisé au mépris de toutes les conventions internationales. Je ne maîtrise pas tous les paramètres, mais, à chaud, je peux imaginer qu’il y aura une recrudescence d’action militaire contre des objectifs américains, des bases militaires, des ambassades ou des intérêts sur place.
Il y a également des risques pour Israël, qui sera peut-être une cible. Les milices pro-iraniennes déployées en Syrie ont une capacité de feu contre des villes israéliennes. Dans la région, il va y avoir un regain de mobilisation de toutes les forces proches de l’Iran, en Irak, au Liban et en Syrie. Je ne veux pas dire qu’il y a un risque d’embrasement général, je n’en sais rien, ce n’est pas la peine d’alimenter le fantasme. Mais la situation est infiniment préoccupante. Il y aura des conséquences, même si on ne sait pas bien les mesurer.
Peut-on s’attendre à des conséquences économiques ?
Une action sur le détroit d’Ormuz [où transitent de nombreux pétroliers] peut faire partie des mesures mises en œuvre par les Iraniens. Ils peuvent bloquer ou menacer de bloquer. Je ne pense pas qu’ils feront un blocage complet : les Iraniens font de la politique et ils savent que cela se retournerait contre eux. Mais il peut y avoir quelques arraisonnements de navires pétroliers et les cours du pétrole pourraient monter, même si cela n’avait pas été le cas après les incidents de l’été dernier dans le détroit.
Voir aussi:
Mort de Soleimani : l’Iran menace, la scène internationale s’inquiète
Le puissant général Qassem Soleimani a été tué à Bagdad. L’ambassade américaine à Bagdad a appelé ses ressortissants à quitter l’Irak « immédiatement ».
Le Point/AFP
03/01/2020
C’est certainement un moment clé du conflit qui oppose les États-Unis à l’Iran. Le puissant général Qassem Soleimani a été tué, jeudi 2 janvier, dans un raid américain à Bagdad, trois jours après une attaque inédite contre l’ambassade américaine. Le général Soleimani « n’a eu que ce qu’il méritait », a abondé le sénateur républicain Tom Cotton. Rapidement, des ténors républicains se sont félicités de ce raid ordonné par Trump. Une attaque dénoncée par ses adversaires démocrates, dont son potentiel rival à la présidentielle, Joe Biden.
Le Premier ministre israélien, Benyamin Netanyahou, a interrompu vendredi son voyage officiel en Grèce afin de rentrer en Israël, a indiqué son bureau à l’Agence France-Presse. Benyamin Netanyahou, arrivé à Athènes jeudi où il a signé un accord avec Chypre et la Grèce en faveur d’un projet de gazoduc, devait rester dans ce pays jusqu’à samedi, mais il a écourté son voyage après l’annonce du décès de Qassem Soleimani, chef des forces iraniennes al-Qods souvent accusées par Israël de préparer des attaques contre l’État hébreu.
La France a plaidé pour la « stabilité »
Le chef du mouvement chiite libanais Hezbollah, grand allié de l’Iran, a promis « le juste châtiment » aux « assassins criminels » responsables de la mort du général iranien Qassem Soleimani. « Apporter le juste châtiment aux assassins criminels […] sera la responsabilité et la tâche de tous les résistants et combattants à travers le monde », a promis dans un communiqué le chef du Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, qui utilise généralement le terme de « Résistance » pour désigner son organisation et ses alliés.
De son côté, la France a plaidé pour la « stabilité » au Moyen-Orient estimant, par la voix d’Amélie de Montchalin, secrétaire d’État aux Affaires européennes, que « l’escalade militaire [était] toujours dangereuse ». « On se réveille dans un monde plus dangereux. L’escalade militaire est toujours dangereuse », a-t-elle déclaré au micro de RTL. « Quand de telles opérations ont lieu, on voit bien que l’escalade est en marche alors que nous souhaitons avant tout la stabilité et la désescalade », a-t-elle ajouté.
Le ministre britannique des Affaires étrangères, Dominic Raab, a appelé « toutes les parties à la désescalade ». « Nous avons toujours reconnu la menace agressive posée par la force iranienne Qods dirigée par Qassem Soleimani. Après sa mort, nous exhortons toutes les parties à la désescalade. Un autre conflit n’est aucunement dans notre intérêt », a déclaré le chef de la diplomatie britannique dans un communiqué.
Éviter une « escalade des tensions »
La Chine a fait part de sa « préoccupation » et a appelé au « calme ». La Chine est l’un des pays signataires de l’accord sur le nucléaire iranien, dont les États-Unis se sont retirés unilatéralement en 2018, et l’un des principaux importateurs de brut iranien. « Nous demandons instamment à toutes les parties concernées, en particulier aux États-Unis, de garder leur calme et de faire preuve de retenue afin d’éviter une nouvelle escalade des tensions », a indiqué devant la presse un porte-parole de la diplomatie chinoise, Geng Shuang.
La Russie a mis en garde contre les conséquences de l’assassinat ciblé à Bagdad du général iranien Qassem Soleimani, une frappe américaine « hasardeuse » qui va se traduire par un « accroissement des tensions dans la région ». « L’assassinat de Soleimani […] est un palier hasardeux qui va mener à l’accroissement des tensions dans la région », a déclaré le ministère russe des Affaires étrangères, cité par les agences RIA Novosti et TASS. « Soleimani servait fidèlement les intérêts de l’Iran. Nous présentons nos sincères condoléances au peuple iranien », a-t-il ajouté.
Les ressortissants américains en Irak appelés à fuir
L’assassinat ciblé du général iranien Qassem Soleimani représente « une escalade dangereuse dans la violence », a déclaré, vendredi, la présidente de la Chambre des représentants, la démocrate Nancy Pelosi. « L’Amérique et le monde ne peuvent pas se permettre une escalade des tensions qui atteigne un point de non-retour », a estimé Nancy Pelosi dans un communiqué.
Le pouvoir syrien a dénoncé la « lâche agression américaine » y voyant une « grave escalade » pour le Moyen-Orient, a rapporté l’agence officielle Sana. La Syrie est certaine que cette « lâche agression américaine […] ne fera que renforcer la détermination à suivre le modèle de ces chefs de la résistance », souligne une source du ministère des Affaires étrangères à Damas citée par Sana.
L’ambassade américaine à Bagdad a appelé ses ressortissants à quitter l’Irak « immédiatement ». La chancellerie conseille vivement aux Américains en Irak de partir « par avion tant que cela est possible », alors que le raid a eu lieu dans l’enceinte même de l’aéroport de Bagdad, « sinon vers d’autres pays par voie terrestre ». Les principaux postes-frontières de l’Irak mènent vers l’Iran et la Syrie en guerre, alors que d’autres points de passage existent vers l’Arabie saoudite et la Turquie.
« Une guerre dévastatrice en Irak »
Le Premier ministre démissionnaire irakien Adel Abdel Mahdi a estimé que le raid allait « déclencher une guerre dévastatrice en Irak ». « L’assassinat d’un commandant militaire irakien occupant un poste officiel est une agression contre l’Irak, son État, son gouvernement et son peuple », affirme Adel Abdel Mahdi dans un communiqué, alors qu’Abou Mehdi al-Mouhandis est le numéro deux du Hachd al-Chaabi, une coalition de paramilitaires pro-Iran intégrée à l’État. « Régler ses comptes contre des personnalités dirigeantes irakiennes ou d’un pays ami sur le sol irakien […] constitue une violation flagrante des conditions autorisant la présence des troupes américaines », ajoute le texte.
Le guide suprême iranien, l’ayatollah Ali Khamenei, s’est engagé vendredi à « venger » la mort du puissant général iranien Qassem Soleimani, tué plus tôt dans un raid américain à Bagdad, et a décrété un deuil national de trois jours dans son pays. « Le martyre est la récompense de son inlassable travail durant toutes ces années. […] Si Dieu le veut, son œuvre et son chemin ne s’arrêteront pas là, et une vengeance implacable attend les criminels qui ont empli leurs mains de son sang et de celui des autres martyrs », a dit l’ayatollah Khamenei sur son compte Twitter en farsi.
L’Iran promet une vengeance
L’Iran et les « nations libres de la région » se vengeront des États-Unis après la mort du puissant général iranien Qassem Soleimani, a promis le président Hassan Rohani. « Il n’y a aucun doute sur le fait que la grande nation d’Iran et les autres nations libres de la région prendront leur revanche sur l’Amérique criminelle pour cet horrible meurtre », a déclaré Hassan Rohani dans un communiqué publié sur le site du gouvernement.
Qaïs al-Khazali, un commandant de la coalition pro-iranienne en Irak, a appelé « tous les combattants » à se « tenir prêts », quelques heures après l’assassinat par les Américains du général iranien Qassem Soleimani à Bagdad. « Que tous les combattants résistants se tiennent prêts, car ce qui nous attend, c’est une conquête proche et une grande victoire », a écrit Qaïs al-Khazali, chef d’Assaïb Ahl al-Haq, l’une des plus importantes factions du Hachd al-Chaabi qui regroupe les paramilitaires pro-Iran sous la tutelle de l’État irakien, dans une lettre manuscrite dont l’Agence France-Presse a pu consulter une copie.
Les républicains serrent les rangs
« J’apprécie l’action courageuse du président Donald Trump contre l’agression iranienne », a salué sur Twitter l’influent sénateur républicain Lindsey Graham, proche allié du président peu après la confirmation par le Pentagone que le locataire de la Maison-Blanche avait donné l’ordre de tuer le général iranien Qassem Soleimani, dans un raid à Bagdad. « Au gouvernement iranien : si vous en voulez plus, vous en aurez plus », a-t-il menacé, avant d’ajouter : « Si l’agression iranienne se poursuit et que je travaillais dans une raffinerie iranienne de pétrole, je songerais à une reconversion. »
Comme cet élu de Caroline du Sud, les républicains serraient les rangs jeudi soir derrière la stratégie du président américain. « Les actions défensives que les États-Unis ont prises contre l’Iran et ses mandataires sont conformes aux avertissements clairs qu’ils ont reçus. Ils ont choisi d’ignorer ces avertissements parce qu’ils croyaient que le président des États-Unis était empêché d’agir en raison de nos divisions politiques internes. Ils ont extrêmement mal évalué », a également salué le sénateur républicain Marco Rubio.
« Un bâton de dynamite »
Dans l’autre camp, les adversaires démocrates du président qui ont approuvé le mois dernier à la Chambre basse du Congrès son renvoi en procès pour destitution ont dénoncé le bombardement et les risques d’escalade avec l’Iran. « Le président Trump vient de jeter un bâton de dynamite dans une poudrière, et il doit au peuple américain une explication », a dénoncé l’ancien vice-président Joe Biden, en lice pour la primaire démocrate en vue de l’élection présidentielle de novembre. « C’est une énorme escalade dans une région déjà dangereuse », a-t-il insisté, dans un communiqué.
« La dangereuse escalade de Trump nous amène plus près d’une autre guerre désastreuse au Moyen-Orient », a dénoncé Bernie Sanders, autre favori de la primaire démocrate. « Trump a promis de terminer les guerres sans fin, mais cette action nous met sur le chemin d’une autre », a poursuivi le sénateur indépendant.
« Un affront aux pouvoirs du Congrès »
Le chef démocrate de la commission des Affaires étrangères de la Chambre des représentants a déploré que Donald Trump n’ait pas notifié le Congrès américain du raid mené en Irak. « Mener une action de cette gravité sans impliquer le Congrès soulève de graves problèmes légaux et constitue un affront aux pouvoirs du Congrès », a écrit dans un communiqué Eliot Engel.
« D’accord, il ne fait aucun doute que Soleimani a beaucoup de sang sur les mains. Mais c’est un moment vraiment effrayant. L’Iran va réagir et probablement à différents endroits. Pensée à tout le personnel américain dans la région en ce moment », a, quant à lui, estimé Ben Rhodes, ancien proche conseiller de Barack Obama. « Un président qui a juré de tenir les États-Unis à l’écart d’une autre guerre au Moyen-Orient vient dans les faits de faire une déclaration de guerre », a réagi le président de l’organisation International Crisis Group Robert Malley.
Voir également:
Frappe américaine : « Pour l’Iranien lambda, le général Soleimani était un monstre »
Propos recueillis par Alain Léauthier
Marianne
03/01/2020
Au fou ! Quelques heures après l’élimination spectaculaire, tôt dans la matinée de ce vendredi 3 janvier, du général Qassem Soleimani, le chef des opérations extérieures (la force al-Qods) des Gardiens de la Révolution iranienne et pilier du régime des mollahs, nombre de chancelleries étrangères condamnaient à demi-mot le raid aérien ciblé ordonné par Donald Trump. « On se réveille dans un monde plus dangereux (…) et l’escalade militaire est toujours dangereuse », a ainsi benoitement déclaré Amélie de Montchalin, la secrétaire d’État française aux Affaires européennes.
En Irak même, l’ex Premier ministre Adel Abdoul Mahdi, proche de Téhéran et obligé de démissionner en décembre sous la pression de la rue, a dénoncé une « atteinte aux conditions de la présence américaine en Irak et atteinte à la souveraineté du pays », allant jusqu’à qualifier d’ « assassinat » la frappe qui a également coûté la vie à Abou Mehdi al-Mouhandis, le numéro deux du Hachd al-Chaabi, une coalition de paramilitaires pro-Iran, désormais intégrés à l’Etat irakien et très actifs dans la tentative d’assaut de l’ambassade américaine à Bagdad il y a trois jours. Dans un tweet musclé, le secrétaire d’État Mike Pompéo l’avait clairement désigné comme un des responsables des évènements ainsi que Qaïs al-Khazali, fondateur de la milice chiite Assaïb Ahl al-Haq, une des factions du Hachd al-Chaabi.
Les mollahs disposent d’une grande variété de relais pour semer le chaos dans la région
Ce dernier ne se trouvait pas dans le convoi visé par la frappe létale et a lancé un appel au djihad – « Que tous les combattants résistants se tiennent prêts car ce qui nous attend, c’est une conquête proche et une grande victoire » – relayant une déclaration tonitruante de l’ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Dans un tweet, le guide suprême iranien a promis une « vengeance implacable » aux « criminels qui ont empli leurs mains de son sang et de celui des autres martyrs », menace sur laquelle s’est aussitôt calé le président Hassan Rohani, longtemps présenté comme le chef de file des « modérés » et réformateurs.
Les dignitaires de la République islamique ne pouvaient guère faire moins à l’issue de plusieurs mois de tensions et d’accrochages indirects qui ont culminé vendredi 27 décembre avec la mort d’un sous-traitant américain lors d’une énième attaque à la roquette contre une base militaire, située cette fois à Kirkouk, dans le nord de l’Irak, en pleine zone pétrolière.
Deux jours plus tard, les avions américains avaient répliqué en bombardant des garnisons des brigades du Hezbollah, autre faction pro-iranienne à la solde de Qassem Soleimani, et c’est autour du cortège funéraire des vingt-cinq « martyrs » tombés ce jour-là qu’avait débuté l’assaut contre l’ambassade des Etats-Unis à Bagdad. En attendant les éventuelles représailles iraniennes, les Etats-Unis ont encouragé leurs ressortissants à quitter au plus vite le sol irakien, tâche qui ne sera pas forcément des plus aisées, et les forces israéliennes ont été placées en état d’alerte maximal. Si une confrontation directe semble pour l’heure exclue, du Yemen au Liban en passant par la Syrie et bien sûr l’Irak, les mollahs disposent d’une grande variété de relais pour semer le chaos dans la région, à l’image du bombardement téléguidé d’installations pétrolières dans l’est de l’Arabie saoudite en septembre dernier.
Aux Etats-Unis, à en croire les commentaires alarmistes de Nancy Pelosi, la présidente démocrate de la Chambre des représentants, et ceux d’une presse lui reprochant déjà des vacances prolongées en Floride alors qu’il met le feu aux poudres, Donald Trump aurait montré une fois de plus l’incohérence de sa politique étrangère. Traître à la cause des Kurdes un jour mais jouant les apprentis sorciers un autre. Tel n’est pourtant pas tout à fait le sentiment de la chercheuse iranienne Mahnaz Shirali, enseignante à Science-Po, dans l’entretien qu’elle nous accorde ce vendredi.
Marianne : Quelle est votre première réaction après la mort de Qassem Soleimani ?
Mahnaz Shirali : C’est d’abord l’Iranienne qui va vous répondre et celle-là ne peut que se réjouir de ce qui s’est passé. Je parle en mon nom mais je peux vous l’assurer aussi au nom de millions d’Iraniens, probablement la majorité d’entre eux : cet homme était haï, il incarnait le mal absolu ! Je suis révoltée par les commentaires que j’ai entendus venant de certains pseudo-spécialistes de l’Iran, le présentant sur une chaîne de télévision comme un individu charismatique et populaire. Il faut ne rien connaître et ne rien comprendre à ce pays pour tenir ce genre de sottises. Pour l’Iranien lambda, Soleimani était un monstre, ce qui se fait de pire dans la République islamique.
C’est un coup dur pour le régime ?
Évidemment, Soleimani en était un élément essentiel, aussi puissant que Khameini et ce n’est pas de la propagande que d’affirmer que sa mort ne choque presque personne.
A quoi peut-on s’attendre ?
Je ne suis pas dans le secret des généraux iraniens mais une simple observatrice informée. Le régime est aux abois depuis des mois, totalement isolé. Ils savent qu’ils n’ont pas d’avenir, la rue et le peuple n’en veulent plus, ils ne peuvent pas vraiment compter sur l’Union européenne et pas plus sur la Chine. Ils n’ont aucun avenir et c’est ce qui rend la situation particulièrement dangereuse car ils sont dans une logique suicidaire.
Les mollahs ont accumulé des fortunes à l’étranger. Ne voudront-ils pas préserver leurs acquis financiers ?
En réalité, ils ont tout perdu et ne peuvent plus sortir du pays pour s’installer à l’étranger car des mandats ont été lancés contre la plupart d’entre eux. Les sanctions ont asséché la manne des pétrodollars et c’est essentiel car il n’y avait pas d’adhésion idéologique à ce régime.
Est-ce à dire que ligne suivi par Trump sur la question iranienne et durement critiquée par de nombreux experts, peut se révéler positive ?
Je ne suis pas compétente pour juger de la politique de Donald Trump. Je peux juste faire quelques observations. Il a considérablement affaibli ce régime, comme jamais auparavant, et peut-être même a-t-il signé leur arrêt de mort. Nous verrons. Lors des manifestations populaires, à Téhéran et dans d’autre villes, les noms de Khameini, de Rohani, de Soleimani étaient hués. Il n’y a jamais eu de slogans anti-Trump ou contre les Etats-Unis.
Mais la situation désormais est explosive…
Probablement oui, hélas, ils n’abandonneront pas le pouvoir tranquillement, j’en suis convaincue.
Voir de même:
Soleimani : La rue iranienne félicite Trump
Iran Resist
03.01.2020
Trump dit avoir mis à mort le Vador immortel des mollahs, Qassem Soleimani. Les adversaires de Trump le blâment. La France s’est jointe à eux par l’intermédiaire de Malbrunot. Mais les Iraniens sont heureux et se félicitent de cette mort et félicitent Trump comme le montre ce slogan écrit dans un quartier chic de Téhéran : Trump Damet garm ! Trump ! Reste en forme !
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
Par ailleurs, à Kermanshâh (Kurdistan iranien), les gens ont fait un gâteau pour une fête en honneur de l’élimination de Hadj Ghassem Soleimani. Dans une vidéo faisant part de cette initiative, un homme qui partage le gâteau fait référence à Soleimani en utilisant son sobriquet de Shash Ghassem (pisseux Ghassem) !
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
© IRAN-RESIST. ORG
Il y a d’autres vidéos ou images du même genre.
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
© IRAN-RESIST. RG
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
D’autres opposants en exil appellent aussi les ambassades du régime pour faire part de leur joie et leurs interlocuteurs ne prennent pas la peine de protester !
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
© IRAN-RESIST. ORG
Il y a aussi des scènes de joie en Irak et en Syrie !
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
© IRAN-RESIST.ORG
Contrairement aux prédictions des Malbrunot & co (voix du Quai d’Orsay), le Moyen-Orient ne va pas basculer dans le chaos pro-mollahs ! Les Français feraient mieux de changer de discours et suivre les peuples de la région au lieu de suivre leurs ennemis par aversion pour Trump ou par jalousie pour ses succès.
Trump Damet garm !
Voir de plus:
Petraeus Says Trump May Have Helped ‘Reestablish Deterrence’ by Killing Suleimani
The former U.S. commander and CIA director says Iran’s “very fragile” situation may limit its response.
Lara Seligman
Foreign policy
January 3, 2020
As a former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and a former CIA director, retired Gen. David Petraeus is keenly familiar with Qassem Suleimani, the powerful chief of Iran’s Quds Force, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad Friday morning.
After months of a muted U.S. response to Tehran’s repeated lashing out—the downing of a U.S. military drone, a devastating attack on Saudi oil infrastructure, and more—Suleimani’s killing was designed to send a pointed message to the regime that the United States will not tolerate continued provocation, he said.
Petraeus spoke to Foreign Policy on Friday about the implications of an action he called “more significant than the killing of Osama bin Laden.” This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Foreign Policy: What impact will the killing of Gen. Suleimani have on regional tensions?
David Petraeus: It is impossible to overstate the importance of this particular action. It is more significant than the killing of Osama bin Laden or even the death of [Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi. Suleimani was the architect and operational commander of the Iranian effort to solidify control of the so-called Shia crescent, stretching from Iran to Iraq through Syria into southern Lebanon. He is responsible for providing explosives, projectiles, and arms and other munitions that killed well over 600 American soldiers and many more of our coalition and Iraqi partners just in Iraq, as well as in many other countries such as Syria. So his death is of enormous significance.
The question of course is how does Iran respond in terms of direct action by its military and Revolutionary Guard Corps forces? And how does it direct its proxies—the Iranian-supported Shia militia in Iraq and Syria and southern Lebanon, and throughout the world?
FP: Two previous administrations have reportedly considered this course of action and dismissed it. Why did Trump act now?
DP: The reasoning seems to be to show in the most significant way possible that the U.S. is just not going to allow the continued violence—the rocketing of our bases, the killing of an American contractor, the attacks on shipping, on unarmed drones—without a very significant response.
Many people had rightly questioned whether American deterrence had eroded somewhat because of the relatively insignificant responses to the earlier actions. This clearly was of vastly greater importance. Of course it also, per the Defense Department statement, was a defensive action given the reported planning and contingencies that Suleimani was going to Iraq to discuss and presumably approve.
This was in response to the killing of an American contractor, the wounding of American forces, and just a sense of how this could go downhill from here if the Iranians don’t realize that this cannot continue.
FP: Do you think this response was proportionate?
DP: It was a defensive response and this is, again, of enormous consequence and significance. But now the question is: How does Iran respond with its own forces and its proxies, and then what does that lead the U.S. to do?
Iran is in a very precarious economic situation, it is very fragile domestically—they’ve killed many, many hundreds if not thousands of Iranian citizens who were demonstrating on the streets of Iran in response to the dismal economic situation and the mismanagement and corruption. I just don’t see the Iranians as anywhere near as supportive of the regime at this point as they were decades ago during the Iran-Iraq War. Clearly the supreme leader has to consider that as Iran considers the potential responses to what the U.S. has done.
It will be interesting now to see if there is a U.S. diplomatic initiative to reach out to Iran and to say, “Okay, the next move could be strikes against your oil infrastructure and your forces in your country—where does that end?”
FP: Will Iran consider this an act of war?
DP: I don’t know what that means, to be truthful. They clearly recognize how very significant it was. But as to the definition—is a cyberattack an act of war? No one can ever answer that. We haven’t declared war, but we have taken a very, very significant action.
FP: How prepared is the U.S. to protect its forces in the region?
DP: We’ve taken numerous actions to augment our air defenses in the region, our offensive capabilities in the region, in terms of general purpose and special operations forces and air assets. The Pentagon has considered the implications the potential consequences and has done a great deal to mitigate the risks—although you can’t fully mitigate the potential risks.
FP: Do you think the decision to conduct this attack on Iraqi soil was overly provocative?
DP: Again what was the alternative? Do it in Iran? Think of the implications of that. This is the most formidable adversary that we have faced for decades. He is a combination of CIA director, JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] commander, and special presidential envoy for the region. This is a very significant effort to reestablish deterrence, which obviously had not been shored up by the relatively insignificant responses up until now.
FP: What is the likelihood that there will be an all-out war?
DP: Obviously all sides will suffer if this becomes a wider war, but Iran has to be very worried that—in the state of its economy, the significant popular unrest and demonstrations against the regime—that this is a real threat to the regime in a way that we have not seen prior to this.
FP: Given the maximum pressure campaign that has crippled its economy, the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, and now this assassination, what incentive does Iran have to negotiate now?
DP: The incentive would be to get out from under the sanctions, which are crippling. Could we get back to the Iran nuclear deal plus some additional actions that could address the shortcomings of the agreement?
This is a very significant escalation, and they don’t know where this goes any more than anyone else does. Yes, they can respond and they can retaliate, and that can lead to further retaliation—and that it is clear now that the administration is willing to take very substantial action. This is a pretty clarifying moment in that regard.
FP: What will Iran do to retaliate?
DP: Right now they are probably doing what anyone does in this situation: considering the menu of options. There could be actions in the gulf, in the Strait of Hormuz by proxies in the regional countries, and in other continents where the Quds Force have activities. There’s a very considerable number of potential responses by Iran, and then there’s any number of potential U.S. responses to those actions
Given the state of their economy, I think they have to be very leery, very concerned that that could actually result in the first real challenge to the regime certainly since the Iran-Iraq War.
FP: Will the Iraqi government kick the U.S. military out of Iraq?
DP: The prime minister has said that he would put forward legislation to do that, although I don’t think that the majority of Iraqi leaders want to see that given that ISIS is still a significant threat. They are keenly aware that it was not the Iranian supported militias that defeated the Islamic State, it was U.S.-enabled Iraqi armed forces and special forces that really fought the decisive battles.
Lara Seligman is a staff writer at Foreign Policy.
Voir encore:
Gen. Petraeus on Qasem Soleimani’s killing: ‘It’s impossible to overstate the significance’
The World
January 03, 2020
The United States is sending nearly 3,000 additional troops to the Middle East from the 82nd Airborne Division as a precaution amid rising threats to American forces in the region, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Iran promised vengeance after a US airstrike in Baghdad on Friday killed Qasem Soleimani, Tehran’s most prominent military commander and the architect of its growing influence in the Middle East.
The overnight attack, authorized by US President Donald Trump, was a dramatic escalation in the « shadow war » in the Middle East between Iran and the United States and its allies, principally Israel and Saudi Arabia.
As former commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and a former CIA director, retired Gen. David Petraeus is very familiar with Soleimani. He spoke to The World’s host Marco Werman about what could happen next.
Marco Werman: How did you know Qasem Soleimani?
Gen. David Petraeus: Well, he was our most significant Iranian adversary during my four years in Iraq, [and] certainly when I was the Central Command commander, and very much so when I was the director of the CIA. He is unquestionably the most significant and important — or was the most significant and important — Iranian figure in the region, the most important architect of the effort by Iran to solidify control of the Shia crescent, and the operational commander of the various initiatives that were part of that effort.
General Petraeus, did you ever interact directly or indirectly with him?
Indirectly. He sent a message to me through the president of Iraq in late March of 2008, during the battle of Basra, when we were supporting the Iraqi army forces that were battling the Shia militias in Basra that were supported, of course, by Qasem Soleimani and the Quds Force. He sent a message through the president that said, « General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qasem Soleimani, control the policy of Iran for Iraq, and also for Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. »
And the implication of that was, « If you want to deal with Iran to resolve this situation in Basra, you should deal with me, not with the Iranian diplomats. » And his power only grew from that point in time. By the way, I did not — I actually told the president to tell Qasem Soleimani to pound sand.
So why do you suppose this happened now, though?
Well, I suspect that the leaders in Washington were seeking to reestablish deterrence, which clearly had eroded to some degree, perhaps by the relatively insignificant actions in response to these strikes on the Abqaiq oil facility in Saudi Arabia, shipping in the Gulf and our $130 million dollar drone that was shot down. And we had seen increased numbers of attacks against US forces in Iraq. So I’m sure that there was a lot of discussion about what could show the Iranians most significantly that we are really serious, that they should not continue to escalate.
Now, obviously, there is a menu of options that they have now and not just in terms of direct Iranian action against perhaps our large bases in the various Gulf states, shipping in the Gulf, but also through proxy actions — and not just in the region, but even in places such as Latin America and Africa and Europe.
Would you have recommended this course of action right now?
I’d hesitate to answer that just because I am not privy to the intelligence that was the foundation for the decision, which clearly was, as was announced, this was a defensive action, that Soleimani was going into the country to presumably approve further attacks. Without really being in the inner circle on that, I think it’s very difficult to either second-guess or to even think through what the recommendation might have been.
Again, it is impossible to overstate the significance of this action. This is much more substantial than the killing of Osama bin Laden. It’s even more substantial than the killing of Baghdadi.
Final question, General Petraeus, how vulnerable are US military and civilian personnel in the Middle East right now as a result of what happened last night?
Well, my understanding is that we have significantly shored up our air defenses, our air assets, our ground defenses and so forth. There’s been the movement of a lot of forces into the region in months, not just in the past days. So there’s been a very substantial augmentation of our defensive capabilities and also our offensive capabilities.
And, you know, the question Iran has to ask itself is, « Where does this end? » If they now retaliate in a significant way — and considering how vulnerable their infrastructure and forces are at a time when their economy is in dismal shape because of the sanctions. So Iran is not in a position of strength, although it clearly has many, many options available to it, as I mentioned, not just with their armed forces and the Revolutionary Guards Corps, but also with these Quds Force-supported proxy elements throughout the region in the world.
Two short questions for what’s next, Gen. Petraeus — US remaining in Iraq, and war with Iran. What’s your best guess?
Well, I think one of the questions is, « What will the diplomatic ramifications of this be? » And again, there have been celebrations in some places in Iraq at the loss of Qasem Soleimani. So, again, there’s no tears being shed in certain parts of the country. And one has to ask what happens in the wake of the killing of the individual who had a veto, virtually, over the leadership of Iraq. What transpires now depends on the calculations of all these different elements. And certainly the US, I would assume, is considering diplomatic initiatives as well, reaching out and saying, « Okay. Does that send a sufficient message of our seriousness? Now, would you like to return to the table? » Or does Iran accelerate the nuclear program, which would, of course, precipitate something further from the United States? Very likely. So lots of calculations here. And I think we’re still very early in the deliberations on all the different ramifications of this very significant action.
Do you have confidence in this administration to kind of navigate all those calculations?
Well, I think that this particular episode has been fairly impressively handled. There’s been restraint in some of the communications methods from the White House. The Department of Defense put out, I think, a solid statement. It has taken significant actions, again, to shore up our defenses and our offensive capabilities. The question now, I think, is what is the diplomatic initiative that follows this? What will the State Department and the Secretary of State do now to try to get back to the table and reduce or end the battlefield consequences?
The flag that Donald Trump posted last night, no words. Was that restraint, do you think?
I think it was. Certainly all things are relative. And I think relative to some of his tweets that was quite restrained.
Voir enfin:
Iran’s strategic mastermind got a huge boost from the nuclear deal
The historic nuclear accord between a US-led group of countries and Iran was good news for a man who some consider to be the Middle East’s most effective covert operative.As a result of the deal, Qasem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods Force and the general responsible for overseeing Iran’s network of proxy organizations, will be removed from European Union sanctions lists once the agreement is implemented, and taken off a UN sanctions list after eight or fewer years.
Iran obtained some key concessions as a result of the nuclear agreement, including access to an estimated $150 billion in frozen assets; the lifting of a UN arms embargo, the eventual end to sanctions related to the country’s ballistic missile program; the ability to operate over 5,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges and to run stable elements through centrifuges at the once-clandestine and heavily guarded Fordow facility; nuclear assistance from the US and its partners; and the ability to stall inspections of sensitive sites for as long as 24 days. In light of these accomplishments, the de-listing of a general responsible for coordinating anti-US militia groups in Iraq — someone who may be responsible for the deaths of US soldiers — almost seems gratuitous.
It’s unlikely that the entire deal hinged on a single Iranian officer’s ability to open bank accounts in EU states or travel within Europe. But it got into the deal anyway. So did a reprieve for Bank Saderat, which the US sanctioned in 2006 for facilitating money transfers to Iranian regime-supported terror groups like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. As part of the deal, Bank Saderat will leave the EU sanctions list on the same timetable as Suleimani, although it will remain under US designation.
Like Suleimani’s removal, Bank Saderat’s apparent legalization in Europe suggests that for the purposes of the deal, the US and its partners lumped a broad range of restrictions under the heading of « nuclear-related » sanctions.
Suleimani and Bank Saderat are still going to remain under US sanctions related to the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses and support for terrorism. US sanctions have broad extraterritorial reach, and the US Treasury Department has turned into the scourge of compliance desks at banks around the world. But that matters to a somewhat lesser degree inside of the EU, where companies have actually been exempted from complying with certain US « secondary sanctions » on Iran since the mid-1990s.
Any company that transacts with a US-designated individual takes on a certain degree of US legal exposure. That actually creates problem for US allies whose companies operate under less restrictive legal regimes. It’s perfectly legal under domestic law for companies in many EU countries — among the US’s closest allies — to perform transactions for certain US-listed individuals and entities. This has been the cause of some trans-Atlantic tensions in the past, with an upshot that’s of immediate relevance to the nuclear deal reached Tuesday.In 1996, the US Congress passed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, targeting entities in two longstanding opponents of the US. But these were countries where European companies had routinely invested. The law didn’t just sanction two unfriendly regimes — it effectively sanctioned US allies where business with both countries was legally tolerated.
The law triggered consultations between the US and the EU under the World Trade Organization’s various dispute mechanisms. Diplomatic protests forced the US and and its European allies to figure out a compromise that wouldn’t expose their companies to additional legal scrutiny or lead to an unnecessary escalation in trans-Atlantic trade barriers.
The result is that the US kept the law on the books, but scaled back their implementation in Europe. Then-President Bill Clinton « negotiated an agreement under which the United States would not impose any ISLA sanctions
on European firms – much to Congress’ dismay. »
And in November 1996, the Council of Europe adopted a resolution protecting European companies from the reach of US law. The resolution authorized « blocking recognition or enforcement of decisions or judgments giving effect to the covered laws, » effectively canceling the extraterritoriality of certain US sanctions on European soil (although legal exposure continued for European companies with enough of a US presence to put them under American jurisdiction). In past disputes, companies inside of Europe have had an EU-authorized waiver for complying with US secondary sanctions.
In a post-deal environment in which European companies are eager investors in a far less diplomatically isolated Iran, the 1996 spat could be a sign of things to come, as well as a guideline for smoothing out disputes over US sanctions enforcement in Europe.
Some time in the next few years, Qasem Suleimani will be able to travel and do business inside the EU, while a bank that’s facilitated the funding of US-listed terror group’s will be allowed to enter the European market. As part of the nuclear deal, the US and its partners bargained away much of the international leverage against some of the more problematic sectors in the Iranian regime, including entities whose wrongdoing went well beyond the nuclear realm.The result is the almost complete reversal of the sanctions regime in Europe. « If you look at the competing annexes, the European list is much more comprehensive and there are going to be significant differences between the designation lists that are maintained, » Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider. « The Europeans look as if they’re about to just open up entirely to Iran. »
Iran successfully pushed for a broad definition of « nuclear-related sanctions, » and bargained hard — and effectively — for a maximal degree of sanctions relief.
And the de-listing of Bank Saderat and Qasem Suleimani, along with the late-breaking effort to classify arms trade restrictions as purely nuclear-related, demonstrates just how far the US and its partners were willing to go to close a historic nuclear deal.
Voir par ailleurs:
Iran: le général Soleimani raconte sa guerre israélo-libanaise de 2006
Le Point/AFP
01/10/2019
La télévision d’Etat iranienne a diffusé mardi soir un entretien exclusif avec le général de division Ghassem Soleimani, un haut commandant des Gardiens de la Révolution, consacré à sa présence au Liban lors du conflit israélo-libanais de l’été 2006.
L’entretien est présenté comme la première interview du général Soleimani, homme de l’ombre à la tête de la force Qods, chargée des opérations extérieures –notamment en Irak et en Syrie— des Gardiens, l’armée idéologique de la République islamique.
Au cours des quelque 90 minutes d’entretien diffusées sur la première chaîne de la télévision d’Etat, le général Soleimani explique avoir passé au Liban, avec le Hezbollah chiite libanais, l’essentiel de ce conflit ayant duré 34 jours.
Le général dit être entré au pays du Cèdre au tout début de la guerre à partir de la Syrie avec Imad Moughnieh, haut commandant militaire du Hezbollah (tué en 2008) considéré par le mouvement chiite comme l’artisan de la « victoire » contre Israël lors de ce conflit ayant fait 1.200 morts côté libanais et 160 côté israélien.
Il revient sur l’élément déclencheur de la guerre: l’attaque, le 12 juillet, d’un commando du Hezbollah parvenu « à entrer en Palestine occupée (Israël, NDLR), attaquer un (blindé) sioniste et capturer deux soldats blessés ».
Mis à part une courte mission au bout « d’une semaine » pour rendre compte de la situation au guide suprême iranien, l’ayatollah Ali Khamenei, et revenir au Liban le jour-même avec un message de sa part pour Hassan Nasrallah, le chef du Hezbollah, le général dit être resté au Liban pour aider ses compagnons d’armes chiites.
Dans l’entretien, l’officier ne mentionne pas la présence d’autres Iraniens. Il livre le récit d’une expérience avant tout personnelle, au contact de Moughnieh et de M. Nasrallah.
Il raconte comment, pris sous des bombardements israéliens sur la banlieue sud de Beyrouth, bastion du Hezbollah, il évacue avec Moughniyeh le cheikh Nasrallah de la « chambre d’opérations » où il se trouve.
Selon son récit, lui et Moughniyeh font passer le chef du Hezbollah cette nuit-là d’abri en cachette avant de revenir tous deux à leur centre de commandement.
La publication de l’interview, réalisée par le bureau de l’ayatollah Khamenei, survient quelques jours après la publication, par ce même bureau, d’une photo inédite montrant Hassan Nasrallah « au-côté » de M. Khamenei et du général Soleimani et accréditant l’idée d’une rencontre récente entre les trois hommes à Téhéran.
Voir aussi:
Trump Calls the Ayatollah’s Bluff
And scores a victory against terrorism
Matthew Continetti
National review
January 3, 2020
The successful operation against Qassem Suleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is a stunning blow to international terrorism and a reassertion of American might. It will also test President Trump’s Iran strategy. It is now Trump, not Ayatollah Khamenei, who has ascended a rung on the ladder of escalation by killing the military architect of Iran’s Shiite empire. For years, Iran has set the rules. It was Iran that picked the time and place of confrontation. No more.
Reciprocity has been the key to understanding Donald Trump. Whether you are a media figure or a mullah, a prime minister or a pope, he will be good to you if you are good to him. Say something mean, though, or work against his interests, and he will respond in force. It won’t be pretty. It won’t be polite. There will be fallout. But you may think twice before crossing him again.
That has been the case with Iran. President Trump has conditioned his policies on Iranian behavior. When Iran spread its malign influence, Trump acted to check it. When Iran struck, Trump hit back: never disproportionately, never definitively. He left open the possibility of negotiations. He doesn’t want to have the greater Middle East — whether Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, or Afghanistan — dominate his presidency the way it dominated those of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. America no longer needs Middle Eastern oil. Best to keep the region on the back burner and watch it so it doesn’t boil over. Do not overcommit resources to this underdeveloped, war-torn, sectarian land.
The result was reciprocal antagonism. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated by his predecessor. He began jacking up sanctions. The Iranian economy turned to a shambles. This “maximum pressure” campaign of economic warfare deprived the Iranian war machine of revenue and drove a wedge between the Iranian public and the Iranian government. Trump offered the opportunity to negotiate a new agreement. Iran refused.
And began to lash out. Last June, Iran’s fingerprints were all over two oil tankers that exploded in the Persian Gulf. Trump tightened the screws. Iran downed a U.S. drone. Trump called off a military strike at the last minute and responded indirectly, with more sanctions, cyber attacks, and additional troop deployments to the region. Last September a drone fleet launched by Iranian proxies in Yemen devastated the Aramco oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. Trump responded as he had to previous incidents: nonviolently.
Iran slowly brought the region to a boil. First it hit boats, then drones, then the key infrastructure of a critical ally. On December 27 it went further: Members of the Kataib Hezbollah militia launched rockets at a U.S. installation near Kirkuk, Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers were wounded. An American contractor was killed.
Destroying physical objects merited economic sanctions and cyber intrusions. Ending lives required a lethal response. It arrived on December 29 when F-15s pounded five Kataib Hezbollah facilities across Iraq and Syria. At least 25 militiamen were killed. Then, when Kataib Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias organized a mob to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, setting fire to the grounds, America made a show of force and threatened severe reprisals. The angry crowd melted away.
The risk to the U.S. embassy — and the possibility of another Benghazi — must have angered Trump. “The game has changed,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said hours before the assassination of Soleimani at Baghdad airport. Indeed it has. The decades-long gray-zone conflict between Iran and the United States manifested itself in subterfuge, terrorism, technological combat, financial chicanery, and proxy forces. Throughout it all, the two sides confronted each other directly only once: in the second half of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. That is about to change.
Deterrence, says Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, is credibly holding at risk something your adversary holds dear. If the reports out of Iraq are true, President Trump has put at risk the entirety of the Iranian imperial enterprise even as his maximum-pressure campaign strangles the Iranian economy and fosters domestic unrest. That will get the ayatollah’s attention. And now the United States must prepare for his answer.
The bombs over Baghdad? That was Trump calling Khamenei’s bluff. The game has changed. But it isn’t over.
Voir également:
The Shadow Commander
Qassem Suleimani is the Iranian operative who has been reshaping the Middle East. Now he’s directing Assad’s war in Syria.
The New Yorker
September 23, 2013
Last February, some of Iran’s most influential leaders gathered at the Amir al-Momenin Mosque, in northeast Tehran, inside a gated community reserved for officers of the Revolutionary Guard. They had come to pay their last respects to a fallen comrade. Hassan Shateri, a veteran of Iran’s covert wars throughout the Middle East and South Asia, was a senior commander in a powerful, élite branch of the Revolutionary Guard called the Quds Force. The force is the sharp instrument of Iranian foreign policy, roughly analogous to a combined C.I.A. and Special Forces; its name comes from the Persian word for Jerusalem, which its fighters have promised to liberate. Since 1979, its goal has been to subvert Iran’s enemies and extend the country’s influence across the Middle East. Shateri had spent much of his career abroad, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, where the Quds Force helped Shiite militias kill American soldiers.
Shateri had been killed two days before, on the road that runs between Damascus and Beirut. He had gone to Syria, along with thousands of other members of the Quds Force, to rescue the country’s besieged President, Bashar al-Assad, a crucial ally of Iran. In the past few years, Shateri had worked under an alias as the Quds Force’s chief in Lebanon; there he had helped sustain the armed group Hezbollah, which at the time of the funeral had begun to pour men into Syria to fight for the regime. The circumstances of his death were unclear: one Iranian official said that Shateri had been “directly targeted” by “the Zionist regime,” as Iranians habitually refer to Israel.
At the funeral, the mourners sobbed, and some beat their chests in the Shiite way. Shateri’s casket was wrapped in an Iranian flag, and gathered around it were the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, dressed in green fatigues; a member of the plot to murder four exiled opposition leaders in a Berlin restaurant in 1992; and the father of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah commander believed to be responsible for the bombings that killed more than two hundred and fifty Americans in Beirut in 1983. Mughniyeh was assassinated in 2008, purportedly by Israeli agents. In the ethos of the Iranian revolution, to die was to serve. Before Shateri’s funeral, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Leader, released a note of praise: “In the end, he drank the sweet syrup of martyrdom.”
Kneeling in the second row on the mosque’s carpeted floor was Major General Qassem Suleimani, the Quds Force’s leader: a small man of fifty-six, with silver hair, a close-cropped beard, and a look of intense self-containment. It was Suleimani who had sent Shateri, an old and trusted friend, to his death. As Revolutionary Guard commanders, he and Shateri belonged to a small fraternity formed during the Sacred Defense, the name given to the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988 and left as many as a million people dead. It was a catastrophic fight, but for Iran it was the beginning of a three-decade project to build a Shiite sphere of influence, stretching across Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean. Along with its allies in Syria and Lebanon, Iran forms an Axis of Resistance, arrayed against the region’s dominant Sunni powers and the West. In Syria, the project hung in the balance, and Suleimani was mounting a desperate fight, even if the price of victory was a sectarian conflict that engulfed the region for years.
Suleimani took command of the Quds Force fifteen years ago, and in that time he has sought to reshape the Middle East in Iran’s favor, working as a power broker and as a military force: assassinating rivals, arming allies, and, for most of a decade, directing a network of militant groups that killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned Suleimani for his role in supporting the Assad regime, and for abetting terrorism. And yet he has remained mostly invisible to the outside world, even as he runs agents and directs operations. “Suleimani is the single most powerful operative in the Middle East today,” John Maguire, a former C.I.A. officer in Iraq, told me, “and no one’s ever heard of him.”
When Suleimani appears in public—often to speak at veterans’ events or to meet with Khamenei—he carries himself inconspicuously and rarely raises his voice, exhibiting a trait that Arabs call khilib, or understated charisma. “He is so short, but he has this presence,” a former senior Iraqi official told me. “There will be ten people in a room, and when Suleimani walks in he doesn’t come and sit with you. He sits over there on the other side of room, by himself, in a very quiet way. Doesn’t speak, doesn’t comment, just sits and listens. And so of course everyone is thinking only about him.”
At the funeral, Suleimani was dressed in a black jacket and a black shirt with no tie, in the Iranian style; his long, angular face and his arched eyebrows were twisted with pain. The Quds Force had never lost such a high-ranking officer abroad. The day before the funeral, Suleimani had travelled to Shateri’s home to offer condolences to his family. He has a fierce attachment to martyred soldiers, and often visits their families; in a recent interview with Iranian media, he said, “When I see the children of the martyrs, I want to smell their scent, and I lose myself.” As the funeral continued, he and the other mourners bent forward to pray, pressing their foreheads to the carpet. “One of the rarest people, who brought the revolution and the whole world to you, is gone,” Alireza Panahian, the imam, told the mourners. Suleimani cradled his head in his palm and began to weep.
The early months of 2013, around the time of Shateri’s death, marked a low point for the Iranian intervention in Syria. Assad was steadily losing ground to the rebels, who are dominated by Sunnis, Iran’s rivals. If Assad fell, the Iranian regime would lose its link to Hezbollah, its forward base against Israel. In a speech, one Iranian cleric said, “If we lose Syria, we cannot keep Tehran.”
Although the Iranians were severely strained by American sanctions, imposed to stop the regime from developing a nuclear weapon, they were unstinting in their efforts to save Assad. Among other things, they extended a seven-billion-dollar loan to shore up the Syrian economy. “I don’t think the Iranians are calculating this in terms of dollars,” a Middle Eastern security official told me. “They regard the loss of Assad as an existential threat.” For Suleimani, saving Assad seemed a matter of pride, especially if it meant distinguishing himself from the Americans. “Suleimani told us the Iranians would do whatever was necessary,” a former Iraqi leader told me. “He said, ‘We’re not like the Americans. We don’t abandon our friends.’ ”
Last year, Suleimani asked Kurdish leaders in Iraq to allow him to open a supply route across northern Iraq and into Syria. For years, he had bullied and bribed the Kurds into coöperating with his plans, but this time they rebuffed him. Worse, Assad’s soldiers wouldn’t fight—or, when they did, they mostly butchered civilians, driving the populace to the rebels. “The Syrian Army is useless!” Suleimani told an Iraqi politician. He longed for the Basij, the Iranian militia whose fighters crushed the popular uprisings against the regime in 2009. “Give me one brigade of the Basij, and I could conquer the whole country,” he said. In August, 2012, anti-Assad rebels captured forty-eight Iranians inside Syria. Iranian leaders protested that they were pilgrims, come to pray at a holy Shiite shrine, but the rebels, as well as Western intelligence agencies, said that they were members of the Quds Force. In any case, they were valuable enough so that Assad agreed to release more than two thousand captured rebels to have them freed. And then Shateri was killed.
Finally, Suleimani began flying into Damascus frequently so that he could assume personal control of the Iranian intervention. “He’s running the war himself,” an American defense official told me. In Damascus, he is said to work out of a heavily fortified command post in a nondescript building, where he has installed a multinational array of officers: the heads of the Syrian military, a Hezbollah commander, and a coördinator of Iraqi Shiite militias, which Suleimani mobilized and brought to the fight. If Suleimani couldn’t have the Basij, he settled for the next best thing: Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani, the Basij’s former deputy commander. Hamedani, another comrade from the Iran-Iraq War, was experienced in running the kind of irregular militias that the Iranians were assembling, in order to keep on fighting if Assad fell.
Late last year, Western officials began to notice a sharp increase in Iranian supply flights into the Damascus airport. Instead of a handful a week, planes were coming every day, carrying weapons and ammunition—“tons of it,” the Middle Eastern security official told me—along with officers from the Quds Force. According to American officials, the officers coördinated attacks, trained militias, and set up an elaborate system to monitor rebel communications. They also forced the various branches of Assad’s security services—designed to spy on one another—to work together. The Middle Eastern security official said that the number of Quds Force operatives, along with the Iraqi Shiite militiamen they brought with them, reached into the thousands. “They’re spread out across the entire country,” he told me.
A turning point came in April, after rebels captured the Syrian town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border. To retake the town, Suleimani called on Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, to send in more than two thousand fighters. It wasn’t a difficult sell. Qusayr sits at the entrance to the Bekaa Valley, the main conduit for missiles and other matériel to Hezbollah; if it was closed, Hezbollah would find it difficult to survive. Suleimani and Nasrallah are old friends, having coöperated for years in Lebanon and in the many places around the world where Hezbollah operatives have performed terrorist missions at the Iranians’ behest. According to Will Fulton, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, Hezbollah fighters encircled Qusayr, cutting off the roads, then moved in. Dozens of them were killed, as were at least eight Iranian officers. On June 5th, the town fell. “The whole operation was orchestrated by Suleimani,” Maguire, who is still active in the region, said. “It was a great victory for him.”
Despite all of Suleimani’s rough work, his image among Iran’s faithful is that of an irreproachable war hero—a decorated veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, in which he became a division commander while still in his twenties. In public, he is almost theatrically modest. During a recent appearance, he described himself as “the smallest soldier,” and, according to the Iranian press, rebuffed members of the audience who tried to kiss his hand. His power comes mostly from his close relationship with Khamenei, who provides the guiding vision for Iranian society. The Supreme Leader, who usually reserves his highest praise for fallen soldiers, has referred to Suleimani as “a living martyr of the revolution.” Suleimani is a hard-line supporter of Iran’s authoritarian system. In July, 1999, at the height of student protests, he signed, with other Revolutionary Guard commanders, a letter warning the reformist President Mohammad Khatami that if he didn’t put down the revolt the military would—perhaps deposing Khatami in the process. “Our patience has run out,” the generals wrote. The police crushed the demonstrators, as they did again, a decade later.
Iran’s government is intensely fractious, and there are many figures around Khamenei who help shape foreign policy, including Revolutionary Guard commanders, senior clerics, and Foreign Ministry officials. But Suleimani has been given a remarkably free hand in implementing Khamenei’s vision. “He has ties to every corner of the system,” Meir Dagan, the former head of Mossad, told me. “He is what I call politically clever. He has a relationship with everyone.” Officials describe him as a believer in Islam and in the revolution; while many senior figures in the Revolutionary Guard have grown wealthy through the Guard’s control over key Iranian industries, Suleimani has been endowed with a personal fortune by the Supreme Leader. “He’s well taken care of,” Maguire said.
Suleimani lives in Tehran, and appears to lead the home life of a bureaucrat in middle age. “He gets up at four every morning, and he’s in bed by nine-thirty every night,” the Iraqi politician, who has known him for many years, told me, shaking his head in disbelief. Suleimani has a bad prostate and recurring back pain. He’s “respectful of his wife,” the Middle Eastern security official told me, sometimes taking her along on trips. He has three sons and two daughters, and is evidently a strict but loving father. He is said to be especially worried about his daughter Nargis, who lives in Malaysia. “She is deviating from the ways of Islam,” the Middle Eastern official said.
Maguire told me, “Suleimani is a far more polished guy than most. He can move in political circles, but he’s also got the substance to be intimidating.” Although he is widely read, his aesthetic tastes appear to be strictly traditional. “I don’t think he’d listen to classical music,” the Middle Eastern official told me. “The European thing—I don’t think that’s his vibe, basically.” Suleimani has little formal education, but, the former senior Iraqi official told me, “he is a very shrewd, frighteningly intelligent strategist.” His tools include payoffs for politicians across the Middle East, intimidation when it is needed, and murder as a last resort. Over the years, the Quds Force has built an international network of assets, some of them drawn from the Iranian diaspora, who can be called on to support missions. “They’re everywhere,” a second Middle Eastern security official said. In 2010, according to Western officials, the Quds Force and Hezbollah launched a new campaign against American and Israeli targets—in apparent retaliation for the covert effort to slow down the Iranian nuclear program, which has included cyber attacks and assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.
Since then, Suleimani has orchestrated attacks in places as far flung as Thailand, New Delhi, Lagos, and Nairobi—at least thirty attempts in the past two years alone. The most notorious was a scheme, in 2011, to hire a Mexican drug cartel to blow up the Saudi Ambassador to the United States as he sat down to eat at a restaurant a few miles from the White House. The cartel member approached by Suleimani’s agent turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. (The Quds Force appears to be more effective close to home, and a number of the remote plans have gone awry.) Still, after the plot collapsed, two former American officials told a congressional committee that Suleimani should be assassinated. “Suleimani travels a lot,” one said. “He is all over the place. Go get him. Either try to capture him or kill him.” In Iran, more than two hundred dignitaries signed an outraged letter in his defense; a social-media campaign proclaimed, “We are all Qassem Suleimani.”
Several Middle Eastern officials, some of whom I have known for a decade, stopped talking the moment I brought up Suleimani. “We don’t want to have any part of this,” a Kurdish official in Iraq said. Among spies in the West, he appears to exist in a special category, an enemy both hated and admired: a Middle Eastern equivalent of Karla, the elusive Soviet master spy in John le Carré’s novels. When I called Dagan, the former Mossad chief, and mentioned Suleimani’s name, there was a long pause on the line. “Ah,” he said, in a tone of weary irony, “a very good friend.”
In March, 2009, on the eve of the Iranian New Year, Suleimani led a group of Iran-Iraq War veterans to the Paa-Alam Heights, a barren, rocky promontory on the Iraqi border. In 1986, Paa-Alam was the scene of one of the terrible battles over the Faw Peninsula, where tens of thousands of men died while hardly advancing a step. A video recording from the visit shows Suleimani standing on a mountaintop, recounting the battle to his old comrades. In a gentle voice, he speaks over a soundtrack of music and prayers.
“This is the Dasht-e-Abbas Road,” Suleimani says, pointing into the valley below. “This area stood between us and the enemy.” Later, Suleimani and the group stand on the banks of a creek, where he reads aloud the names of fallen Iranian soldiers, his voice trembling with emotion. During a break, he speaks with an interviewer, and describes the fighting in near-mystical terms. “The battlefield is mankind’s lost paradise—the paradise in which morality and human conduct are at their highest,” he says. “One type of paradise that men imagine is about streams, beautiful maidens, and lush landscape. But there is another kind of paradise—the battlefield.”
Suleimani was born in Rabor, an impoverished mountain village in eastern Iran. When he was a boy, his father, like many other farmers, took out an agricultural loan from the government of the Shah. He owed nine hundred toman—about a hundred dollars at the time—and couldn’t pay it back. In a brief memoir, Suleimani wrote of leaving home with a young relative named Ahmad Suleimani, who was in a similar situation. “At night, we couldn’t fall asleep with the sadness of thinking that government agents were coming to arrest our fathers,” he wrote. Together, they travelled to Kerman, the nearest city, to try to clear their family’s debt. The place was unwelcoming. “We were only thirteen, and our bodies were so tiny, wherever we went, they wouldn’t hire us,” he wrote. “Until one day, when we were hired as laborers at a school construction site on Khajoo Street, which was where the city ended. They paid us two toman per day.” After eight months, they had saved enough money to bring home, but the winter snow was too deep. They were told to seek out a local driver named Pahlavan—“Champion”—who was a “strong man who could lift up a cow or a donkey with his teeth.” During the drive, whenever the car got stuck, “he would lift up the Jeep and put it aside!” In Suleimani’s telling, Pahlavan is an ardent detractor of the Shah. He says of the two boys, “This is the time for them to rest and play, not work as a laborer in a strange city. I spit on the life they have made for us!” They arrived home, Suleimani writes, “just as the lights were coming on in the village homes. When the news travelled in our village, there was pandemonium.”
As a young man, Suleimani gave few signs of greater ambition. According to Ali Alfoneh, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, he had only a high-school education, and worked for Kerman’s municipal water department. But it was a revolutionary time, and the country’s gathering unrest was making itself felt. Away from work, Suleimani spent hours lifting weights in local gyms, which, like many in the Middle East, offered physical training and inspiration for the warrior spirit. During Ramadan, he attended sermons by a travelling preacher named Hojjat Kamyab—a protégé of Khamenei’s—and it was there that he became inspired by the possibility of Islamic revolution.
In 1979, when Suleimani was twenty-two, the Shah fell to a popular uprising led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the name of Islam. Swept up in the fervor, Suleimani joined the Revolutionary Guard, a force established by Iran’s new clerical leadership to prevent the military from mounting a coup. Though he received little training—perhaps only a forty-five-day course—he advanced rapidly. As a young guardsman, Suleimani was dispatched to northwestern Iran, where he helped crush an uprising by ethnic Kurds.
When the revolution was eighteen months old, Saddam Hussein sent the Iraqi Army sweeping across the border, hoping to take advantage of the internal chaos. Instead, the invasion solidified Khomeini’s leadership and unified the country in resistance, starting a brutal, entrenched war. Suleimani was sent to the front with a simple task, to supply water to the soldiers there, and he never left. “I entered the war on a fifteen-day mission, and ended up staying until the end,” he has said. A photograph from that time shows the young Suleimani dressed in green fatigues, with no insignia of rank, his black eyes focussed on a far horizon. “We were all young and wanted to serve the revolution,” he told an interviewer in 2005.
Suleimani earned a reputation for bravery and élan, especially as a result of reconnaissance missions he undertook behind Iraqi lines. He returned from several missions bearing a goat, which his soldiers slaughtered and grilled. “Even the Iraqis, our enemy, admired him for this,” a former Revolutionary Guard officer who defected to the United States told me. On Iraqi radio, Suleimani became known as “the goat thief.” In recognition of his effectiveness, Alfoneh said, he was put in charge of a brigade from Kerman, with men from the gyms where he lifted weights.
The Iranian Army was badly overmatched, and its commanders resorted to crude and costly tactics. In “human wave” assaults, they sent thousands of young men directly into the Iraqi lines, often to clear minefields, and soldiers died at a precipitous rate. Suleimani seemed distressed by the loss of life. Before sending his men into battle, he would embrace each one and bid him goodbye; in speeches, he praised martyred soldiers and begged their forgiveness for not being martyred himself. When Suleimani’s superiors announced plans to attack the Faw Peninsula, he dismissed them as wasteful and foolhardy. The former Revolutionary Guard officer recalled seeing Suleimani in 1985, after a battle in which his brigade had suffered many dead and wounded. He was sitting alone in a corner of a tent. “He was very silent, thinking about the people he’d lost,” the officer said.
Ahmad, the young relative who travelled with Suleimani to Kerman, was killed in 1984. On at least one occasion, Suleimani himself was wounded. Still, he didn’t lose enthusiasm for his work. In the nineteen-eighties, Reuel Marc Gerecht was a young C.I.A. officer posted to Istanbul, where he recruited from the thousands of Iranian soldiers who went there to recuperate. “You’d get a whole variety of guardsmen,” Gerecht, who has written extensively on Iran, told me. “You’d get clerics, you’d get people who came to breathe and whore and drink.” Gerecht divided the veterans into two groups. “There were the broken and the burned out, the hollow-eyed—the guys who had been destroyed,” he said. “And then there were the bright-eyed guys who just couldn’t wait to get back to the front. I’d put Suleimani in the latter category.”
Ryan Crocker, the American Ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, got a similar feeling. During the Iraq War, Crocker sometimes dealt with Suleimani indirectly, through Iraqi leaders who shuttled in and out of Tehran. Once, he asked one of the Iraqis if Suleimani was especially religious. The answer was “Not really,” Crocker told me. “He attends mosque periodically. Religion doesn’t drive him. Nationalism drives him, and the love of the fight.”
Iran’s leaders took two lessons from the Iran-Iraq War. The first was that Iran was surrounded by enemies, near and far. To the regime, the invasion was not so much an Iraqi plot as a Western one. American officials were aware of Saddam’s preparations to invade Iran in 1980, and they later provided him with targeting information used in chemical-weapons attacks; the weapons themselves were built with the help of Western European firms. The memory of these attacks is an especially bitter one. “Do you know how many people are still suffering from the effects of chemical weapons?” Mehdi Khalaji, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said. “Thousands of former soldiers. They believe these were Western weapons given to Saddam.” In 1987, during a battle with the Iraqi Army, a division under Suleimani’s command was attacked by artillery shells containing chemical weapons. More than a hundred of his men suffered the effects.
The other lesson drawn from the Iran-Iraq War was the futility of fighting a head-to-head confrontation. In 1982, after the Iranians expelled the Iraqi forces, Khomeini ordered his men to keep going, to “liberate” Iraq and push on to Jerusalem. Six years and hundreds of thousands of lives later, he agreed to a ceasefire. According to Alfoneh, many of the generals of Suleimani’s generation believe they could have succeeded had the clerics not flinched. “Many of them feel like they were stabbed in the back,” he said. “They have nurtured this myth for nearly thirty years.” But Iran’s leaders did not want another bloodbath. Instead, they had to build the capacity to wage asymmetrical warfare—attacking stronger powers indirectly, outside of Iran.
The Quds Force was an ideal tool. Khomeini had created the prototype for the force in 1979, with the goal of protecting Iran and exporting the Islamic Revolution. The first big opportunity came in Lebanon, where Revolutionary Guard officers were dispatched in 1982 to help organize Shiite militias in the many-sided Lebanese civil war. Those efforts resulted in the creation of Hezbollah, which developed under Iranian guidance. Hezbollah’s military commander, the brilliant and murderous Imad Mughniyeh, helped form what became known as the Special Security Apparatus, a wing of Hezbollah that works closely with the Quds Force. With assistance from Iran, Hezbollah helped orchestrate attacks on the American Embassy and on French and American military barracks. “In the early days, when Hezbollah was totally dependent on Iranian help, Mughniyeh and others were basically willing Iranian assets,” David Crist, a historian for the U.S. military and the author of “The Twilight War,” says.
For all of the Iranian regime’s aggressiveness, some of its religious zeal seemed to burn out. In 1989, Khomeini stopped urging Iranians to spread the revolution, and called instead for expediency to preserve its gains. Persian self-interest was the order of the day, even if it was indistinguishable from revolutionary fervor. In those years, Suleimani worked along Iran’s eastern frontier, aiding Afghan rebels who were holding out against the Taliban. The Iranian regime regarded the Taliban with intense hostility, in large part because of their persecution of Afghanistan’s minority Shiite population. (At one point, the two countries nearly went to war; Iran mobilized a quarter of a million troops, and its leaders denounced the Taliban as an affront to Islam.) In an area that breeds corruption, Suleimani made a name for himself battling opium smugglers along the Afghan border.
In 1998, Suleimani was named the head of the Quds Force, taking over an agency that had already built a lethal résumé: American and Argentine officials believe that the Iranian regime helped Hezbollah orchestrate the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, which killed twenty-nine people, and the attack on the Jewish center in the same city two years later, which killed eighty-five. Suleimani has built the Quds Force into an organization with extraordinary reach, with branches focussed on intelligence, finance, politics, sabotage, and special operations. With a base in the former U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran, the force has between ten thousand and twenty thousand members, divided between combatants and those who train and oversee foreign assets. Its members are picked for their skill and their allegiance to the doctrine of the Islamic Revolution (as well as, in some cases, their family connections). According to the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, fighters are recruited throughout the region, trained in Shiraz and Tehran, indoctrinated at the Jerusalem Operation College, in Qom, and then “sent on months-long missions to Afghanistan and Iraq to gain experience in field operational work. They usually travel under the guise of Iranian construction workers.”
After taking command, Suleimani strengthened relationships in Lebanon, with Mughniyeh and with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s chief. By then, the Israeli military had occupied southern Lebanon for sixteen years, and Hezbollah was eager to take control of the country, so Suleimani sent in Quds Force operatives to help. “They had a huge presence—training, advising, planning,” Crocker said. In 2000, the Israelis withdrew, exhausted by relentless Hezbollah attacks. It was a signal victory for the Shiites, and, Crocker said, “another example of how countries like Syria and Iran can play a long game, knowing that we can’t.”
Since then, the regime has given aid to a variety of militant Islamist groups opposed to America’s allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The help has gone not only to Shiites but also to Sunni groups like Hamas—helping to form an archipelago of alliances that stretches from Baghdad to Beirut. “No one in Tehran started out with a master plan to build the Axis of Resistance, but opportunities presented themselves,” a Western diplomat in Baghdad told me. “In each case, Suleimani was smarter, faster, and better resourced than anyone else in the region. By grasping at opportunities as they came, he built the thing, slowly but surely.”
In the chaotic days after the attacks of September 11th, Ryan Crocker, then a senior State Department official, flew discreetly to Geneva to meet a group of Iranian diplomats. “I’d fly out on a Friday and then back on Sunday, so nobody in the office knew where I’d been,” Crocker told me. “We’d stay up all night in those meetings.” It seemed clear to Crocker that the Iranians were answering to Suleimani, whom they referred to as “Haji Qassem,” and that they were eager to help the United States destroy their mutual enemy, the Taliban. Although the United States and Iran broke off diplomatic relations in 1980, after American diplomats in Tehran were taken hostage, Crocker wasn’t surprised to find that Suleimani was flexible. “You don’t live through eight years of brutal war without being pretty pragmatic,” he said. Sometimes Suleimani passed messages to Crocker, but he avoided putting anything in writing. “Haji Qassem’s way too smart for that,” Crocker said. “He’s not going to leave paper trails for the Americans.”
Before the bombing began, Crocker sensed that the Iranians were growing impatient with the Bush Administration, thinking that it was taking too long to attack the Taliban. At a meeting in early October, 2001, the lead Iranian negotiator stood up and slammed a sheaf of papers on the table. “If you guys don’t stop building these fairy-tale governments in the sky, and actually start doing some shooting on the ground, none of this is ever going to happen!” he shouted. “When you’re ready to talk about serious fighting, you know where to find me.” He stomped out of the room. “It was a great moment,” Crocker said.
The coöperation between the two countries lasted through the initial phase of the war. At one point, the lead negotiator handed Crocker a map detailing the disposition of Taliban forces. “Here’s our advice: hit them here first, and then hit them over here. And here’s the logic.” Stunned, Crocker asked, “Can I take notes?” The negotiator replied, “You can keep the map.” The flow of information went both ways. On one occasion, Crocker said, he gave his counterparts the location of an Al Qaeda facilitator living in the eastern city of Mashhad. The Iranians detained him and brought him to Afghanistan’s new leaders, who, Crocker believes, turned him over to the U.S. The negotiator told Crocker, “Haji Qassem is very pleased with our coöperation.”
The good will didn’t last. In January, 2002, Crocker, who was by then the deputy chief of the American Embassy in Kabul, was awakened one night by aides, who told him that President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union Address, had named Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil.” Like many senior diplomats, Crocker was caught off guard. He saw the negotiator the next day at the U.N. compound in Kabul, and he was furious. “You completely damaged me,” Crocker recalled him saying. “Suleimani is in a tearing rage. He feels compromised.” The negotiator told Crocker that, at great political risk, Suleimani had been contemplating a complete reëvaluation of the United States, saying, “Maybe it’s time to rethink our relationship with the Americans.” The Axis of Evil speech brought the meetings to an end. Reformers inside the government, who had advocated a rapprochement with the United States, were put on the defensive. Recalling that time, Crocker shook his head. “We were just that close,” he said. “One word in one speech changed history.”
Before the meetings fell apart, Crocker talked with the lead negotiator about the possibility of war in Iraq. “Look,” Crocker said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do have some responsibility for Iraq—it’s my portfolio—and I can read the signs, and I think we’re going to go in.” He saw an enormous opportunity. The Iranians despised Saddam, and Crocker figured that they would be willing to work with the U.S. “I was not a fan of the invasion,” he told me. “But I was thinking, If we’re going to do it, let’s see if we can flip an enemy into a friend—at least tactically for this, and then let’s see where we can take it.” The negotiator indicated that the Iranians were willing to talk, and that Iraq, like Afghanistan, was part of Suleimani’s brief: “It’s one guy running both shows.”
After the invasion began, in March, 2003, Iranian officials were frantic to let the Americans know that they wanted peace. Many of them watched the regimes topple in Afghanistan and Iraq and were convinced that they were next. “They were scared shitless,” Maguire, the former C.I.A. officer in Baghdad, told me. “They were sending runners across the border to our élite elements saying, ‘Look, we don’t want any trouble with you.’ We had an enormous upper hand.” That same year, American officials determined that Iran had reconfigured its plans to develop a nuclear weapon to proceed more slowly and covertly, lest it invite a Western attack.
After Saddam’s regime collapsed, Crocker was dispatched to Baghdad to organize a fledgling government, called the Iraqi Governing Council. He realized that many Iraqi politicians were flying to Tehran for consultations, and he jumped at the chance to negotiate indirectly with Suleimani. In the course of the summer, Crocker passed him the names of prospective Shiite candidates, and the two men vetted each one. Crocker did not offer veto power, but he abandoned candidates whom Suleimani found especially objectionable. “The formation of the governing council was in its essence a negotiation between Tehran and Washington,” he said.
Voir de même:
Gen. Soleimani: A new brand of Iranian hero for nationalist times
Not a Shiite religious figure and not a martyr, Qassem Soleimani, the living commander of Iran’s elite Qods Force, has been elevated to hero status.
Scott Peterson
The Christian Science Monitor
February 15, 2016
Tehran, Iran
For years the commander of Iran’s elite Qods Force worked from the shadows, conducting the nation’s battles from Afghanistan to Lebanon.
But today Qassem Soleimani is Iran’s celebrity general, a man elevated to hero status by a social media machine that has at least 10 Instagram accounts and spreads photographs and selfies of him at the front lines in Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic Republic long ago turned hero worship into an art form, with its devotion to Shiite religious figures and war martyrs. But the growing personality cult that halos Maj. Gen. Soleimani is different: The gray-haired servant of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is very much alive, and his ascent to stardom coincides with a growing nationalist trend in Iran.
“Propaganda in Iran is changing, and every nation needs a live hero,” says a conservative analyst in Qom, who asked not to be named.
“The dead heroes now are not useful; we need a live hero now. Iranian people like great commanders, military heroes in history,” he says, ticking off a string of names. “I think Qassem Soleimani is the right person for our new propaganda policy – the right person at the right time.”
Soleimani’s face surged into public view after the self-described Islamic State (IS) swept from Syria into Iraq in June 2014. Frontline photographs of the general mingling with Iranian fighters went viral.
Iranians cite many reasons for his rise, from “saving” Baghdad from IS jihadists and reactivating Shiite militias in Iraq to preserving the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during nearly six years of war.
Never mind that some analysts suggest that earlier failures to prevent internal upheaval in Iraq and Syria – for years those countries were part of Soleimani’s responsibility – are the reason for Iran’s deep involvement today.
For his part, Soleimani attributes the “collapse of American power in the region” to Iran’s “spiritual influence” in bolstering resistance against the United States, Israel, and their allies.
“It is very extraordinary. Who else can come close?” says a veteran observer in Tehran, Iran, who asked not to be named. “I don’t know how intentional this is; you see people in all walks of life respect him. It shows we can have a very popular hero who is not a cleric.”
“There is no stain on his image,” says the observer.
Indeed, Soleimani has become a source of pride and a symbol for Iranians of all stripes of their nation’s power abroad. At a pro-regime rally, even young Westernized women in makeup pledge to be “soldiers” of Soleimani. At a bodybuilding championship held in his honor, bare-chested men flaunted their muscles beside a huge portrait of him.
Among the Islamic Revolution’s true believers, Soleimani’s exploits are sung by religious storytellers and posted online. His writings about the Iran-Iraq War are steeped in religious language.
In a video from the Syrian front line broadcast on state TV last month, he addressed fighters, saying, of an Iranian volunteer who was killed, “God loves the person who makes holy war his path.”
When erroneous reports of Soleimani’s death recently emerged (Iran has lost dozens of senior IRGC commanders in Syria and Iraq and hundreds of “advisers”), he laughed and said, “This [martyrdom] is something that I have climbed mountains and crossed plains to find.
Some say the hero worship has gone too far; months ago the IRGC ordered Iranian media not to publish frontline selfies. When a young director wanted to make a film inspired by his hero, the general said he was against it and was embarrassed.
Yet Soleimani appears to have relented for Ebrahim Hatamikia, a renowned director of war films.
“Bodyguard” is now premièring at a festival in Tehran. “I made this film for the love of Haj Qassem Soleimani,” the director told an Iranian website, adding that he is “the earth beneath Soleimani’s feet.”
Voir de plus:
The war on ISIS is getting weird in Iraq
Michael B Kelley
Business insider
Mar 25, 2015
The US has started providing « air strikes, airborne intelligence, and Advise & Assist support to Iraqi security forces headquarters » as Baghdad struggles to drive ISIS militants out of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.
The Iraqi assault has heretofore been spearheaded by Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and most of the Iraqi forces are members of Shiite militias beholden to Tehran.
The British magazine The Week features Suleimani in bed with Uncle Sam, which is quite striking given that Suleimani directed « a network of militant groups that killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, » as detailed by Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker.The notion of the US working on the same side Suleimani is confounding to those who consider him a formidable adversary.
« There’s just no way that the US military can actively support an offensive led by Suleimani, » Christopher Harmer, a former aviator in the United States Navy in the Persian Gulf who is now an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, told Helene Cooper of The New York Times recently. « He’s a more stately version of Osama bin Laden. »
Suleimani’s Iraqi allies — such as the powerful Badr militia — are known for allegedly burning down Sunni villages and using power drills on enemies.
« It’s a little hard for us to be allied on the battlefield with groups of individuals who are unrepentantly covered in American blood, » Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat who served as the US ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, told US News.
Nevertheless, American warplanes have provided support for the so-called special groups over the past few months.
Badr commander Hadi al-Ameri recently told Eli Lake of Bloomberg that the US ambassador to Iraq offered airstrikes to support the Iraqi army and the Badr ground forces. Ameri added that Suleimani « advises us. He offers us information, we respect him very much. »
The Wall Street Journal noted that « U.S. officials want to ensure that Iran doesn’t play a central role in the fight ahead. U.S. officials want to be certain that the Iraqi military provides strong oversight of the Shiite militias. »
The question is who tells Suleimani to get out of the way but leave his militias behind.
Voir de plus:
Trump Kills Iran’s Most Overrated Warrior
Suleimani pushed his country to build an empire, but drove it into the ground instead.
Thomas L. Friedman
NYT
Jan. 3, 2020
One day they may name a street after President Trump in Tehran. Why? Because Trump just ordered the assassination of possibly the dumbest man in Iran and the most overrated strategist in the Middle East: Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
Think of the miscalculations this guy made. In 2015, the United States and the major European powers agreed to lift virtually all their sanctions on Iran, many dating back to 1979, in return for Iran halting its nuclear weapons program for a mere 15 years, but still maintaining the right to have a peaceful nuclear program. It was a great deal for Iran. Its economy grew by over 12 percent the next year. And what did Suleimani do with that windfall?
He and Iran’s supreme leader launched an aggressive regional imperial project that made Iran and its proxies the de facto controlling power in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sana. This freaked out U.S. allies in the Sunni Arab world and Israel — and they pressed the Trump administration to respond. Trump himself was eager to tear up any treaty forged by President Obama, so he exited the nuclear deal and imposed oil sanctions on Iran that have now shrunk the Iranian economy by almost 10 percent and sent unemployment over 16 percent.
All that for the pleasure of saying that Tehran can call the shots in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sana. What exactly was second prize?
With the Tehran regime severely deprived of funds, the ayatollahs had to raise gasoline prices at home, triggering massive domestic protests. That required a harsh crackdown by Iran’s clerics against their own people that left thousands jailed and killed, further weakening the legitimacy of the regime.
Then Mr. “Military Genius” Suleimani decided that, having propped up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and helping to kill 500,000 Syrians in the process, he would overreach again and try to put direct pressure on Israel. He would do this by trying to transfer precision-guided rockets from Iran to Iranian proxy forces in Lebanon and Syria.
Alas, Suleimani discovered that fighting Israel — specifically, its combined air force, special forces, intelligence and cyber — is not like fighting the Nusra front or the Islamic State. The Israelis hit back hard, sending a whole bunch of Iranians home from Syria in caskets and hammering their proxies as far away as Western Iraq.
Indeed, Israeli intelligence had so penetrated Suleimani’s Quds Force and its proxies that Suleimani would land a plane with precision munitions in Syria at 5 p.m., and the Israeli air force would blow it up by 5:30 p.m. Suleimani’s men were like fish in a barrel. If Iran had a free press and a real parliament, he would have been fired for colossal mismanagement.
But it gets better, or actually worse, for Suleimani. Many of his obituaries say that he led the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq, in tacit alliance with America. Well, that’s true. But what they omit is that Suleimani’s, and Iran’s, overreaching in Iraq helped to produce the Islamic State in the first place.
It was Suleimani and his Quds Force pals who pushed Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to push Sunnis out of the Iraqi government and army, stop paying salaries to Sunni soldiers, kill and arrest large numbers of peaceful Sunni protesters and generally turn Iraq into a Shiite-dominated sectarian state. The Islamic State was the counterreaction.
Finally, it was Suleimani’s project of making Iran the imperial power in the Middle East that turned Iran into the most hated power in the Middle East for many of the young, rising pro-democracy forces — both Sunnis and Shiites — in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
As the Iranian-American scholar Ray Takeyh pointed out in a wise essay in Politico, in recent years “Soleimani began expanding Iran’s imperial frontiers. For the first time in its history, Iran became a true regional power, stretching its influence from the banks of the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Soleimani understood that Persians would not be willing to die in distant battlefields for the sake of Arabs, so he focused on recruiting Arabs and Afghans as an auxiliary force. He often boasted that he could create a militia in little time and deploy it against Iran’s various enemies.”
It was precisely those Suleimani proxies — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen — that created pro-Iranian Shiite states-within-states in all of these countries. And it was precisely these states-within-states that helped to prevent any of these countries from cohering, fostered massive corruption and kept these countries from developing infrastructure — schools, roads, electricity.
And therefore it was Suleimani and his proxies — his “kingmakers” in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq — who increasingly came to be seen, and hated, as imperial powers in the region, even more so than Trump’s America. This triggered popular, authentic, bottom-up democracy movements in Lebanon and Iraq that involved Sunnis and Shiites locking arms together to demand noncorrupt, nonsectarian democratic governance.
On Nov. 27, Iraqi Shiites — yes, Iraqi Shiites — burned down the Iranian consulate in Najaf, Iraq, removing the Iranian flag from the building and putting an Iraqi flag in its place. That was after Iraqi Shiites, in September 2018, set the Iranian consulate in Basra ablaze, shouting condemnations of Iran’s interference in Iraqi politics.
The whole “protest” against the United States Embassy compound in Baghdad last week was almost certainly a Suleimani-staged operation to make it look as if Iraqis wanted America out when in fact it was the other way around. The protesters were paid pro-Iranian militiamen. No one in Baghdad was fooled by this.
In a way, it’s what got Suleimani killed. He so wanted to cover his failures in Iraq he decided to start provoking the Americans there by shelling their forces, hoping they would overreact, kill Iraqis and turn them against the United States. Trump, rather than taking the bait, killed Suleimani instead.
I have no idea whether this was wise or what will be the long-term implications. But here are two things I do know about the Middle East.
First, often in the Middle East the opposite of “bad” is not “good.” The opposite of bad often turns out to be “disorder.” Just because you take out a really bad actor like Suleimani doesn’t mean a good actor, or a good change in policy, comes in his wake. Suleimani is part of a system called the Islamic Revolution in Iran. That revolution has managed to use oil money and violence to stay in power since 1979 — and that is Iran’s tragedy, a tragedy that the death of one Iranian general will not change.
Today’s Iran is the heir to a great civilization and the home of an enormously talented people and significant culture. Wherever Iranians go in the world today, they thrive as scientists, doctors, artists, writers and filmmakers — except in the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose most famous exports are suicide bombing, cyberterrorism and proxy militia leaders. The very fact that Suleimani was probably the most famous Iranian in the region speaks to the utter emptiness of this regime, and how it has wasted the lives of two generations of Iranians by looking for dignity in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways.
The other thing I know is that in the Middle East all important politics happens the morning after the morning after.
Yes, in the coming days there will be noisy protests in Iran, the burning of American flags and much crying for the “martyr.” The morning after the morning after? There will be a thousand quiet conversations inside Iran that won’t get reported. They will be about the travesty that is their own government and how it has squandered so much of Iran’s wealth and talent on an imperial project that has made Iran hated in the Middle East.
And yes, the morning after, America’s Sunni Arab allies will quietly celebrate Suleimani’s death, but we must never forget that it is the dysfunction of many of the Sunni Arab regimes — their lack of freedom, modern education and women’s empowerment — that made them so weak that Iran was able to take them over from the inside with its proxies.
I write these lines while flying over New Zealand, where the smoke from forest fires 2,500 miles away over eastern Australia can be seen and felt. Mother Nature doesn’t know Suleimani’s name, but everyone in the Arab world is going to know her name. Because the Middle East, particularly Iran, is becoming an environmental disaster area — running out of water, with rising desertification and overpopulation. If governments there don’t stop fighting and come together to build resilience against climate change — rather than celebrating self-promoting military frauds who conquer failed states and make them fail even more — they’re all doomed.
Voir encore:
Love is a Battlefield
Jon Stewart takes the U.S.-Iran ‘strange bedfellows’ line literally, imagines Iraq as a love triangle
Peter Weber
The Week
June 17, 2014
Yes, Jon Stewart is a comedian, and no, The Daily Show isn’t a hard news-and-analysis show. But on Monday night’s show, Stewart gave a remarkably cogent and creative explanation of the geopolitical situation in Iraq. The U.S. and Iran are discussing coordinating their efforts in Iraq to defeat a common enemy, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militia. Meanwhile, ISIS is getting financial support from one of America’s biggest Arab allies, and Iran’s biggest Muslim enemy, Saudi Arabia.
Forget « strange bedfellows » — this is a romantic Gordian knot. But it makes a lot of sense when Stewart presents the situation as a love triangle. « Sure, you say ‘Death to America’ and burn our flags, but you do it to our face, » Stewart tells Iran. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been funding America’s enemies behind our backs — but what about its sweet, sweet crude oil? Like all good love triangles, this one has a soundtrack — Stewart draws on the hits of the 1980s to great effect. In fact, the only ’80s song Stewart left out that would have tied this all together: « Love Bites. » –Peter Weber
State Department urges U.S. citizens to ‘depart Iraq immediately’ due to ‘heightened tensions’
Notes
- [1]
Notre traduction.
- [2]
L’ayatollah Khomeini qualifie la guerre de Jihad défensif et l’appelle « Défense Sacrée » (Def¯a’e moghaddas) ; au sujet des offensives iraniennes il parle de « Kerbala » en référence à la bataille qui, dans cette ville irakienne, marque en 680 le début de la rupture entre les Chiites et les Sunnites ; la guerre en Irak est appelée « Qadisiyya de Sadam » par référence, ici encore religieuse, à la bataille al-Qadisiyya de Sa’d qui eut lieu en Mésopotamie en 636 entre Musulmans et Perses sassanides, dans le cadre de la conquête musulmane de la Perse (voir à ce sujet Sinan Antoon, « Monumental Disrespect », Middle East Report, no 228, automne 2003, p. 28-30).
- [3]
L’auteur remercie Sandrine Lefranc pour sa lecture attentive et ses commentaires.
- [4]
Voir notamment Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions. Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999 ; Amnesty International (AI), « Iran : Violations of Human Rights 1987-1990 », décembre 1990 ; AI, « Iran : Political Executions », décembre 1988 ; anonyme, « Man shahede ghatle ame zendanyane siyasi boodam » (« J’ai été témoin du massacre des prisonniers politiques »), Cheshmandaz, no 14, hiver 1995 ; Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Khaterat (Mémoires), hhhhttp:// wwww. amontazeri. com(consulté le 7 avril 2008).
- [5]
Voir E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 215 ; AI, « Iran : Violations of Human Rights 1987-1990 » ; Kaveh Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor : A Preliminary Report on The 1988 Massacre of Iran’s Political Prisoners », Harvard Human Rights Journal, vol. 20, 2007, p. 227-261, p. 228.
- [6]
Farhad Khosrokhavar, « L’Iran, la démocratie et la nouvelle citoyenneté », Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, no 111, 2001/2, p. 291-317.
- [7]
Ibid., p. 309 et Nouchine Yavari d’Hellencourt, « Islam et démocratie : de la nécessité d’une contextualisation », Cemoti, no spécial, La question démocratique et les sociétés musulmanes. Le militaire, l’entrepreneur et le paysan, no 27, hhhhttp:// cemoti. revues. org/ document656. html(consulté le 20 avril 2008).
- [8]
Ibid.
- [9]
Ibid.
- [10]
Stanley Cohen, States of Denial, Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001.
- [11]
E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 209-229 ; Afshin Matin-Asgari, « Twentieth Century Iran’s Political Prisoners », Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 42, no 5, 2006, p. 689-707.
- [12]
Maziar Behrooz, « Reflections on Iran’s Prison System During the Montazeri Years (19851988) », Iran Analysis Quarterly, vol. 2, no 3, 2005, p. 11-24.
- [13]
Reza Afshari, Human Rights in Iran : The Abuse of Cultural Relativism, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001 ; K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 243-257 ; Raluca Mihaila, « Political Considerations in Accountability for Crimes Against Humanity : An Iranian Case Study », Hemispheres : The Tufts University Journal of International Affairs, no spécial, State-Building : Risks and Consequences, 2002, hhhhttp:// ase. tufts. edu/ hemispheres/ (consulté le 7 avril 2008).
- [14]
Conseil Économique et Social des Nations Unies (ECOSOC), Commission sur les droits humains, « On the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran », Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 27, U.N. Doc. A/44/620 (2 novembre 1989) ; Final Report on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, pursuant to Commission resolution 1992/67 of 4 March 1992, E/CN.4/1993/41 ; Human Rights Watch, « Pour-Mohammadi and the 1988 Prison Massacres », Ministers of Murder : Iran’s New Security Cabinet, hhhhttp:// wwww. hrw. org/ backgrounder/ mena/ iran1205/ 2. htm#_Toc121896787(consulté le 7 avril 2008).
- [15]
Un impressionnant travail a été accompli sur ce point par E. Abrahambian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 209-229, qui reste la principale référence à ce jour.
- [16]
Notamment Nima Parvaresh, Nabardi nabarabar : gozareshi az haft sal zendan 136168 (Une bataille inégale : rapport de sept ans en prison 19821989), Andeesheh va Peykar Publications, 1995 ; Reza Ghaffari, Khaterate yek zendani az zendanhaye jomhuriyeh islami (Les mémoires d’un prisonnier dans les prisons de la République Islamique), Stockholm, Arash Forlag, 1998 ; anonyme, « Man shahede ghatle ame zendanyane siyasi boodam », op. cit.
- [17]
Nous reprenons, parmi les différentes transcriptions possibles, l’orthographe adoptée par l’organisation aujourd’hui [[[[http:// wwww. maryam-rajavi. com/ fr/ content/ view/ 300/ 66/ (consulté le 7 avril 2008). « Moudjahidines » est le pluriel de « moudjahed ».
- [18]
Mohammad Mossadeq a été Premier ministre de 1951 à 1953. Ayant nationalisé l’industrie pétrolière iranienne en 1951, il est renversé en 1953 suite à l’opération « TP-Ajax » (menée par la CIA), condamné à trois ans d’emprisonnement, puis assigné à résidence jusqu’à sa mort en 1967. Hosein Fatemi est le fondateur du Front de Libération exécuté en 1955.
- [19]
Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedins, New Haven/Londres, Yale University Press, 1992, p. 115-125.
- [20]
Ibid., p. 100-102.
- [21]
Ibid., p. 229 ; voir également A. Matin-Asgari, « Twentieth Century Iran’s Political Prisoners », art. cité, p. 690.
- [22]
E. Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedins, op. cit., p. 229 (notre traduction).
- [23]
Appliqué dans la Constitution iranienne de 1979, ce principe théologique confère aux religieux la primauté sur le pouvoir politique et assure une gestion réelle du pouvoir par le Guide de la Révolution (Vali-e Faghih) qui détermine la direction politique générale du pays, arbitre les conflits entre pouvoirs législatif, exécutif et judiciaire et est chef des armées (régulières et paramilitaires).
- [24]
Haleh Afshar (dir.), Iran : A Revolution in Turmoil, Albany, SUNY Press, 1985 ; Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the ayatollahs : Iran and the Islamic Revolution, New York, Basic Books, 1984.
- [25]
Connie Bruck, « Exiles : How Iran’s Expatriates Are Gaming the Nuclear Threat », The New Yorker, 6 Mars 2006, p. 48.
- [26]
E. Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedins, op. cit., p. 260-261.
- [27]
C. Bruck, « Exiles… », art. cité ; Human Rights Watch, No exit : human rights abuses inside the MKO camps, 2005, [[[http:// hrw. org/ backgrounder/ mena/ iran0505/ ?iran0505.pdf, consulté le 7 avril 2008] ; Human Rights Watch, Statement on Responses to Human Rights Watch Report on Abuses by the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), 15 février 2006, [[[[http:// hrw. org/ mideast/ pdf/ iran021506. pdf(consulté le 7 avril 2008).
- [28]
Elizabeth Rubin, « The Cult of Rajavi », New York Times Magazine, 13 juillet 2003, p. 26.
- [29]
E. Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedins, op. cit., p. 3 (notre traduction).
- [30]
Ibid.
- [31]
Le mouvement était le seul à présenter des candidats partout en Iran.
- [32]
Le manuscrit dit : « une société Tohidie », d’après le Tohid qui est le premier principe d’Islam (« Je dis qu’il y a un seul Dieu ») : une société islamique selon la perspective d’Ali Chariati.
- [33]
E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confession, op. cit., p. 210.
- [34]
Nader Vahabi, « L’obstacle structurel à l’abolition de la peine de mort en Iran », Panagea, « Diritti umani », mars 2007, hhhttp:// wwww. panagea. eu/ web/ index. php? ?option=com_content&task=view&id=150&Itemid=99999999 (consulté le 28 avril 2008).
- [35]
H.-A. Montazeri, Khaterat, op. cit.
- [36]
Hossein Mokhtar, Testimony at the September 1st Conference, Mission for Establishment of Human Rights in Iran (MEHR), 1998, en ligne, hhhhttp:// wwww. mehr. org/ massacre_1988. htm(consulté le 7 avril 2008). Notre traduction.
- [37]
E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 209 et suiv.
- [38]
Ibid.
- [39]
Témoignage cité dans E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 214 ; K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 238.
- [40]
E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 209.
- [41]
K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 227 ; R. Mihaila, « Political Considerations in Accountability for Crimes Against Humanity… », art. cité. Ces travaux prolongent une recherche initiale d’Amnesty International qui a produit plusieurs rapports quasi contemporains aux événements (« Iran : Violations of Human Rights 1987-1990 », art. cité ; « Iran : Political Executions », art. cité) et adopte aujourd’hui la définition de crime contre l’humanité : « Aux termes du droit international en vigueur en 1988, on entend par crimes contre l’humanité des attaques généralisées ou systématiques dirigées contre des civils et fondées sur des motifs discriminatoires, y compris d’ordre politique. » (AI, Action Urgente, « Iran : Craintes de mauvais traitements/ Prisonniers d’opinion présumés », 2 novembre 2007, [en ligne hhhhttp:// asiapacific. amnesty. org/ library/ Index/ FRAMDE131282007,consulté le 7 avril 2008]).
- [42]
Les pasdaran-e Sepah, gardiens de la Révolution, sont la milice paramilitaire de la République islamique.
- [43]
Expression désignant l’attentat terroriste de juin 1981 où 72 cadres du Parti républicain islamique sont morts : le terme renvoie aux « compagnons l’Imam de Hussein » dans la tradition chiite ; l’« Imam » désigne ici Khomeini.
- [44]
K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 240-241.
- [45]
Du français « comité » : désigne les cellules informelles d’ordre public mises en place par le Hezbollah au début de la Révolution, et qui se solidifient peu à peu en para-forces de l’ordre, surveillant notamment les m urs islamiques.
- [46]
AI, « Mass Executions of Political Prisoners », Amnesty International’s Newsletter, février 1989 ; K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 239.
- [47]
Ibid.
- [48]
UN document A/44/153, ZB février 1989, cité dans AI, Iran : Violations of Human Rights 1987-1990. Notre traduction.
- [49]
Final Report on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights.
- [50]
M. Behrooz, « Reflections on Iran’s Prison System… », art. cité.
- [51]
E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 221 (notre traduction).
- [52]
Ibid., p. 221-222 ; Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut, « La révolution iranienne à l’heure des réformes », Le Monde diplomatique, janvier 1998 : hhhhttp:// wwww. monde-diplomatique. fr/ 1998/ 01/ KIAN_THIEBAUT/ 9782. html#nh1(consulté le 20 avril 2008).
- [53]
H. Mokhtar, Testimony at the September 1 Conference, op. cit (notre traduction) ; Kanoon-e Khavaran hhhhttp:// wwww. khavaran. com/ HTMLs/ Fraxan-Zendanian-Jan3008. htm(consulté le 7 avril 2008) ; Bidaran, hhhhttp:// wwww. bidaran. net/ (consulté le 7 avril 2008) ; OMID, A Memorial in Defense of Human Rights in Iran, [en llllignehttp:// wwww. abfiran. org/ english/ memorial. php,consulté le 7 avril 2008].
- [54]
Christina Lamb, The Telegraph, « Khomeini fatwa “led to killing of 30,000 in Iran” », 19 juin 2001 ; Conseil National de la Résistance Iranienne, site des moudjahidines du Peuple en exil, hhhhttp:// wwww. ncr-iran. org/ fr/ content/ view/ 3966/ 89/ ,(consulté le 7 avril 2008).
- [55]
Nasser Mohajer, « The Mass Killings in Iran », Aresh, no 57, août 1996, p. 7, cité in E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 212.
- [56]
K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 257 ; R. Mihaila, « Political Considerations in Accountability for Crimes Against Humanity… », art. cité.
- [57]
K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 243-257 ; R. Mihaila, « Political Considerations in Accountability for Crimes Against Humanity… », art. cité.
- [58]
Voir par exemple N. Yavari d’Hellencourt, « Islam et démocratie… », art. cité.
- [59]
Voir par exemple Ahmed Vahdat, « The Spectre of Montazeri », Rouzegar-e-Now, no 8, janvier-février 2003, p. 48.
- [60]
Cité dans K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 241.
- [61]
E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit., p. 210 ; R. Ghaffari, Khaterate yek zendani az zendanhaye jomhuriyeh islami, op. cit., note 23, p. 248 ; HRW, « Pour-Mohammadi and the 1988 Prison Massacres », op. cit. ; H.-A. Montazeri, Khaterat, op. cit.
- [62]
E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions…, op. cit. ; R. Afshari, Human Rights in Iran, op. cit. ; H.-A. Montazeri, Khaterat , op. cit.
- [63]
Paul Vieille, « L’institution shi’ite, la religiosité populaire, le martyre et la révolution », Peuples Méditerranéens, no 16, 1981, p. 77-92.
- [64]
Voir par exemple E. Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedins, op. cit., p. 206 et 243.
- [65]
F. Khosrokhavar, L’islamisme et la mort : le martyre révolutionnaire en Iran, Paris, l’Harmattan, 1995 ; F. Khosrokhavar, Anthropologie de la révolution iranienne. Le rêve impossible, Paris, l’Harmattan, 1997.
- [66]
Ulrich Marzolph, « The Martyr’s Way to Paradise. Shiite Mural Art in the Urban Context », Ethnologia Europaea, vol. 33, no 2, 2003, p. 87-98.
- [67]
Ali Reza Sheikholeslami, « The Transformation of Iran’s Political Culture », Critique : Critical Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 17, no 9, 2000, p.105-133.
- [68]
F. Khosrokhavar, L’islamisme et la mort…, op. cit.
- [69]
Témoignage paru dans le journal islamiste Keyhan en 1984, cité par F. Khosrokhavar, L’islamisme et la mort…, op. cit., p. 92.
- [70]
BBC Persia, « Le cimetière de Khavaran : des sépultures sans nom, et la mise au jour des exécutés », 1er septembre 2005, hhhhttp:// wwww. bbc. co. uk/ persian/ iran/ story/ 2005/ 09/ 050902_mf_cemetery. shtml(notre traduction, consulté le 7 avril 2007).
- [71]
AI, Iran : Violations of Human Rights 1987-1990, p. 3. Notre traduction.
- [72]
Entretien filmé reproduit sur le site internet de l’ONG de défense des droits humains : hhhhttp:// wwww. bidaran. net/ (consulté le 7 avril 2008).
- [73]
Entretien télévisé disponible sur internet : Mosahebe-ye Televisione Internasional ba Babake Yazdi Dar Morede Koshtare Tabestane 67 (interview de la chaîne télévisée Internationale avec Babak Yazdi, concernant les massacres de l’été 88), hhhhttp:// khavaran. com/ Ghatleam(consulté le 7 avril 2007).
- [74]
Mohammad Reza Mohini, « Khavaran est un nom qui signifie “ne pas oublier” », Bidaran, hhhhttp:// wwww. bidaran. net/ spip. php? article48(consulté le 7 avril 2008).
- [75]
E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confession…, op. cit., p. 218 ; K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 282 ; AI, « Mass Executions of Political Prisoners », art. cité.
- [76]
Communauté religieuse persécutée.
- [77]
BBC Persia, « Le cimetière de Khavaran… », art. cité ; voir aussi M. R Mohini, « Khavaran est un nom qui signifie “ne pas oublier” », art. cité.
- [78]
Nouvelles radiophonique du 19 novembre 2005, Radio Farda, Afrade Nashenas Ghabrhaye Edamyane Siyasiye Daheye 60 ra dar Goorestane Khavaran Takhreeb Kardand (« Des individus non identifiés ont détruit les tombes des prisonniers politiques exécutés dans les années 1980 dans le cimetière de Khavaran »).
- [79]
AI, Action Urgente, « Iran : Craintes de mauvais traitements/ Prisonniers d’opinion présumés », op. cit.
- [80]
Human Rights Watch, Minister of murders, op. cit. Notre traduction.
- [81]
Kanoon-e Khavaran, op. cit. (site internet).
- [82]
M. R. Mohini, « Khavaran est un nom qui signifie “ne pas oublier” », art. cité.
- [83]
F. Khosrokhavar, « L’Iran, la démocratie et la nouvelle citoyenneté », art. cité.
- [84]
John R. Gillis (dir.), Commemorations : The Politics of National Identity, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 3 (notre traduction).
- [85]
K. Shahrooz, « With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor… », art. cité, p. 259 ; voir aussi R. Mihaila, « Political Considerations in Accountability for Crimes Against Humanity… », art. cité, en ligne.
- [86]
Nicole Loraux, La cité divisée. L’oubli dans la mémoire d’Athène, Paris, Payot-Rivages, 2005, p. 164.
- [87]
Nathalie Nougayrède, « Une chercheuse franco-iranienne empêchée de quitter Téhéran », Le Monde, 6 septembre 2007.
- [88]
Nader Khoshdel, « Marasem-e bozorgdasht-e zendanian-e siasi : goft-o-gou ba Mihan Rousta » (« La cérémonie de bozorgdasht des prisonniers politiques : entretien avec Mihan Rousta »), Sedaye-ma, 13 octobre 2004, hhhhttp:// wwww. sedaye-ma. org/ web/ show_article. php? file= src/ didgah/ mihanrousta_10132006_1. htm(consulté le 7 avril 2008).
jcdurbant 
NO FRANZ FERDINAND MOMENT (Hobbled by sanctions and challenged by anti-government protests in Iraq, Lebanon and at home, Iran’s revenge options seem narrow as a missile strike on American bases in Bahrain or elsewhere in the Gulf would invite suicide, analysts say)
Anti-government protests have also challenged the regime’s dominance in Iraq, Lebanon and at home. Now, in Al Quds commander Qassem Soleimani, Iranians have lost the very man they would have relied upon to craft an effective response. Tehran’s strategy since President Donald Trump pulled out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal that had promised rapprochement between Iran and the West suggests any retaliation will likely be measured. It needs to be significant enough to reflect Soleimani’s stature, though not enough to invite an unbridled conflict with the world’s military superpower. Such controlled reprisals could include a strike at diplomatic staff or cyberattacks.
“I don’t think either the U.S. or Iran want all-out war,” said Sir Tom Beckett, a former lieutenant general in the British Army and now executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies-Middle East. “The U.S. needed to assert its willingness to take military action alongside its campaign of exerting maximum economic pressure.” That has now been done. The bigger question is whether the removal of Soleimani, a national hero to many Iranians, proves to have been part of a wider strategy.
The U.S. and Iran are effectively already at war. Since at least the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Soleimani’s approach to challenging American power was to assemble and strengthen proxy Shiite militias in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. He then used these to prosecute a hybrid war against the U.S. and its regional allies at arm’s length, without triggering a direct response from Washington.
The Trump administration plans to send about 2,800 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne division to Kuwait to act as an additional deterrent against Iran. The new U.S. contingent will join about 700 troops dispatched to Kuwait earlier this week as part of the division’s rapid-reaction “ready battalion,” according to two U.S. officials who asked not to be identified discussing the deployment. The U.S. already had about 60,000 personnel.
Game Changer
Successive administrations under George W. Bush and Barack Obama chose not to risk an escalation despite Soleimani’s responsibility for U.S. fatalities. Now it’s Iran that will have to weigh the risks of a determined response. As U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper put it hour before the drone strike in Baghdad: “The game has changed.”
Yet despite Khamenei’s stark threat, Iran is unlikely to reach for a maximal option, such as a missile strike on American bases in Bahrain or elsewhere in the Gulf. To do so would invite suicide, analysts say.
“This is an intensely dangerous moment, but as always with Iran, we should be wary of hyperbolic predictions,” said Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “Tehran is well practiced at calibrating retaliation around its real interests, which ultimately concern regime survival and targeting its reprisals with deliberation and precision.”
In the past, it was Soleimani who made those calibrations. A veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, Soleimani ran the elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard Corps that specialized in unconventional warfare and overseas operations.
They included a series of pinpoint attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf last year that culminated with a daring attack on a Saudi oil facility. No fatalities were reported in any of the attacks and neither the U.S. nor Saudi Arabia had a response.
Militia Network
Soleimani’s network of militias appear to have triggered his death. They shelled a U.S. base in Iraq, killing a U.S. contractor, and then stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, evoking memories of the 1979 U.S. hostage crisis in Tehran.
On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. had struck out at Soleimani because it had information he was planning further attacks against U.S. personnel.
Those militias remain the most effective and usable military tool at Iran’s disposal. Soleimani’s deputy, who was quickly named as the new Quds force chief, said the group’s strategy would not change.
The question, according to British military strategist Beckett and others, is where Khamenei will opt to strike and at what level — with a single dramatic action, or multiple much smaller attacks that would make it harder for the U.S. to escalate again.
“Iranian leaders are unlikely to lash out blindly,” said Maloney. “Instead, they will indulge in the short-term opportunity to whip up nationalism and wait for the best opportunity to inflict damage on U.S. interests and allies.”
Not Sarajevo
Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group predicted on Friday that Iran’s immediate response would likely involve low to moderate level clashes inside Iraq, with Iranian-backed militias attacking U.S. bases, renewed harassment of shipping in the Gulf and other strikes around the world that could be hard to anticipate. A cyberattack is one option Iranian officials are almost certainly considering, according to some experts.
Zarif said Friday that the consequences of the U.S. killing Soleimani will be “broad” and will be out of Iran’s hands because of the general’s widespread popularity in the region.
Unlike the political assassination in the Balkans that triggered World War I, the fallout out from Thursday’s attack is likely to be far less widespread, according to Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East Security at the London-based IISS.
“This is not a Franz Ferdinand moment,” said Hokayem. “It’s at best an inflection point. Hundreds of thousands have been dying in the region over the last 10 years or so, including at the hands of Soleimani. The U.S. and Iran are already at war.”
https://news.yahoo.com/iran-options-appear-narrow-seeks-173454471.html
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https://news.yahoo.com/mystery-airstrike-reportedly-kills-iran-014911744.html
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MERCI PHOTOSHOP ! (Printemps persan: Devinez qui ignorant les signes évidents de détournement d’images des mollahs comme les scènes de réjouissance et les messages de joie de la population a même augmenté les chiffres de mobilisation pour Soleimani ?)
Les médias français affirment que le général-milicien Soleimani, tué par les Américains, était très populaire en Iran et qu’il y a eu de grandes manifestations en son honneur hier à Téhéran. Ils répètent les propos de la propagande du régime évoquant des milliers de manifestants à Téhéran et autant dans les autres villes. C’est bien peu pour un homme très populaire. De plus, il s’agit d’une fausse nouvelle, car les images publiées par le régime ne sont pas conformes à la saison et à la météo du moment. Voici la vérité factuelle de l’absence de mobilisation pour Soleimani et surtout pour le régime !
Hier, vendredi 3 janvier, le temps était très nuageux dans l’ensemble du pays avec des précipitations notamment à Téhéran, mais on a vu des gens défiler principalement à Téhéran sous un ciel légèrement nuageux sans aucune trace d’humidité au sol ! On a vu des foules ensoleillées (3e photo), également des arbres avec des feuilles vert tendre (4e photo) ou des rangées d’arbres très verts en arrière-plan (5e photo) ce qui laisse supposer le détournement d’images correspondant à la fin de l’hiver en Iran !
On a aussi vu des arbres très verts, du soleil à gogo et de mauvaises lignes de perspective.
Toutes ces images montraient uniquement Téhéran.
Des images correspondant à la météo de ce jour ont été publiées un peu plus tard. Il y avait là tout au plus une trentaine d’hommes de Qods, une trentaine de « civils » et une trentaine de femmes. Autant dire même pas une goutte d’eau dans un océan d’indifférence voire un océan de refus de mobilisation au sein même du régime ! Ce qui veut dire que personne n’ira se battre pour lui, pour le venger et par ailleurs pour sauver le régime (que Malbrunot et Merchet se rassurent, il n’y aura pas de guerre).
Mais malgré les images d’archives détournées par les mollahs, malgré une propagande en demi-teinte et une micro manifestation seulement à Téhéran qui souligne l’impopularité de Soleimani et du régime, les médias français vont dans le sens du régime en augmentant même le nombre de ses partisans.
En fait, les médias français, très dépendants du pouvoir, pleurent la fin du régime et des investissements de quelques entrepreneurs-amis du pouvoir qui ne sont guère de bons Français, car ils espèrent produire à très bas coût des biens dans leur seul intérêt.
Mais restons dans le réel factuel. La mort de Soleimani a déplacé moins de 100 agents du régime ! Soleimani n’était nullement populaire et au contraire il était même très haï apparemment même au sein du régime. Les Iraniens ont même fêté sa mort comme nous l’avons signalé et depuis, il y a eu de nouvelles vidéos montrant ces fêtes (scènes de danse, de gueuletons improvisés et aussi de messages de joie).
En fin comme l’a fait remarquer un cher correspondant de notre site en voyant les images printanières de la propagande du régime, après la mort d’un des bourreaux du régime, on peut s’attendre à un beau printemps iranien !
http://www.iran-resist.org/article6929.html
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SOLEIMANI IS MY COMMANDER NO MORE (While others overplay the consequences, Daniel Pipes tries his best to downplay Trump’s brilliant move)
« I’m inclined to think it’s a less important event than most people. In the first place, Soleimani was an operative, not a decision-maker; he carried out instructions, he didn’t develop those instructions. He was clearly very competent at it, but operators are not that difficult to find. And there have been prior cases where an operator has been taken out, and then someone else replaces him and is about as good, or maybe even better. So, I don’t think the killing has enormous consequences for Iranian capabilities. (…) The Iranians are going to respond indirectly to the United States, maybe via cyber-hacking and other non-kinetic, non-violent forms of response. I think they might well attack Israel and Jewish interests, but not Americans; they don’t want to take on Trump. (…) Donald Trump is unpredictable. (…) That has its virtues, by the way, as a cowboy, keeping his opponents on edge. It also has disadvantages: opponents can’t figure out how to avoid trouble, allies don’t understand what steps to take, and so forth. (…) It makes sense strategically if it’s followed up. (…) this means that after 40 years of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the U.S. government has finally decided to respond to its aggression not just economically, but militarily: to Iran’s building nuclear weapons, to its jihad, to its more or less taking over four countries – Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq – and to its ideological aggression. If this means such a profound change, then yes, it’s big. (…) the Iranians will take it out on Israel and Jewish interests, likely on the Saudis too. But not Americans … except perhaps obliquely, such as through the internet. There could well be an increase in violence in the Middle East, but there’s a lot anyway, and it may not be much more than what already exists. The Iranians have been on the warpath in four countries. For example, in Iraq, Soleimani oversaw the forceful repression of dissidents; I expect that repression will continue. (…)The great majority of Iranians do not like their regime, and they have on occasion – including in 2009, in 2017, and in the last few months – expressed their dissatisfaction with it. The regime is strong, knows how to handle dissent, and has repressed it. I imagine that the great majority of Iranians are not unhappy that a major regime operative has been taken out. (…) probably, the killing will encourage Iranians unhappy with their repressive, totalitarian regime to stand up against it. »
Daniel Pipes
http://www.danielpipes.org/19185/predicting-the-fall-out-from-qasem-solemeini-death
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THE LONG OVERDUE END OF A MONSTER (Hats off to German magazine editor who breaks ranks with his cowardly fellow journalists and calls out Soleimani’s repelling and bloodthirsty record)
The Iranian terror sponsor Qassem Soleimani stood for a world that no peaceful human being could want – a world in which one could be blown up by a bomb at any time if one is at the wrong place at the wrong time.
A world in which entire cities are wiped out – like Aleppo. In which bloodthirsty militia go from door to door and execute civilians. In which the kindergartens in Germany could burn up in fireballs at any time because its children are Jewish. In which Israel is under threat of extinction every day.
Soleimani, the world’s most repelling and bloodthirsty terrorist, who brought suffering and harm over humanity on the mullahs’ behalf, was an enemy of our civilization. He represented the unbearable thought that murderers will live more safely and be more untouchable the more people they kill (with the support of the state).
His violent and overdue end will not stop global terrorism, but the image of his burnt-out car still sends out a powerful message. US President Donald Trump has made it clear that the worst figures in the world, however big-mouthed and ruthless they may be, cannot hide from America’s strength.
They may torment, torture, harass, and terrorize those who are weaker and in despair, but they cannot do anything against the most powerful democracy in the world. At most, they can hide in holes and hope that they won’t be found.
And when they claim that they are not afraid of death, these butchers are lying – they are cowards who love the sweet, corrupt life.
President Trump has freed the world of a monster whose aim in life was an atomic cloud over Tel Aviv. Trump has acted in self-defense – the self-defense of the US and all peace-loving people.
Julian Reichleft
https://www.bild.de/politik/international/bild-international/commentary-on-the-us-air-strike-against-the-iranian-terror-general-trump-has-fre-67082482.bild.html
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[…] https://jcdurbant.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/elimination-du-general-soleimani-attention-une-decision-i… […]
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QUELLE COMPLAISANCE FRANCAISE FACE AU REGIME DES MOLLAHS ? (Et quel anti-occidentalisme et antisémitisme occidental congénital face à ce Trump qui a tout simplement fait ce que ni Carter ni Clinton ni Obama n’ont osé faire: éliminer un monstre dont le but dans la vie était de vouloir un nuage atomique au-dessus de Tel-Aviv ?)
L’exercice à venir est ingrat, en tous les cas il est rare au sein du monde médiatique et intellectuel français contemporain: ne pas ménager la République Islamique dans son conflit contre l’Amérique et comprendre la décision du président de celle-ci d’avoir éliminé le serviteur le plus zélé de celle-là.
Pour des raisons tenant apparemment aux mystères de la raison et que j’aurais tenté d’élucider à plusieurs reprises dans un environnement assez hostile, la République islamique d’Iran n’a pas très mauvaise presse française au regard de ce qu’elle est et de ce qu’elle fait.
Voilà en effet un régime qui maltraite sa population depuis sa fondation. Qui noie toute forme de contestation dans le sang. Qui fait pendre les homosexuels. Qui enferme les femmes dans les voiles et fait fouetter et enfermer les avocates qui défendent les femmes non voilées.
Voilà un régime qui, à l’extérieur, foule aux pieds les lois internationales sur les engins balistiques. Inscrit sur ses missiles: «Israël sera détruit». Inscrit sa politique dans un impérialisme aujourd’hui rejeté de Beyrouth à Bagdad. Pratique le terrorisme international y compris en France lorsqu’il tente de faire poser des engins explosifs l’an dernier lors du meeting organisé par la Résistance Iranienne à Villepinte. Fait poser des bombes par son Hezbollah interposé au Centre Communautaire juif de Buenos Aires (75 morts). Prend en otages des scientifiques françaises sans que le gouvernement français ni la presse ne s’en émeuvent excessivement.
Pour expliquer l’inexplicable passivité française, y compris féministe et antiraciste, à l’égard d’un régime aussi dangereux et sanguinaire, le recours à l’impensé idéologique est nécessaire. D’abord, l’habituelle tolérance de l’idéologie médiatique et politique pour l’intolérance islamique radicale qui prend sa source dans un anti-occidentalisme occidental congénital. Mais aussi, la crainte obséquieuse du terrorisme et l’espoir secret que caresser la bête inhumaine dans le sens de son poil la réduira à quia. Enfin, plus profondément encore enfoui, un inconscient antisioniste, puissant dans certains courants médiatiques, qui ne peut s’empêcher de considérer que quelqu’un qui veut détruire l’État détesté ne saurait être tout à fait détestable.
C’est dans ce cadre incroyablement indulgent que la personnalité très particulière de Qassem Soleimani, éliminé sur décision de Donald Trump jeudi dernier, aura été relativement épargnée dans la presse européenne. À l’exception notable du Bild allemand qui, par la plume de son rédacteur en chef écrit: «Le Président Trump a libéré du monde un monstre dont le but dans la vie était de vouloir un nuage atomique au-dessus de Tel-Aviv. Trump a agi en état de légitime défense pour les États-Unis.»
En revanche, même le personnel politique démocrate américain, farouchement hostile au président honni, a reconnu à l’unisson que le chef des tristement célèbres Gardiens de la Révolution, garde prétorienne du régime, était l’organisateur de nombreuses opérations terroristes hors d’Iran et n’avait rien à envier à Ben Laden ou à Al-Baghdadi en ce qui concerne le nombre de leurs victimes.
C’est dans ce contexte moral, politique et idéologique que la manière maussade dont le monde politique et médiatique européen a appréhendé la décision américaine, et qui ressemble au jugement partisan des démocrates américains, doit être comprise.
Bien entendu, on excusera ce truisme, si Donald Trump était resté inactif, le risque militaire eût été à court terme moins grand. Jusqu’à présent, le président américain était moqué pour sa passivité matamoresque quand il n’était pas morigéné pour son isolationnisme égoïste. L’Iran, disaient les prétendus spécialistes, se jouait de lui et de son attentisme bruyant. Ses alliés dans le Golfe étaient attaqués sans qu’il ne réagisse et l’on comprenait qu’il valait mieux être l’affidé du placide Poutine.
Voilà qu’à présent, et alors même qu’il venait d’être défié à plusieurs reprises par le régime des ayatollahs et que M. Soleimani se croyait intouchable jusqu’à railler son impuissance, il est montré du doigt comme un aventurier aventureux.
Ainsi fonctionne à l’égard du 45e président américain l’alternative diabolique de la perversion intellectuelle idéologique. Qu’on me pardonne cette trivialité: si Trump fait, c’est un boutefeu, s’il ne fait, c’est une trompette.
Et Donald Trump, malgré tous ses défauts, en ce compris cette imprévisibilité qui peut être parfois qualité, a fait. Ce que n’a pas fait Jimmy Carter quand, en violation des règles les plus sacrées, Khomeini prit en otages des centaines de ses compatriotes à l’ambassade de Téhéran. Ce que n’a pas fait l’icône médiatique Obama quand, après qu’Assad ait usé du gaz à l’encontre de son propre peuple, il ait effacé du pied les lignes rouges qu’il avait tracées de la main. Ce qu’il ne fit pas non plus, lorsque flanquée d’Hillary Clinton, ils laissèrent faire le sac du consulat de Benghazi avec son ambassadeur assassiné.
Raison pourquoi, l’attaque contre l’ambassade des États-Unis à Bagdad constituait sans doute, dans l’esprit de beaucoup d’Américains, à commencer par le premier, la dernière des provocations. Mais Trump n’est ni Carter, ni Clinton, ni Obama, raison pourquoi il est détesté par ce camp dont on sait à quel point il se trompe bien.
https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/goldnadel-l-inexplicable-passivite-francaise-face-au-regime-des-ayatollahs-20200106
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SPOT THE ERROR !
« The only ones that are mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership and our Democrat presidential candidates.”
Nikki Haley
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6120216736001
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QUEL FESTIVAL DE NIAISERIE ? (Comme avant lui Ben Laden et Al-Baghdadi et par affidés interposés, le général iranien faisait la guerre – aux Yémenites, Saoudiens, Syriens, Irakiens, Américains et à son propre peuple – et il arrive qu’on meurt à la guerre)
Sa mort suscite des commentaires accablants de niaiserie. Des journaux français parlent « d’assassinat » ce qui revient à dire que Trump est un assassin. A l’extrême gauche (au PCF notamment), on est horrifié et on condamne « l’impérialisme américain ». Macron exprime son « inquiétude ». Dans ce festival de niaiseries, la palme revient à Joe Biden, l’adversaire démocrate de Trump. Il est scandalisé que le président américain n’ait pas consulté le Congrès avant de prendre sa décision. Le Congrès compte plusieurs centaines de membres : autant téléphoner directement à Téhéran…
Le général Souleimani faisait la guerre. Comme avant lui Ben Laden et Al-Baghdadi, également tués par les Américains. Il ne valait pas mieux qu’eux. Il faisait la guerre au Yémen par rebelles houthis interposés. Il faisait la guerre à l’Arabie saoudite : les roquettes qui ont détruit des citernes de l’Aramco portent sa marque.
Mille morts en Iran
Il faisait la guerre aux insurgés syriens en envoyant ses soldats d’élite soutenir Bachar Al-Assad. Il faisait la guerre à Israël en armant le Hezbollah. Il faisait la guerre aux Américains en fomentant des attentats contre eux. Il faisait la guerre, hélas de façon efficace, à son propre peuple.
Ce sont ses hommes, les pasdarans, qui noyèrent dans le sang les récentes manifestations anti-gouvernementales en Iran. C’est ce qu’Alain Rodier, dans un étrange article paru dans Atlantico, appelle « siffler la fin de la récréation ». Selon toutes les estimations, la répression menée par Qassem Soleimani a fait environ 1 000 morts ! On a connu des « récréations » moins meurtrières. Oui, le général iranien faisait la guerre. Et il arrive qu’on meurt à la guerre.
Glaive américain
Il faut noter que les dirigeants iraniens annoncent, sans surprise, qu’ils vont « venger » Souleimani. En attendant, ils doivent se poser de graves questions sur leur propre vulnérabilité. Comment la CIA a-t-elle su quel jour et à quelle heure l’avion du général iranien allait atterrir à Bagdad ? Et comment a-t-elle fait pour pister à la seconde près son convoi à la sortie de l’aéroport ? Le glaive américain a un tranchant bien aiguisé.
Benoît Rayski
https://www.causeur.fr/iran-qassem-soleimani-hezbollah-170910
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https://twitter.com/HeshmatAlavi/status/998141863105265664
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BOMB THE DAMN KHOMEINI SHRINE !
https://apnews.com/9e87a8b9aa6cbde264a848b62f8a82fc
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LET’S STOP PRETENDING ! (Iran dismantles its Department of Compliance Chicanery and fires its Director for Nuclear Deal Duplicity, says America does not deserve its sham adherence to an agreement it never intended to follow in the first place)
In response to the United States’ recent killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Iran announced on Tuesday it will no longer pretend to abide by the 2015 Nuclear Deal between the two nations. Sources confirm Iran has already dismantled its Department of Compliance Chicanery and fired its Director for Nuclear Deal Duplicity. “America is the Great Satan and cannot be trusted,” a spokesperson told reporters. “They do not deserve our sham adherence to an agreement we never intended to follow in the first place.” Iranian officials then revealed that their National Center to Help Children and Orphans and their Department of Puppies and Candy were actually nuclear facilities in disguise this whole time. Shocked New York Times reporters watched as Iranian officials pressed a button at the Center for World Peace and Also Cake and Ice Cream, rotating the walls to reveal it was actually a nuclear research center. At publishing time, North Korea was threatening to stop faking compliance with its nuclear restrictions.
https://babylonbee.com/news/iran-announces-they-will-stop-pretending-to-follow-nuclear-deal
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AVEC LA REPUBLIQUE ISLAMIQUE, ON EST TOUJOURS DANS LA MISE EN SCENE (Au Moyen-Orient, les funérailles sont une occasion de nourrir les participants aux obsèques et dans un pays de près de 85 millions d’habitants, même s’il y a 5 % de la population qui soutient le régime, cela reste une proportion très faible)
« Ce que nous avons vu, ce sont des images que la République islamique nous a envoyées et qu’elle contrôlait entièrement. Nous avons vu un raz-de-marée humain, filmé par la République islamique. Il est très difficile de juger de l’état d’une société à travers les images officielles. En Iran, comme dans le reste du Moyen-Orient, les funérailles sont une occasion de nourrir les participants aux obsèques, et on a vu ces derniers jours de grands camions qui distribuaient des repas à longueur de journée. C’est un détail mais qui a son importance car, en Iran, 75 % de la population vit en dessous du seuil de pauvreté. Il n’est pas difficile d’attirer de pauvres gens qui n’ont pas de quoi manger. En outre, beaucoup de participants aux funérailles étaient des fonctionnaires d’État qui avaient souvent été contraints d’y faire acte de présence. Des bus spéciaux les ont acheminés depuis leur lieu de travail. Il faut mentionner également la capacité éprouvée des dirigeants iraniens à jouer avec la peur de la population dans les moments de tension. Enfin, dans un pays de près de 85 millions d’habitants, même s’il y a 5 % de la population qui soutient le régime, cela reste une proportion très faible. (…) Avec la République islamique, nous sommes toujours dans des mises en scène. Nous ne voyons que ce qu’elle veut bien nous montrer. C’est pourquoi les commentateurs et les journalistes doivent être très vigilants et ne pas aller sur le terrain où les ayatollahs veulent les conduire. Ce n’est pas parce qu’il y a 500 000 personnes dans les rues, ou même plus, qu’il faut en déduire que le régime jouit d’une légitimité populaire. Il faut tenir compte du fait qu’on a affaire à des gens qui maîtrisent parfaitement leur image et qui dépensent des sommes colossales pour cela. (..;) C’était un personnage cruel et un homme clé du régime. Dans les rangs des partisans du régime, il était vu comme le numéro deux, certains le considéraient même comme le numéro un, capable de donner des ordres, y compris au guide de la révolution Ali Khamenei ! C’est une rumeur que je ne cautionne pas, mais cela montre bien l’image dont il bénéficiait. Certaines rumeurs au sein du régime disent aussi qu’il avait pris trop de pouvoir et qu’il fallait se débarrasser de lui… Il faisait peur. Il avait un rôle militaire mais aussi un rôle mafieux au sein de l’économie iranienne. (…) Les deux épisodes, en novembre et en janvier, ne sont pas similaires et ce serait une erreur d’analyse de les comparer. En novembre, les manifestations de protestation à la suite d’une hausse des prix des carburants se sont passées à huis clos, et leur répression aussi. Les autorités ont coupé pendant une semaine le téléphone et Internet. Les informations ont mis du temps à émerger. En janvier, au contraire, les gens ont défilé devant les caméras officielles, en l’absence de tout journaliste étranger. Un récit déjà construit nous a été fourni. Dans les deux cas, il faut prendre les informations avec des pincettes. La réalité est que la République islamique est profondément contestée à l’intérieur du pays, pas seulement depuis novembre, mais depuis des années. En même temps, elle est assurément capable de mobiliser ses sympathisants lorsqu’elle en a besoin. L’un n’empêche pas l’autre. Ce ne sont pas les mêmes populations que nous avons vues dans les rues en novembre et en janvier. (…) Via les réseaux sociaux, je suis en contact avec de nombreux jeunes en Iran. Je constate une profonde cacophonie à l’intérieur de cette jeunesse, avec des opinions très divergentes sur beaucoup de sujets. Mais tous ces jeunes ont une chose en commun : ils ne veulent plus du tout des ayatollahs. (…) Les gens souffrent, mais cela ne crée pas automatiquement de rancœur vis-à-vis des Américains. L’Iranien moyen en veut surtout à ses dirigeants. Les gens sont conscients que l’Iran n’est pas en mesure de tenir tête à la première puissance du monde. Les Iraniens sont très rationnels. Ils ne sont pas des admirateurs de l’Amérique, mais leur colère se dirige surtout contre la République islamique qui s’est systématiquement opposée aux Américains depuis quarante ans. (…) Cette riposte était plus médiatique qu’autre chose. Cependant, l’escalade a commencé depuis plusieurs mois. La mort de Soleimani n’y a pas changé grand-chose. Depuis septembre et même avant, on assistait à une escalade systématique de la part du régime. (…) Ce programme [nucléaire] est un élément de plus aux mains du régime pour se donner une belle image auprès de l’opinion musulmane de la région, pour se donner une illusion de puissance, mais sa réalité concrète reste à démontrer. Ce qui est sûr, c’est qu’avec cette crise nucléaire les dirigeants ont attiré les foudres des Occidentaux sur le pays et conduit à la paralysie de l’économie. (…) [l’expansion iranienne au Moyen-Orient] est ralentie depuis longtemps. La baisse des prix du pétrole et les sanctions économiques ont asséché les sources de pétrodollars du régime. L’Iran n’a plus d’argent. Les dirigeants ont du mal à payer les milices à leur solde au Liban, en Syrie ou en Irak. L’épisode a montré que la République islamique n’est qu’un empire fondé sur le mercenariat. Ils n’ont réussi à créer des infrastructures solides de pouvoir dans aucun des pays sous leur influence. Même au Liban, qu’a construit le Hezbollah ? Rien ! Seulement quelques hôpitaux à la disposition de ses cadres et pas de la population. Il est dirigé, à l’image de ses parrains iraniens, par des kleptocrates incapables de s’investir dans la gestion du pays. C’est pourquoi les Libanais aujourd’hui défilent dans les rues. (…) La politique sectaire de Soleimani a contribué à renforcer Daech ces dernières années plutôt qu’à l’affaiblir. Si les capacités militaires de l’État islamique ont été en grande partie détruites aujourd’hui, ce n’est pas grâce à lui. Enfin, Soleimani, dans sa médiocrité, est parfaitement remplaçable. »
Mahnaz Shirali
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/la-jeunesse-iranienne-ne-veut-plus-des-ayatollahs-09-01-2020-2356966_24.php
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WHAT SHOCKING MORAL DECADENCE AMONG THE WEST’S LIBERAL ELITES ? (Upside-down moral universe: Democrats who had hailed the extra-judicial killing of bin Laden in 2011 as a personal triumph for President Obama now claim absurdly that killing Soleimani is unconstitutional and the tens of thousands that had demonstrated country-wide against the repressive regime for months were now presented as united against America)
The liberal world is aghast. President Donald Trump has done something that repudiates the very rules of nature by which Western progressives live. Faced with a military general intent on ramping up the decades-long war of conquest he had been commanding for his fanatically anti-Western regime, Trump liquidated him before he could murder anyone else.
Cue liberal horror and outrage. Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani – the man responsible for a vast infrastructure of global slaughter and oppression, and with blood on his hands from American and British soldiers, as well as Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, Jews and others – was described in The New York Times after being annihilated by an American drone as “universally admired.”
The actress Rose McGowan tweeted imbecilically: “Dear #Iran, The USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people. 52% of us humbly apologize. We want peace with your nation. We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime. We do not know how to escape. Please do not kill us.”
Howling that Trump had provoked another world war, progressives totally ignored the fact that for the past four decades, Iran had been waging war against the West and Israel and anyone who stood in its way.
Instead, they viewed Soleimani as a murder victim to be mourned while Trump was the war criminal.
Democrats who had hailed the extra-judicial killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 as a personal triumph for President Barack Obama now claimed absurdly that killing Soleimani was unconstitutional.
If anyone doubted the shocking moral decadence among the West’s liberal elites, this reaction has provided ample evidence. In this upside-down moral universe, genocidal fanatics, whose dissembling enables liberals to take refuge in the fantasy of a trouble-free solution, must be negotiated with and appeased.
They are never condemned for the aggression they conceal, nor is what they do considered a serious threat. The only aggressor said to threaten the peace of the world is the person who stops them in their tracks.
Such moral bankruptcy over Iran has been evident since the Islamic revolutionary regime came to power in 1979, and immediately launched its onslaught on the West and the Jewish people.
Despite Iran’s repeated global atrocities and attacks on American targets, including bombings, hostage-taking and blowing up coalition soldiers in Iraq, successive US presidents from Jimmy Carter onwards flinched from holding the regime to account.
Instead, they indulged in spineless appeasement. This reached its nadir with the Obama-brokered 2015 nuclear deal, which enabled billions of dollars to be funneled into expanding Iran’s aggression while merely delaying its production of nuclear weapons.
Now, with its mealy-mouthed platitudes about de-escalation on both sides, the European Union has reacted to the Soleimani killing in its usual spineless manner.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been making marginally more honest statements about the evils of Iranian aggression. It’s unclear whether he’s anxious not to irritate Trump in view of the post-Brexit trade deal that Britain wants to conclude with the United States, or whether he believes that the US president has now changed the rules of the geopolitical game altogether.
The unfortunate fact is, however, that the British establishment has appeasement encoded into its DNA.
From the BBC and much of the press, you’d think the Iranian people were entirely consumed by grief and anger over Soleimani’s violent demise.
The US media have been hardly any better. On ABC, Martha Raddatz told “Good Morning America” from Iran: “The crowds are massive and emotional … the people are united against America.”
Yet much of this mass mourning was being staged at gunpoint, with shops made to close and people forced to join the funeral demonstrations for Soleimani and the others killed alongside him.
Below the radar, however, Iranians were celebrating. In The Washington Post, Iranian Masih Alinejad wrote: “I have received thousands of messages, voice mails and videos from Iranians in cities such as Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran and even Ahvaz who are happy about Soleimani’s death.”
This is hardly surprising considering the country-wide demonstrations that have been taking place in Iran for months against this repressive regime, despite thousands of protesters reportedly being jailed or murdered.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and parts of Syria and Lebanon, people were reported to be dancing in the streets, and handing out sweets and cakes to celebrate.
Informed analysts, such as Hillel Frisch of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, say that Soleimani’s elimination has dealt the Iranian regime an enormous blow.
The intelligence involved in his killing, writes Frisch, proves beyond doubt that the Iranian security system is riddled with informants. This will create a devastating chain of insecurity and suspicion.
In Iraq, he says, many citizens are now sitting on the sidelines waiting to see whether Iran or America will prevail in their country.
This, along with the decision by Shi’ite spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Sistani not to condemn the killing, reinforces the assumption created by months of hitherto unthinkable Shia Iraqi protests against the Iranian Shia regime that even many Shia Iraqis aren’t mourning Soleimani at all.
It seems as if Trump may have called the regime’s bluff. Its missile attacks on two small American bases in Iraq, which killed no one, was hardly commensurate with the huge game-changer of taking out Soleimani.
Immediately after he was killed, Middle East analyst Jonathan Spyer shrewdly observed that this placed Iran’s rulers in a dilemma. To inflict the kind of harm against America that would reflect the magnitude of Soleimani’s killing would result, they now realized, in Trump inflicting possibly terminal damage on them.
It seems they have decided for now to back off, with a missile attack calibrated to fail, but which allowed the regime to save face with its domestic audience, who were given by state-controlled media the fake news that at least 80 “American terrorists” had been killed.
No one, however, should be under any illusions. The regime can be expected to resume its strategy of mounting deniable attacks against soft or second-tier military targets.
Trump has now laid down his red line: If you attack America, you will be destroyed. The same cannot be said for Britain and Europe. Their aversion to fighting back has turned their populations, with countless Iranian terrorist sleeper cells in their midst, into sitting ducks.
It’s good that Trump is now increasing sanctions against Iran. And good luck to him in piling pressure on Johnson to follow America’s lead and withdraw from the lethal nuclear pact for which the United Kingdom has been such a cheerleader.
But this mercurial and contradictory president now has to follow through. He himself cannot make another deal with a regime that believes its Divine destiny is to cause an apocalypse and bring the Shia messiah to earth. He must instead force its destruction.
“President Trump could not be more clear. On our watch, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon,” said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
All decent, rational people should be cheering those words. For the first time, this evil regime has been held to account. Yet Western liberals are spitting tacks. We can see what side they’re on here, and it’s not their own.
The murderous, fanatical Iranian regime poses one of the greatest dangers to the civilized world. How shameful that Western liberals – in their terrifying moral and intellectual blindness – seem to be falling over themselves to give it victory.
Melanie Phillips
https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-perverse-western-mourning-for-soleimani/
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CHERCHEZ L’ERREUR ! (Soleimani a mérité 25 fois qu’on le tue, mais ce n’était pas le bon moment)
« Trump est imprévisible, c’est certain. Mais c’est trop facile de penser qu’il est fou, il ne l’est pas. Il a été élu et il risque bien de l’être à nouveau. C’est une espèce d’agité mis au pouvoir par le pays le plus puissant du monde. Pourquoi a-t-il enterré l’accord sur le nucléaire iranien ? Il a toujours été obsédé par l’Iran et l’accord conclu par Obama, il en a presque fait une affaire personnelle. Mais d’une manière ou d’une autre, je ne sais pas bien comment, il faudra y revenir à cet accord de 2015. Macron a bien proposé des chemins de sortie de crises. Les chiites, je les connais bien, ils furent longtemps les déshérités de l’Islam. On va devoir se réconcilier avec les Iraniens, ce grand peuple. Même si les ayatollahs, je n’aime pas ça. J’ai toujours détesté les théocraties. Quant à Soleimani, il a mérité 25 fois qu’on le tue, il fut l’instigateur de nombreux massacres et je ne le pleure pas. Mais ce n’était pas le bon moment. Non, sûrement pas… C’était une erreur. (…) Je préfère 1 000 fois ce qu’a fait Obama. De toutes les personnes que j’ai rencontrées au cours de ma vie, il fait partie de ceux qui m’ont le plus impressionné. Avec Nelson Mandela ou Vaclav Havel entre autres… Obama, il ne parle pas beaucoup. Mais on a l’impression qu’il voit à travers vous, au-delà de vous. Même si lui aussi a fait des erreurs. Il aurait dû frapper la Syrie et Assad en août 2013. Tout était prêt, nous étions prêts. (…) Comment se passer des États-Unis sans une Europe vraiment unie ? Voilà bien notre drame : nous n’avons pas réussi à construire l’Europe. Elle était notre credo, notre soutien, notre espérance, le grand mouvement politique de notre temps. Nous avons failli. Qui veut d’une défense commune ? Je ne parle pas d’une armée européenne qui ferait défiler ses chars à Paris puis à Berlin. Mais simplement d’une exigence de Défense commune. Nous le devons à nos enfants. Mais nous n’avons pas voulu émietter nos pouvoirs nationaux. Il faut du temps… Faut-il un siècle ? J’ai été député européen, c’est formidable, passionnant. Mais l’influence de ce Parlement ne dépasse guère Bruxelles et Strasbourg, ou alors un peu au Luxembourg… L’Europe, l’Europe, l’Europe, ce devrait être notre réponse aux problèmes du monde. Et notamment concernant les migrants. (…) madame Merkel en a accueilli des centaines de milliers. Nous, à peine quelques milliers… La barque européenne s’est fracassée sur le rocher des migrants. La solidarité élémentaire n’était plus là. Honteux repli sur soi. Et les migrations continueront. (…) L’appel d’air, c’est exactement ce qu’on disait déjà avec les « boat people ». La France en a accueilli plus de 300 000, sans problème majeur. On est allés les chercher jusqu’en mer de Chine, à 12 000 kilomètres ! Alors d’accord, me dit-on, mais ce n’étaient pas des musulmans… Ces « musulmans » dont on parle, ils fuyaient Daech et la misère et mourraient en Méditerranée, là où nos enfants jouent au sable… C’est un crève-cœur. J’avais demandé à François Hollande d’intervenir et je n’étais pas le seul. Il avait envoyé deux bateaux. Notre marine est à Toulon, déjà sur zone. (…) J’approuvais totalement la façon dont François est intervenu. À la demande des Maliens, il faut le rappeler ! Mais qu’est-ce qu’on fait au Mali ? Nous risquons de perdre. Ce genre de guerres n’est pas gagnable… D’autant plus que pour beaucoup, nous sommes et resterons les colonisateurs. Les Maliens, je n’en suis pas sûr mais je le crains, choisiront un pouvoir islamiste plutôt que le soutien des anciens colonisateurs. C’est dur. Mais c’est ainsi. La mondialisation de l’islamisme est en train de gagner du terrain. Hélas, hélas, hélas… Et dans le même temps, les droits de l’homme ne comptent plus guère. Nous avons vécu l’ère des droits de l’homme et le temps de l’humanitaire, mais c’est fini. Autrefois, nous étions sensibles à la mort des autres, aux malheurs des autres, maintenant c’est terminé. Une sorte de « Compassion fatigue » s’est emparée du monde. Cinq cent mille morts en Syrie, pas une manif en France ! Ou si peu… L’égoïsme a triomphé. (…) [La Lybie] à l’époque je pensais que c’était la bonne solution. Il fallait éviter le massacre de Benghazi. Peut-être me suis-je trompé… Ou peut-être avons-nous outrepassé le mandat de l’ONU… De toute façon, je n’étais plus ministre des Affaires étrangères, c’était Alain Juppé. (…) En Libye, il fallait y aller, mais il fallait rester ! Et pour tout dire, je ne pense pas que le but était de tuer Kadhafi. Aujourd’hui, c’est vrai, le pays est un capharnaüm politique et une catastrophe intellectuelle. En ce moment débarquent des Turcs avec les Frères musulmans, pour aider le gouvernement de Tripoli, contre le maréchal Haftar, soutenu par les Russes qui sont eux-mêmes les alliés des Turcs ! Qu’est-ce que vous comprenez à ça ? (…) Sauf qu’en Syrie s’ajoutait le problème kurde. J’ai vraiment une grande expérience des Kurdes. Et depuis 1974 ! Je suis le dernier survivant des vieux amis des Kurdes. Même entre eux il y a un micro-nationalisme : les Kurdes syriens ne parlent pas aux Kurdes irakiens, de l’autre côté du Tigre. Vieille affaire… Mais je les aidais quand même, parce que je les aime. Leur combat pour la démocratie est inédit au Moyen-Orient. On vote sur plusieurs listes, l’opposition existe, il y a un Parlement ! Les femmes ont une place égale aux hommes dans la société. Surtout, ils ne confondent pas la mosquée et le palais du gouvernement. (…) Il faut continuer d’y aller, surtout pour des raisons directement humanitaires, même si ça devient peut-être plus dangereux. L’ingérence est un droit voté par les Nations unies, non seulement par l’Assemblée générale mais aussi par le Conseil de sécurité. Et notez bien que le droit d’ingérence se veut un droit préventif. (…) En Birmanie, pour soutenir les Rohingyas. Je l’ai proposé d’ailleurs. Nous avions, avec les Anglais, des bateaux dans le golfe du Bengale. On était là, avec nos hélicoptères, nos Mistral. On aurait pu les protéger plus tôt. Il y aura toujours des urgences mondiales. Que fait-on aujourd’hui pour les Ouïgours ? D’ailleurs, je pense que les situations d’urgences seront de plus en plus liées au climat, regardez l’Australie aujourd’hui. Pour cela, il faut garder le droit d’ingérence à l’ONU. Ça ne se décide pas tout seul. (…) Le riz en Somalie, c’est ma fierté totale ! Un certain nombre d’odieux personnages se sont moqués. Mais c’est la France entière qui a soutenu la Somalie. Ce riz, c’était le riz des enfants de France. C’est une opération merveilleuse, il n’y avait plus de riz dans les Prisunic ! 200 grammes de riz par enfant apportés à école. La Poste puis la SNCF l’ont acheminé… c’était une opération nationale. Mais les obstacles retardaient la livraison et l’Unicef annonçait que 1 000 enfants mourraient de famine tous les jours. Si ensuite je suis allé sur la plage en Somalie, c’est parce que le riz était bloqué – une tempête dans le golfe d’Aden et le port tenus par des « rebelles ». J’ai porté ce sac de riz pour montrer aux enfants de France que leur riz était bien arrivé. En Afrique, des gens m’embrassent encore dans la rue pour ça. (…) [Greta Thunberg] Franchement… Je ne la connais pas bien. Elle me semble admirable, mais je me demande si elle ne provoque pas autant d’obstacles qu’elle en surmonte… (…) Elle n’est pas sympathique, voilà tout. Elle a 16 ans, elle donne des leçons au monde. Enfin… c’est quand même bien qu’elle soit allée à l’ONU. Son combat est noble à une époque où l’on cherche en vain des militants des droits de l’homme. (…) [ces nouveaux militants antispécistes ou indigénistes] C’est d’une tristesse… Voir que les militants des droits des animaux ou des végans supplantent ceux des droits de l’homme, franchement… C’est pas la même chose quand même. Je n’ai rien contre les animaux ni les végétariens. Je m’en fous ! Mais n’abandonnons pas les droits de l’homme. Ça, c’est un scandale. J’aimerais que la cause des migrants passe avant celle des animaux. D’ailleurs, nous devrions avoir un « Monsieur migrants » en France. J’aurais aimé que ce soit moi. Ils auraient pu y penser… J’ai proposé… (…) Où elle est, la gauche ? Les écolos progressent oui, mais la gauche, pour l’heure, est morte. Les frondeurs, ces inconscients, ont grignoté comme des termites le Parti socialiste. On entend aujourd’hui plus les communistes que les socialistes, un comble ! Les frondeurs n’ont pas respecté celui qui avait été élu. François Hollande a été élu. Et son quinquennat ne mérite pas l’opprobre dont on le couvre. Remarquez, à droite, ce n’est pas mieux… (…) [Matzneff] J’étais le seul à dire que c’était un salopard ! Je l’ai écrit, je ne sais plus où. (…) Mais la pétition de Matzneff, je ne l’ai pas lue ! Daniel Cohn-Bendit et moi l’avons signée parce que Jack Lang nous l’avait demandé. C’était il y a 40 ans. C’est une énorme erreur. Il y avait derrière une odeur de pédophilie, c’est clair. C’était une connerie absolue. Plus qu’une connerie, une sorte de recherche de l’oppression. Je regrette beaucoup. (…) [ que tant de grands noms – Sartre, Aragon, Barthes – aient aussi signé] C’est difficile à expliquer. Autre temps, autres mœurs. La période était bêtement laxiste, permissive. Les idéologies nous submergeaient. Connaissez-vous cette phrase de Camus : « Quelque chose en eux aspire à la servitude » ? »
Bernard Kouchner
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/bernard-kouchner-soleimani-a-merite-25-fois-qu-on-le-tue-11-01-2020-2357226_24.php
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TWITTER PRESIDENT (Guess why the media rage against the 70-million follower twitter president who has outpaced them all to let people hear directly from the man they elected and now even reaches out in their own language to the oppressed Iranian people ?)
In the aftermath of the death of Qassem Soleimani last week, the torching of the Iranian consulates in Najaf and Karbala, Iraq, and the Saturday death of Abbas Ali Al-Sa’edi, the pro-Iranian Hashd Al Sha’abi commander in Karbala, there are clear indications that the Iranian and Iraqi people are losing their fear of the mullahs of Iran. There is a lot of YouTube video of Iranians in the streets of Tehran and elsewhere, and a particularly neat one of Iranian students refusing to walk on an American and an Israeli flag.
This is a prelude to understanding President Donald Trump’s tweet to the Iranian people on Saturday and the sure knowledge that he’s outpaced newspapers, radio, and TV alike in understanding what regular people understand regardless of what language they speak. Then there is the absence of coverage of the event by what has been called the “mainstream media” — although the mainstream appears not to be following them. Google results mid-morning Sunday — in order of appearance, with sources — show you who cared:
Trump Persian Tweet to Iranian People: I “Stand with You.” (Heavy.Com)
Trump tweet in Farsi “the most liked Persian tweet’ in history of Twitter (Washington Examiner)
Trump’s support for Iranian protestors breaks a Twitter record, something the MSM ‘will not report’ (TheBlaze)
Trump Persian Tweet to Iranian People: I “Stand With You…” (Schooltips.com)
Trump tweet in Farsi “the most liked Persian tweet” in… (enmnews)
Donald Trump Tweets in Persian to Pump Up Iranian Protests (CNN)
President Trump’s Tweet in Farsi is Most Liked Persian Tweet… (Gateway Pundit)
Trump Tweets Support for Iranian Protesters — in Persian (Legal Insurrection)
Trump Tweets Support for the ‘Brave and Suffering’ of Iran (PJ Media)
See a pattern?
With the exception of the snarky CNN headline, most are smaller outlets and all are openly supportive of the president’s decision to tell the Iranian people that we are not their enemy and we support their struggle against their government.
The Iranian people appear to appreciate that.
So where is The New York Times? Where is The Washington Post? The Los Angeles Times?
The Post had a few presidential tweet stories. In May, there was one about how the president’s tweets “put the Middle East on a knife edge.” There were a few in June and July — specifically, about one tweet the Iranian government called “repugnant.” The New York Times did some “analysis” of Mr. Trump’s tweets: “Trumps Twitter Presidency” and an opinion piece that claimed the tweets proved the president to be a “raging racist.” Those were the nice ones.
You get the point.
And sure, by the time you read this, someone in the MSM will have figured out that the tweet was important — not only for what it said, and not only for the apparent joy it brought to the Iranians who read it, liked it, and retweeted it, but because Donald Trump has figured out a way to talk to people without their government or media intervening.
Oh, wait. That’s what he’s been doing with the American people from the beginning of his presidency — letting people hear directly from the man they elected. Americans have often taken that for granted: After all, most of us have unfettered Internet and we can log onto WhiteHouse.gov if we want to know what the president said last night in Arkansas. But this is why the president has 70 million Twitter followers.
And here, perhaps, is the source of MSM unhappiness with Donald Trump. It isn’t only what he does as president; sometimes they even approve of that. It is resentment that he skips them — and denigrates them — just as much as they skip over his agenda and denigrate him. It has long been the position of newspapers, radio, and television that the American people need a filter for what happens — and that they are the filter. They are the way to understand the world. Walter Cronkite was that for millions of people in the 1960s. Tom Friedman, with fewer than a million followers (even adding the 44 million of his employer, The New York Times), isn’t that.
And no one is likely to be that again. Not in the United States. And not even in a country where the government manages and manipulates the media and the official pronouncements. Not even in Iran.
There’s a new day out there. President Trump gets it.
https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2020/01/13/trump-tweets-for-liberty-in-iran/
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HOW STUPID CAN YOU GET ? (Guess who Iran’s most faithful useful idiot is now blaming for the downing of the Ukrainian plane and its 176 victims ?)
While a sombre Trudeau pledged to investigate the bombing and get answers for Canadians, he couldn’t muster the courage to name the culprit or condemn the Iranian regime. He even repeatedly stressed that it was an accident, showing a willingness to accept Iran’s word that the bombing was unintentional. Perhaps even more disturbing, when a CBC reporter asked Trudeau if he blamed the U.S. for the crash, Trudeau failed to provide a straight answer or unequivocally reject the idea that the U.S. should be held responsible for the heinous actions of an adversarial government…
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/malcolm-blame-trump-for-iranian-missiles-thats-what-cbc-says
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HISTORY WILL SAY IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO (Says former Obma security advisor as the Iranian regime teeters on the edge of collapse)
“I think the needle is moved more in that direction in the last year towards that possibility than ever before with a combination of the sanctions, relative isolation of the regime, and then some catastrophic decisions have been made — assuming that we weren’t going to respond, which turned out to be a very, very bad decision. I think it’s clear that the regime in Iran has had a very bad couple of weeks. And one of the things that people don’t talk about too much is the degree of unrest that there is in the country, which I think is significant. So you take the removal of Soleimani, you take the accidental downing of the civilian aircraft coupled with the amount of popular unrest — the needle towards possible collapse of a regime has to be something that people think about. It’s probably not politically correct to talk about it, but you have to think about it. I would not let up. And I would not listen to the appeasers of the world who kind of want to calm the waves and let’s get back to normal business,” Jones said. “You have Iran using its proxies to spread terror around the world and interdict shipping, you know, shoot down drones and things like that. Those days, I think, are over. And I hope Iran understands that. [Killing Soleimani] was a powerful step, we’ll see where it goes. It’s a complicated region, but I think history will say that this was the right thing to do.”
Gen. James Jones (former Obama’s national security advisor)
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/13/iran-is-closer-than-ever-before-to-regime-collapse-says-former-obama-security-adviser.html
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YOU’RE RUINING THE NARRATIVE ! (CNN reporter gets the scare of his life when he realizes Iranian crowds are not shouting Death to America! » but « Death to the dictator! » and blaming not Trump and the US but their own government)
As Iranians protested their government’s downing of a passenger jet, a frantic CNN reporter ran through the crowd lecturing them on how they were actually supposed to be shouting « Death to America! »
The CNN reporter arrived at the protests, excited to cover another anti-US protest but quickly realized they were actually shouting « Death to the dictator! » and blaming their government for shooting down the plane.
« Guys, you’re ruining the narrative! » he cried through a megaphone. « We can’t run with this! You’re willing to assign blame to Iran more readily than the media and the Democrats were! This isn’t good for our viewership! Are you guys in league with Fox News? » « Please guys, please shout ‘death to America,’ just for a few minutes so I can get some B-roll! »
His efforts weren’t having any effect, so the reporter began trying to start up the chants himself. « Come on, people! Death to America! Death to America! When I say ‘Death to,’ you say, ‘America!’ Death to! » A shoe was thrown in his direction, though, and he scattered, fearing for his life.
https://babylonbee.com/news/cnn-reporter-informs-iranian-protesters-theyre-supposed-to-be-shouting-death-to-america
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QUEL TRUMP BASHING ?
« Finalement, ce Trump bashing qu’on a entendu pendant une semaine en France n’était pas aussi justifié que ça. Parce qu’il est quand même en train de faire quelque chose. Il a fait peur aux dirigeants iraniens, et sa stratégie malgré tout ce qu’on peut lui reprocher, malgré toute la souffrance que les Iraniens ont subie, on voit qu’il y a quand même des effets. C’est quand même, il faut le dire, grâce à Donald Trump que les dirigeants iraniens n’ont pas de quoi payer leurs mercenaires au Liban et en Irak. Et ils sont complètement contestés par les Irakiens et par les Libanais. »
Mahnaz Shirali
https://www.europe-israel.org/2020/01/mahnaz-shirali-specialiste-de-liran-cloue-le-bec-des-journalistes-anti-trump-la-strategie-de-donald-trump-netait-pas-aussi-mauvaise-que-ca-cest-grace-a-trump-que-les-dir
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WHAT TERRORIST DESIGNATION OF SOLEIMANI ? (Soleimani was originally « designated » by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2007 under Bush and in 2011 under Obama as commander of the Quds Force for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations)
« Soleimani was a designated terrorist by President Obama, who didn’t do anything about it. »
Donald Trump (January 14, 2020)
https://www.c-span.org/video/?467870-1/president-trump-campaigns-milwaukee-wisconsin
IRGC Individuals: Treasury is designating the individuals below under E.O 13382 on the basis of their relationship to the IRGC. One of the five is listed on the Annex of UNSCR 1737 and the other four are listed on the Annex of UNSCR 1747 as key IRGC individuals.
General Hosein Salimi, Commander of the Air Force, IRGC
Brigadier General Morteza Rezaie, Deputy Commander of the IRGC
Vice Admiral Ali Akhbar Ahmadian, Most recently former Chief of the IRGC Joint Staff
Brigadier Gen. Mohammad Hejazi, Most recently former Commander of Bassij resistance force
Brigadier General Qasem Soleimani, Commander of the Qods Force
Support for Terrorism — Executive Order 13224 Designations
IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF): The Qods Force, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC; aka Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps), provides material support to the Taliban, Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).
The Qods Force is the Iranian regime’s primary instrument for providing lethal support to the Taliban. The Qods Force provides weapons and financial support to the Taliban to support anti-U.S. and anti-Coalition activity in Afghanistan. Since at least 2006, Iran has arranged frequent shipments of small arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds, 107mm rockets, plastic explosives, and probably man-portable defense systems to the Taliban. This support contravenes Chapter VII UN Security Council obligations. UN Security Council resolution 1267 established sanctions against the Taliban and UN Security Council resolutions 1333 and 1735 imposed arms embargoes against the Taliban. Through Qods Force material support to the Taliban, we believe Iran is seeking to inflict casualties on U.S. and NATO forces.
The Qods Force has had a long history of supporting Hizballah’s military, paramilitary, and terrorist activities, providing it with guidance, funding, weapons, intelligence, and logistical support. The Qods Force operates training camps for Hizballah in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and has reportedly trained more than 3,000 Hizballah fighters at IRGC training facilities in Iran. The Qods Force provides roughly $100 to $200 million in funding a year to Hizballah and has assisted Hizballah in rearming in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
In addition, the Qods Force provides lethal support in the form of weapons, training, funding, and guidance to select groups of Iraqi Shi’a militants who target and kill Coalition and Iraqi forces and innocent Iraqi civilians.
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/hp644.aspx
Executive Order 13572 Designations
Exposing further the complicity of Syrian government officials in the human rights abuses and repression of the Syrian people, Treasury designated today the following individuals and entities pursuant to E.O. 13572:
Qasem Soleimani: Commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), the conduit for Iranian material support to the GID. The IRGC-QF was listed in the Annex to E.O. 13572.
E.O. 13572 authorizes the United States to sanction any person that is owned or controlled by, or acts for or on behalf of any person designated pursuant to E.O. 13460. Included in today’s action are three companies and one corporate official for ties to public corruption in Syria. The targets are Cham Holding and its Chairman Nabil Rafik al Kuzbari, Bena Properties, and Al Mashreq Investment Fund, all of which are owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of Rami Makhlouf. Makhlouf, a powerful Syrian businessman and regime insider, was designated by Treasury in February 2008 under E.O. 13460 for improperly benefitting from and aiding the public corruption of Syrian regime officials.
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1181.aspx
Treasury Sanctions Five Individuals Tied to Iranian Plot to Assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States
10/11/2011 WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced the designation of five individuals, including four senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) officers connected to a plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States Adel Al-Jubeir, while he was in the United States and to carry out follow-on attacks against other countries’ interests inside the United States and in another country. As part of today’s action, Treasury also designated the individual responsible for arranging the assassination plot on behalf of the IRGC-QF.
As a result of today’s designations, U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions with these individuals, and any assets they may hold in the U.S. are frozen.
Qasem Soleimani
As IRGC-QF Commander, Qasem Soleimani oversees the IRGC-QF officers who were involved in this plot. Soleimani was previously designated by the Treasury Department under E.O. 13382 based on his relationship to the IRGC. He was also designated in May 2011 pursuant to E.O. 13572, which targets human rights abuses in Syria, for his role as the Commander of the IRGC-QF, the primary conduit for Iran’s support to the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate (GID).
Background on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force
The IRGC-QF is the Government of Iran’s primary foreign action arm for executing its policy of supporting terrorist organizations and extremist groups around the world. The IRGC-QF provides training, logistical assistance and material and financial support to militants and terrorist operatives, including the Taliban, Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
IRGC-QF officers and their associates have supported attacks against U.S. and allied troops and diplomatic missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The IRGC-QF continues to train, equip and fund Iraqi Shia militant groups – such as Kata’ib and Hizballah – and elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan to prevent an increase in Western influence in the region. In the Levant, the IRGC-QF supports terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas, which it views as integral to its efforts to challenge U.S. influence in the Middle East.
The Government of Iran also uses the IRGC and IRGC-QF to implement its foreign policy goals, including, but not limited to, seemingly legitimate activities that provide cover for intelligence operations and support to terrorist and insurgent groups. These activities include economic investment, reconstruction, and other types of aid to Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, implemented by companies and institutions that act for or on behalf of, or are owned or controlled by, the IRGC and the Iranian government.
The IRGC-QF was designated by Treasury pursuant to E.O. 13224 in October 2007 for its support for terrorism, and was listed in the Annex to E.O. 13572 of April 2011 as the conduit for Iran’s support to Syria’s GID, the overarching civilian intelligence service in Syria which has been involved in human rights abuses in Syria.
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/pages/tg1320.aspx
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2020/jan/16/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-claim-obama-designated-irans-/
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WHAT BRILLIANT TRUMP MOVE ? (Trump has left the regime with a set of impossible choices: risk war, and damage the domestic economy further, leading to destabilizing protests; or yield to U.S. demands, saving the economy but also showing Iranians the regime can be defeated)
“There will be those who will argue that we can’t sustain the current situation if we don’t have a war. For the Iranian government, living in crisis is good. It’s always been good, because you can blame all the economic problems on sanctions, or on the foreign threat of war. In the last couple of years, Iran has looked for adventures as a way of diverting attention from economic problems.”
Yassamine Mather (Oxford)
“The hard-liners are willing to impoverish people to stay in power. The Islamic Republic does not make decisions based on purely economic outcomes. They see escalation as the only way to the negotiating table. They can’t capitulate and come to the negotiating table. They can’t compromise, because that would show weakness. By demonstrating that they can escalate, that they are fearless, they are trying to build leverage.”
Sanam Vakil (Chatam House)
“The killing of Suleimani represents a watershed, not only in terms of directing attention away from domestic problems, but also rallying Iranians around their flag. Mr. Trump had supplied the Iranian leadership “time and space to change the conversation. Iranians were no longer consumed with the “misguided and failed economic policies of the Iranian regime,” but rather “the arrogant aggression of the United States against the Iranian nation.”
Fawaz A. Gerges (London School of Economics)
Crippling sanctions imposed by the Trump administration have severed Iran’s access to international markets, decimating the economy, which is now contracting at an alarming 9.5 percent annual rate, the International Monetary Fund estimated. Oil exports were effectively zero in December, according to Oxford Economics, as the sanctions have prevented sales, even though smugglers have transported unknown volumes.
The bleak economy appears to be tempering the willingness of Iran to escalate hostilities with the United States, its leaders cognizant that war could profoundly worsen national fortunes. In recent months, public anger over joblessness, economic anxiety and corruption has emerged as a potentially existential threat to Iran’s hard-line regime.
Inflation is running near 40 percent, assailing consumers with sharply rising prices for food and other basic necessities. More than one in four young Iranians is jobless, with college graduates especially short of work, according to the World Bank.
Moreover, Europe and the United Nations could also join the U.S. in reimposing their sanctions in the near future.
Some fear that hard-liners within the regime could see war as a potential way to stimulate the economy, the Times notes. However, a full and direct confrontation with the U.S. “would likely weaken the currency and exacerbate inflation, while menacing what remains of national industry.” It could also “threaten a run on domestic banks,” the Times notes.
As Breitbart News recently noted, President Trump’s decision to leave President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran — not just for its nuclear activities but for its terrorism and human rights abuses — has more than wiped out the economic gains Iran achieved by agreeing to the Iran deal in 2015.
Trump has left the regime with a set of impossible choices: risk war, and damage the domestic economy further, leading to destabilizing protests; or yield to U.S. demands, saving the economy but also showing Iranians the regime can be defeated…
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KHAMENEI LOSES HIS BAG-CARRIER (How with no proper training and often little or no formal education but with the help of gullible Western media, Soleimani rose from bag-carrier to over-hyped terror master)
While analysts and policymakers are busy speculating on ways that Tehran’s ruling mullahs might avenge the killing of their most hyped general the real question that needs considering may be elsewhere. The question is: what effect Soleimani’s death might have on the power struggle that, though currently put on hold, is certain to resume with greater vigor in Tehran.
Tehran propaganda tries to sell Soleimani as a kind of superman who, almost single handedly, brought Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and parts of Afghanistan and Yemen under Iranian control while driving Americans out of the Middle East and crushing ISIS’s so-called Caliphate which tried to rival the Islamic Republic in Tehran. Soleimani himself did a lot to promote that image and, doing that, received much help from Western, specially American, and Israeli media that bought the bundle of goods from Tehran.
Facts, however, offer a different portrait of the late general. Soleimani joined the Islamic revolution in 1980 aged 27 at a time that the mullahs were busy putting together a praetorian guard to protect their new regime. A few months later, the ragtag army that Soleimani had joined was sent to help the remnants of a heavily purged national army fight an invading Iraqi force. With over 8,000 officers and NCOs of the national army purged by Khomeini the new regime offered a fast track to people like Soleimani who had joined the military with no proper training and often little or no formal education. Thus, just three years after he had joined the military, young Soleimani found himself in command of a division of raw recruits. Under his command Iranian forces suffered three of their biggest defeats in operations Al-Fajr 8, and Karbala I and Karbala II. Mohsen Reza’i, then chief of the Revolutionary Guard, describes the three battles as “a string of catastrophes” for Iranian forces.
However, Soleimani, who was to demonstrate his genius for networking and self-promotion, scored one lasting victory when he attached himself to Ali Khamenei, the mullah who was to become the Islamic Republic’s “Supreme Guide”.
Khamenei started as Deputy Defense Minister and rose to become President of the Islamic Republic. Soleimani, mocked as “the mullah’s bag-carrier”, was always at his side. In the 1990s, as Khamenei slowly built himself as the sole arbiter of Iran’s fate, Soleimani seized the opportunity to secure a fiefdom for himself.
That came in the shape of the project to “export” the Iranian Revolution to other Muslim countries. Initially, exporting the revolution, mentioned in the regime’s constitution as a sacred duty, had been regarded as a matter of propaganda and organizing sympathizers in Arab countries through outfits named Hezbollah. The task was handled by a special office in the Foreign Ministry headed by Ayatollah Hadi Khosroshahian. Partly thanks to lobbying by Soleimani the task was taken away from the Foreign Ministry and handed over to the Revolutionary Guard. But even then Soleimani didn’t get the top job which went to then Col. Ismail Qaani, the man who has now succeeded Soleimani as Commander of the Quds Force. Soleimani’s next move was to dislodge Qaani and get the top job himself. (Qaani was named as deputy). Even that configuration would not satisfy Soleimani who had bigger ambitions. As long as he was part of the IRGCs chain of command he had to obey rules set by superiors whom he despised.
Thanks to Khamenei’s support, he succeeded in securing his independent fiefdom in the shape of the Quds Force which, though formally part of the IRGC, has its own separate budget and chain of command and is answerable to no one but Khamenei.
Next, Soleimani seized control of Tehran’s foreign policy in Arab countries, Afghanistan, North Korea, and South America and, in some sensitive areas, even Russia. The Islamic Republic’s presidents and foreign ministers have never had tete-a-tete talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin as Soleimani had.
It became a matter of routine for Soleimani to appoint Iran’s ambassadors to Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Doha and several other Arab capitals.
A dramatic illustration of Soleimani’s “independence” came when he shipped Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad to Tehran in a special ‘plane without even telling the Iranian president let alone foreign minister who were also excluded from the Syrian’s audience with Khamenei.
A control freak, Soleimani insisted on deciding even the smallest details himself. In his one, and now final, interview, last November, the general talks of how Lebanese Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had to clear every move with him.
Inside Iran, Soleimani built a state within the state. According to the Islamic Customs’ Office, the Quds Force operates 25 jetties in five of Iran’s biggest ports for its “imports and exports” with no intervention by the relevant authorities. A line percent levy on imports of foreign cars is reserved for a special fund, controlled by the Quds Force, to cover expenditure in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and help pro-Iran Palestinian groups.
Soleimani had his own network of lobbyists in many Arab countries and some Western democracies. Hundreds of Iranian and Arab militants have enrolled in Western universities with scholarships from the Quds Force.
The Quds Force has registered vast tracts of public land in its name, claiming the need for future housing for its personnel. It also runs two dozen companies and banks and several shipping lines and an airline.
Soleimani, who loved making and publishing “selfies” showing himself close to battlegrounds in the Middle East, was never present anywhere near a battle but was always to come after the dust had settled, to take “selfies” and claim the credit.
A master of self-promotion, Soleimani received the rank of major-general without having risen through the hierarchy of the top brass like the other 12 men on the list. (After death he has been promoted to Lt. General).
Some analysts in Tehran believe that Khamenei was planning to promote Soleimani further by making him President of the Islamic Republic in 2021. An image-building campaign started last year as Soleimani was marketed as “the Sufi commander”, a label given to Safavid kings in the 16th century.
A committee of exiled Iranians in Florida also started campaigning to draft Soleimani as president.
If that was Khamenei’s game plan, there is no doubt that Soleimani’s demise will lead to more uncertainty regarding the future course of Iranian politics.
Amir Taheri
https://etleboro.org/g/533dca80f00c55631f4d3c59f591aa48en/amir-taheri—the-general%E2%80%99s-death-upsets-iran%E2%80%99s-plan
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BUMP ON THE MULLAHS’ ROAD TO NOWHERE (Guess who in one master blow has finally put a stop to the mullahs’ old survival recipe of 1 million war dead, 15,000 executions, 8 million exiles, oil money dependence, cheap refugee labor and foreign mercenaries?)
No matter what gloss the ruling clerics might try to put on current events in Iran, one point is clear: their Islamic Republic is in trouble. Deep trouble. This is, of course, not the first time that the system hastily put together by a bunch of mullahs and their leftist allies hits a bump on its road to nowhere. Even in its first year the Islamic Republic faced huge protest movements in Tehran and other major cities and had to use force to crush rebellions by Iranian-Kurdish and Turcoman communities.
According to best estimates, to remain in place the Islamic Republic has executed more than 15,000 people and driven more than 8 million Iranians into exile. And all that not to mention the eight-year war that the late Ayatollah, Ruhallah Khomeini, provoked with Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Despite all that the regime managed to survive thanks to a number of factors.
The first of those was that the Islamic Republic had at its disposal a large amount of cash earned from oil exports. The steady rise in oil prices meant that in its first 30 years of existence the Islamic Republic earned more than 20 times the money that Iran had made ever since it started exporting oil in 1908.
That ready source of cash meant that the new rulers of Iran did not need the citizenship for any of the ordinary things citizens in normal countries are needed for. The government did not depend on the people for revenue through taxation.
At the same time, it did not need citizens to win elections as candidates were approved beforehand. Nor did the government need the citizens to work to keep the economy going. Over four million refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and former Soviet Azerbaijan provided a huge source of cheap labor.
When it came to needing citizens to fight for the regime, citizens were again not indispensable as the regime succeeded in hiring mercenaries in a number of neighboring countries, notably Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.
It was that scheme of proxy wars that turned the late General, Qassem Soleimani, into a hero of the Islamic Republic. In fact, Soleimani did not need any military expertise. All he needed to do was to act as a cash machine for his proxy warriors.
Today, however, the oil cow is giving the mullahs much less milk than before. In fact, the regime’s hope is to secure something around 60 billion US dollars a year to cover its basic expenses. The existing war chest, built over the years, won’t cover those basic expenses for more than a year from now.
The other important element in the regime’s strategy was certainly that, whatever it did at home or abroad, its putative foes would always shy away from taking strong action against it, preferring dialogue and compromise.
Tehran always knew that whatever it did against outside powers it always had the option of surrendering at five minutes to midnight. Today, that option is also fading. I doubt that even the lily livered Europeans would now settle for just a friendly smile and a promise of future good behavior from Tehran. President Hassan Rouhani and his “New York Boys” may still hope to see a US Democrat in the White House soon. But even if that happens, I doubt that any future US president would repeat the mistakes made by Barack Obama.
Even an opportunist power like Russia is no longer prepared to play the game according to the rules fixed by the mullahs. The mullahs’ total disregard for international law and norms of behavior, tragically demonstrated with the shooting down of the Ukrainian jetliner in Tehran makes it hard for even dyed-in-wool anti-Americans in the West and elsewhere to continue as apologists for an incompetent, corrupt and cruel regime.
The next item in the mullahs’ scenario was to wrap themselves in patriotic colors and demand that Iranians forgive their peccadillos in the name of raw nationalism. Rouhani’s closest associate Muhammad Javad Zarif, acting as foreign minister, often uses tropes as “Iran’s 7,000-year civilization” and claims that “we were masters of the world long before Americans appeared on the map. However, that trick isn’t working either. Most Iranians, including many regime apologists in the West, know that the regime’s core ideology, Khomeinism, is built on a profound hatred of all things Iranian.
The mullahs’ recent attempt at marketing Gen. Soleimani as an Iranian hero, a kind of nationalist icon, has proved a failure as posters lamenting his demise are torn down and/or effaced by protesters in the country.
Soleimani was a cash dispensing machine that never asked Iranians for permission to spend their money abroad. The scheme he ran was never discussed anywhere, even in the regime’s own institutions, let alone any public forum. Nor was he answerable to anyone but “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei who, if Soleimani’s only press interview is believed, never bothered to go into any details.
Another feature of the regime’s survival scenario was to foment false hopes by fielding supposedly “reformist” figures capable of replacing the regime’s frown with a smile to please some Iranians and many gullible foreigners. Today, however, that trick is also hard to repeat, especially as more and more players in the “reform-seeking” game realize that they have been taken for a ride.
When everything else failed the mullahs knew that they could hang on to power by mass killings and widespread arrests. Each time they used that trick they managed to buy a few more years. This time, however, may be different. The current wave of protests was launched just days after the crushing of the previous national uprising. The previous round of protests seemed divided between a demand for straight regime change or demand for cosmetic moves, including resignation of top officials.
The latest protests, however, are clearly focused on a demand for regime change, even by some former “reform-seekers”. All this means that the regime’s classical recipe for survival isn’t working as before. For the first time, more and more Iranians are beginning to contemplate regime change not as merely a desirable slogan but as a practical strategy to lead the nation out of the impasse created by Khomeinism.
Amir Taheri
https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/2086851/amir-taheri/iran-why-old-recipe-does-not-work
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WHAT MULLAHS’ LOSING GAME (Guess what happens when faced with Trump’s sanctions and loss of face, Khamenei can no longer fulfill the prosperous 30 percent’s increasing demands for social and political freedoms ?)
When popular protests erupted in Iran’s top 100 cities, including the capital Tehran, last month, it soon became clear that the ruling elites were at pains to decide what was really going on. The faction led by « Supreme Guide » Ali Khamenei started by dismissing the uprising as a déjà vu version of the protests that have punctuated Iran’s history since the 1979 revolution. The daily Kayhan, reputed to reflect Khamenei’s views, dismissed the uprising as « sporadic disturbances fomented by a handful of hooligans. » Khamenei himself saw it as « a bump on the road » to the « Great New Islamic Civilization » he says he is building.
The official media dismissed what it claimed was « a blind riot with no leadership. »
Pro-regime voices in the West mocked the whole thing as « a storm in the twitter cup » and pontificated that a few exiles campaigning for human rights would never be able to provide the leadership needed for a serious challenge to the Iranian government.
The remnants of the « reform seeking » faction tried to label the uprising as nothing but a protest against the tripling of the price of petrol.
Pro-Tehran lobbies abroad tried to promote a third version, claiming that while « hooligans » were leading the protests, the mass of the people who followed had no political grievances against the regime. They insisted that President Hassan Rouhani was trying to raise revenues to keep the ship of state afloat.
Almost no one in the ruling establishment bothered to ask why so many Iranians were prepared to risk their lives to make their voices heard and what could the regime do to address their grievances.
After initial hesitations the elite regained its unity by responding in the best way it knows, not to say the only way it knows: a brutal crackdown that claimed hundreds of lives and over 10,000 arrests.
The switch in approach to the uprising meant a change of narrative.
The « hooligans » were rebranded as « trained combatants armed by foreign powers » sent to turn Iran into « another Syria. » Khamenei’s top military aide, Major-General Hossein Salami, pushed hyperbole to the limit by claiming that Iran faced « a veritable world war. »
The claim that the uprising had no leadership was abandoned.
Khamenei asserted that « the evil Pahlavi family » was leading the riots with the People’s Mujahedin, or in his words Munafeqin, in tandem. The Khomeinist propaganda machine generated a new narrative: The Islamic Republic had faced an epic challenge, and succeeded in crushing it without the slightest concession, let alone re-casting any of its domestic and foreign policies.
Nevertheless, although medium-term effects of the uprisings remain subject to speculation, its immediate result is already visible in a multifaceted retreat by the Khomeinist elite.
The first facet of that retreat is ideological.
Suddenly, all talk of conquering the world and creating the « Great New Islamic Civilization » is consigned to oblivion.
In an unusual speech, Khamenei spelled out the new gospel: « If Iranians wish to preserve their good life and security, » they should stick to the Islamic Republic.
Rouhani had said that around 70 percent of Iranians live in poverty while the remaining 30 percent « enjoy a prosperous life. » Now, Khamenei was making it clear that he looks to the « prosperous » 30 percent for support in keeping his regime. In his time, Khomeini had claimed that his revolution was for the « mass of the poor » which he designated with the term « dispossessed » (mustadhafin in Arabic and Persian.) Now Khamenei was saying that the term had been misunderstood.
Last week, Khamenei claimed in a fatwa, « The term dispossessed has been misinterpreted as poor and vulnerable people. » He added: « That is not correct; the dispossessed means the imams and the leaders of humanity. » Khamenei’s argument is that the 12 Imams, and by extension the clerics who are their heirs, have been dispossessed of their right to rule the world. Thus, when it comes to worldly affairs, the Islamic regime is not meant to help the poor and the vulnerable but to protect the « security and prosperity » of those who enjoy those blessings.
Translated into simple terms, Khamenei is calling on the « prosperous 30 percent » not to take their current well-being for granted and to help the regime crush the mass of the poor who wish to upset the apple cart.
The revolution against the Shah was started, manned and led by middle classes that had emerged in his reign. The « ordinary masses, » that is to say urban workers and peasants who might have fitted the term « dispossessed », remained loyal to the Shah almost to the very end. The Shah wrongly believed that the newly created and increasingly prosperous urban middle classes would never challenge his regime. He feared a Communist-style revolution based on a workers-peasants alliance of the type Lenin or Mao Zedong imagined but never experienced.
The Shah thought that by giving land to peasants and granting workers a share in the profits of companies he would prevent such a revolution. He ignored the fact that the peasants who became landowners, albeit on small-scale, used their title deeds as collateral, to enter the capital market and within a generation joined the middle classes. Something similar happened to the top bracket of urban workers who invested their share of the profits to reach a middle-class status.
Now we know that the Shah never faced any danger from the mass of the poor.
The danger to his regime came from urban middle classes that in any society do not remain content with economic prosperity and social freedoms for long; they always end up demanding political rights commensurate with their economic and social status. The best symbol of modern urban middle classes, or the bourgeoisie as the Marxists like to say, is Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist who, the more he gets, the more he asks for.
Is Khamenei making a similar mistake albeit for different reasons?
The 30 percent he is counting on may remain loyal as long as he is able to keep the 70 percent « unhappy ones » on a tight leash. However, if he manages to crush the 70 percent, thus removing their threat, he would face the 30 percent’s increasing demands for social and political freedoms no clerical regime can grant. And, if he fails, the 30 percent in question will look for someone else who can do for them what the Khomeinist regime cannot. In either case, the « Supreme Guide » is playing a losing game.
Amir Taheri
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15254/iran-mullahs-losing-game
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WHAT ANTIAMERICANISM AND HYPOCRISY OF THE LEFT ON IRAN ?
“We must help the protesters in Iran, not the Mullahs!”
Petr Bystron (AfD)
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WHAT BRILLIANT TRUMP MOVE ? (Confused in Tehran: As Iran finds itself in the impossible position where it can no longer respond to America’s upping the ante out of its reach, while it must preserve its one-shot Hezbollah threat on Israel for a rainy day)
In the wake of the U.S. killing of General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran is scrambling to figure out how to respond to President Trump. Throughout 2019, Iran ratcheted up threats and tensions, targeting oil tankers in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and U.S. troops in Iraq via proxies, testing Washington’s response. The decision to kill Soleimani, who arrived at Baghdad International Airport without any apparent suspicion of his impending death, threw down a gauntlet to Tehran that left the Ayatollah and the IRGC grasping for response options. This is a lesson to be learned from the recent Iran tensions: The U.S. can strike back at Iran and its allies without a major war resulting, so long as Iran is surprised or confused by the U.S. response.
Iran, in response, fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. bases in Iraq because it didn’t know what else to do. Ballistic missiles enabled Iran to strike without risking its own casualties and to showcase a technology that it has and that the U.S. lacked defenses against in Iraq. But the strike was limited in scope, and Iran hoped that at worst the U.S. would respond with cruise missiles or some similar kind of missile strike. How do we know this? Iran didn’t put its whole country on a war footing when it fired the missiles. It did down a civilian Ukrainian Airlines flight by mistake, showing that it expected some kind of aerial retaliation.
Iran tries to project an image of itself as massively powerful and cunning, sending its constantly smiling foreign minister, Javad Zarif, abroad to demonstrate its ability to open doors from Europe to Asia. Closer to home, Iran pushes relations with Turkey, Qatar, India, Oman, and other countries. Iran boasts of massive revenge for its losses. All last year, Iranian media featured articles about its military technological achievements, such as new drones, missiles, and warships. But behind the facade of strength and boasting, Iran prefers long-term incremental achievements and influence entrenchment in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.
Take the Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq throughout 2019 as an example. Iran can read U.S. media and official statements to gauge U.S. response. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Iraq in May to warn of possible Iranian escalation. From that moment Iran did escalate, attacking oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and downing a U.S. drone in June. In Iraq, rockets were fired at bases where U.S. forces are located. Pompeo warned in December that “Iran’s proxies have recently conducted several attacks” in Iraq and that the U.S. would respond directly if Iran harmed U.S. personnel. David Schenker, State Department assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, said that Iranian-backed militias in Iraq were shelling Iraqi bases where U.S. forces are located.
Iran didn’t expect the U.S. to carry through with a powerful response because it could read U.S. responses to the June drone downing and knew that Trump had refrained from a strike on Iran. Whether by mistake or intention, a rocket attack by Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah in late December killed a U.S. contractor near Kirkuk. Five Kataib Hezbollah sites were hit with U.S. airstrikes in response, and dozens were killed. Iran predicted that a show of force at the U.S. embassy would embarrass Washington and show the U.S. who is boss in Iraq. On Twitter on December 31, Pompeo singled out Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iran, and other Iraqi proxies of Iran as responsible for the attack on the U.S. embassy. Tehran’s leaders could have read that tweet as the threat that it was. Instead, Muhandis met Soleimani at the airport in Baghdad two days later, without fear that he was being followed by a U.S. drone that would soon turn his SUV into a smoldering wreck.
The decision to go off script and strike directly at Soleimani and Muhandis has been termed “regime disruption,” a purposeful attempt to confuse Tehran by doing something unprecedented. Iran’s initial reaction was muted despite is boasts of “hard revenge,” because it doesn’t know what to do. It wants to keep an open account with the U.S., as a threat to do more. But Tehran’s usual attempt to control the tempo of conflict in the Middle East has been blunted.
Lesson learned: Iran does best when it gets to set the narrative through its good-cop/bad-cop strategy of military bluster and political sweet talk, played by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Iran’s proxies in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. But what does Iran do when it faces complex challenges? In Syria, Israel has carried out more than 1,000 airstrikes on Iranian targets, and Iran has responded with desultory rocket fire. The attacks appear to have reached a point where Iran expects them and shrugs them off, because, as with Soleimani, it doesn’t know how to respond to Israel. It has provided Hezbollah with a massive arsenal of rockets and wants to equip them with precision guidance, but Tehran must know that you get to use this massive arsenal only once before you provoke a war with Israel. That means that Hezbollah has one shot and that Iran must preserve that threat for a rainy day.
Where Iran succeeds in its incrementalism is in the Gulf and in dealings with Europe over the Iran deal. Iran has walked away from key aspects of the deal over the past year, giving Europe 60-day warnings. Iran did the same in the Gulf, judging that Saudi Arabia would not respond to a drone and cruise-missile attack in September against its Abaiq refinery. Typically, when 25 drones and nine cruise missiles strike a massive refinery, the country would go to war in response. But Iran knows that Saudi Arabia can’t afford a real war that would destabilize the Gulf and oil exports. Riyadh and its wealthy Gulf neighbors have more to lose than Iran does in such a scenario.
Iran expects its adversaries to follow a script, and it has a ready-made tit-for-tat response. The U.S. left the Iran deal and struck Soleimani and Muhandis, surprising Tehran. Killing another IRGC commander would have diminishing returns, just as sanctions seem to no longer surprise Tehran. This is a challenge for American strategists: Devise a strategy whose core is to do the opposite of what the enemy expects. A combination of Seinfeld’s George and Sun Tzu’s Art of War. The more Iran has to focus on what the U.S. might do next, the less Iran can plan on how to attack the U.S. and its allies, including Israel.
Seth J. Frantzman
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/us-iran-tensions-confused-tehran-scrambles-to-figure-out-president-trump/
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WHAT SOLEIMANI THREAT ? (Spot the error when the only ones mourning the loss of Soleimani are the Democrat leadership and their presidential candidates ?)
“The only ones that are mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership, and our Democrat presidential candidates.”
Nikki Haley
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/01/07/nikki-haley-democrats-mourning-soleimani/2830729001/
« He was worse than Osama bin Laden. He was worse than Baghdadi. He was worse than Zarqawi. It was the best move we could have made. The chatter was they were going to do a 1979 hostage siege. They were going to take over the embassy, take all the Americans in the embassy hostage and then broker their release in exchange for sanctions relief. The chatter was they were going to put Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in as prime minister. So do a coup and then seize the embassy. They’d walked into the embassy without weapons. Trashed it. Saw how close they could get to it. Saw they could throw things over. Saw they could get as close as to almost break the windows with the US guards on the other side. The next thing they wanted to do was roll through the embassy in a protest with civilians with Iraqi flags and make it look like the protestors were taking the embassy when it was really the militias. Killing Quasem Solemani was actually a de-escalating event. It sent a message to the regime that the President was really serious about hurting Iran. It’s important to remember that intelligence doesn’t confirm an imminent attack, it only hints at one. »
Michael Pregent (Middle East intelligence expert, Hudson Institute)
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2020/february/intelligence-expert-to-news-soleimani-planning-to-take-americans-hostage-in-iraq-embassy-broker-sanctions-relief
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QUEL EFFONDREMENT ? (Alors qu’après plus de 40 ans d’oppression, le peuple iranien commence à voir le bout du tunnel, devinez qui dénonce la télévision franco-allemande ?)
Depuis 2018, Washington empêche les ventes de l’or noir iranien, qui représentent entre 70% et 80% des recettes d’exportation du pays et environ la moitié de ses ressources budgétaires mettant le marché pétrolier sous pression. Des représailles américaines à l’impact incontestable sur l’économie du pays. L’Iran fait face à une crise économique sans précédent, l’accord nucléaire a été totalement dénaturé depuis le retrait américain et la population est asphyxiée par les sanctions et une inflation supérieure à 40%. Le rial iranien, la monnaie du pays, s’est effondré. Alireza Rahimizadeh, un entrepreneur germano-iranien, spécialisé dans la vente d’engins de construction, fermera probablement son entreprise dans les prochains mois. : embargo oblige, les pièces détachées en provenance d’Allemagne ne sont plus livrées. Une de ses employées, Leila, veut émigrer en Allemagne dès que possible. Un souhait partagé par de nombreux jeunes Iraniens. Aujourd’hui, deux tiers de la population a moins de 40 ans et n’a donc pas connu la naissance du régime actuel. Ces jeunes urbains constatent que le fossé se creuse entre leur génération et celle des élites vieillissantes qui contrôlent le pays. En novembre dernier, la répression s’est abattue sur de nombreux jeunes au cours des plus grandes manifestations depuis la révolution de 1979. À moins d’un mois des élections législatives prévues en février 2020, et après la mort du général Qassem Soleimani, la population iranienne est inquiète et désillusionnée. En attendant, face à la crise économique, le chômage, le manque d’espoir en l’avenir et l’angoisse d’une possible guerre, la jeunesse iranienne rejoint les rangs de la diaspora…
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WHAT PALESTINIAN STATE ? (The root of the conflict has never been about land but about the Palestinians’ refusal to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state, and maybe this annexation of territories destined anyway to remain part of Israel in any peace deal could jolt the Palestinian leaders into recognizing that their adamant refusal to compromise is getting them nowhere)
« Annexation can be seen as a step towards ending the deadlock between the parties. »
Gregg Roman
« None of the territory currently administered by the Palestinian Authority would be annexed, nor any Palestinian population center. The purpose of annexation is to extend Israeli sovereignty to existing Jewish communities that have long been seen as destined to remain part of Israel in any peace deal. That would still leave more than two-thirds of the West Bank, plus all of Gaza, for a sovereign Palestinian state. (…) But statehood has never been the goal of the Palestinian movement. Time and again, Palestinian leaders have been offered a « two-state solution. » Time and again they have said no. In 2000, Israel was willing to recognize a sovereign Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza, plus shared control of Jerusalem, only to be spurned by Yasser Arafat. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert repeated the offer to Abbas in 2008; he too was turned down. Not even Barack Obama, the most Palestinian-friendly president ever, could elicit a « yes » from the Palestinian Authority. The root of the conflict has never been land; it has always been the refusal of Palestinians to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state. That is why the « land for peace » strategy repeatedly failed. Unlike Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, who was prepared to accept Israel’s existence in exchange for the return of the Sinai Peninsula, Palestinian leaders have steadfastly insisted that the land « from the river to the sea » must be cleansed of Jews. Israel’s comprehensive withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 — when every settlement was dismantled and the entire territory turned over to Palestinian control — led not to peace, as so many expected, but to increased violence. By contrast, the conflict tends to recede when Israel asserts its own sovereignty. There was international condemnation when Israel annexed the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but the controversy faded without more bloodshed. There was outrage when the US embassy in Israel was moved to Jerusalem two years ago, but that storm abated too. Indeed, Biden has said that if he is elected, the embassy will stay where it is. The most significant development in Israel’s relations with its neighbors in recent years has been the dramatic rise in cooperation with the Sunni Arab countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates. Those warming ties, which stem from antipathy to Iran and its menacing « Shia Crescent, » have not been derailed by Israel’s unresolved friction with the Palestinians. There is no reason to expect annexation, if it happens, to change that. Almost as if to underscore the point, Etihad Airways on Tuesday flew its first direct commercial flight from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv. There may be pro forma rebukes from the Arab League. But Israel’s Arab friends won’t go to the mat to support Palestinian intransigence. Extending Israeli sovereignty to a small part of the West Bank not inhabited by Palestinians won’t change anything on the ground. But maybe, just maybe, it can jolt Abbas and the Palestinian Authority into recognizing that their adamant refusal to compromise is getting them nowhere. (…) By demonstrating in concrete terms that rejectionism has consequences, annexation might persuade Palestinian leaders that time is not on their side. Granted, it’s a long shot. But Israel has little to lose by taking it. There will be a hullabaloo, but it will pass. »
Jeff Jacoby
SOMETIME THIS SUMMER, Israel’s new government — a broad left-right unity coalition— may move ahead with plans to formally annex about 30 percent of the West Bank, applying Israeli civilian law to the Jordan Valley and to Jewish settlements established after 1967, when Israel seized the territory in the Six-Day War. It has formally been under military occupation ever since, while its permanent status has been up for negotiation.
While Israel will act only if it gets a green light from the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has signaled that the Trump administration will not object. « That’s an Israeli decision, » Pompeo said last month. « And we will work closely with them to share with them our views of this in [a] private setting. »
Within Israel’s government, there is a solid consensus in favor of annexation. But much of the world has reacted to the prospect with condemnation.
On Tuesday, the French government warned Israel that any move to extend its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank would damage relations with the European Union. The German government and the Palestinian Authority issued a joint statement calling annexation a « clear violation of international law » that would « seriously undermine » the likelihood of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, angrily declared (not for the first time) that he would abrogate all agreements made with Israel and the United States. There were denunciations from Russian and Vatican diplomats. Jordan’s King Abdullah II predicted a « massive conflict » if Israel goes ahead with annexation.
In the United States, Democratic voices joined the chorus of opposition. « I do not support annexation, » former Vice President Joe Biden told participants in an online fundraiser. Three Democratic senators circulated a letter avowing that annexation « would fray our unique bonds, imperil Israel’s future, and place out of reach the prospect of a lasting peace. » More than 30 former Democratic foreign policy officials called for adding language criticizing Israel and supporting Palestinian rights in the 2020 Democratic Party platform.
Faced with such antagonism, wouldn’t Israel be better off shelving the whole annexation idea?
No.
For all the fulminating about the threat annexation poses to a « two-state solution, » the scenario being contemplated by Israel would not prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. None of the territory currently administered by the Palestinian Authority would be annexed, nor any Palestinian population center. The purpose of annexation is to extend Israeli sovereignty to existing Jewish communities that have long been seen as destined to remain part of Israel in any peace deal. That would still leave more than two-thirds of the West Bank, plus all of Gaza, for a sovereign Palestinian state.
But statehood has never been the goal of the Palestinian movement. Time and again, Palestinian leaders have been offered a « two-state solution. » Time and again they have said no. In 2000, Israel was willing to recognize a sovereign Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza, plus shared control of Jerusalem, only to be spurned by Yasser Arafat. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert repeated the offer to Abbas in 2008; he too was turned down. Not even Barack Obama, the most Palestinian-friendly president ever, could elicit a « yes » from the Palestinian Authority.
The root of the conflict has never been land; it has always been the refusal of Palestinians to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state. That is why the « land for peace » strategy repeatedly failed. Unlike Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, who was prepared to accept Israel’s existence in exchange for the return of the Sinai Peninsula, Palestinian leaders have steadfastly insisted that the land « from the river to the sea » must be cleansed of Jews. Israel’s comprehensive withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 — when every settlement was dismantled and the entire territory turned over to Palestinian control — led not to peace, as so many expected, but to increased violence.
By contrast, the conflict tends to recede when Israel asserts its own sovereignty. There was international condemnation when Israel annexed the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but the controversy faded without more bloodshed. There was outrage when the US embassy in Israel was moved to Jerusalem two years ago, but that storm abated too. Indeed, Biden has said that if he is elected, the embassy will stay where it is.
The root of the conflict has never been land; it is the refusal of Palestinians to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state. Palestinian leaders insist the land « from the river to the sea » must be cleansed of Jews. There is a reason why the logos of Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian factions, depict crossed weapons imposed against the map of Israel.
The most significant development in Israel’s relations with its neighbors in recent years has been the dramatic rise in cooperation with the Sunni Arab countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates. Those warming ties, which stem from antipathy to Iran and its menacing « Shia Crescent, » have not been derailed by Israel’s unresolved friction with the Palestinians. There is no reason to expect annexation, if it happens, to change that. Almost as if to underscore the point, Etihad Airways on Tuesday flew its first direct commercial flight from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv. There may be pro forma rebukes from the Arab League. But Israel’s Arab friends won’t go to the mat to support Palestinian intransigence.
Extending Israeli sovereignty to a small part of the West Bank not inhabited by Palestinians won’t change anything on the ground. But maybe, just maybe, it can jolt Abbas and the Palestinian Authority into recognizing that their adamant refusal to compromise is getting them nowhere.
« Annexation can be seen as a step towards ending the deadlock between the parties, » arguesGregg Roman, director of the Middle East Forum, in The Hill. By demonstrating in concrete terms that rejectionism has consequences, annexation might persuade Palestinian leaders that time is not on their side. Granted, it’s a long shot. But Israel has little to lose by taking it. There will be a hullabaloo, but it will pass.
Jeff Jacoby (The Boston Globe)
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/24193/israeli-annexation-may-give-palestinians-the-push
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IT NEVER WAS ABOUT TERRITORY, STUPID ! (Annexation could be a step towards ending the deadlock by showing the Palestinian leaders that rejectionism has consequences and forcing them to give up their longstanding violent aims)
« Israelis of all backgrounds and ideologies long have believed this conflict never was about territory. Ever since it began, more than 100 years ago, the question that motivated Palestinian rejectionism was always about Jewish sovereignty per se, and not about where and how much. This is what motivated massacres of Jews in the Land of Israel in the 1920s and 1930s, among others.
This is what motivated the Arab leaders of Mandatory Palestine to reject the Peel Plan of 1937, which would have given them around three-quarters of the whole territory for statehood, and the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, which would have provided for a state on 55 percent of the territory.
Palestinian Authority leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas continued this rejectionist stance in 2001 and 2008, even though Israeli prime ministers offered terms that included an almost full withdrawal from the territory east of the Green Line.
The sticking point always has been the issue of sovereignty of the Jewish People over any territory in their indigenous and ancestral homeland. This is why Abbas could walk away from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s maximalist offer at Annapolis in 2008 because the agreement would include articles about ending the conflict and all claims to the territories offered.
Since then, Abbas has barely allowed himself to enter into a room with an Israeli prime minister, even after Netanyahu placed a full construction freeze on settlements in 2009, demonstrating again that the issue of settlements and territory is merely a “red herring” issue.
Thus, no Israeli has seen an Israeli and Palestinian leader shake hands for over 12 years. On the contrary, many Israelis have felt the continuance of Palestinian rejectionism, in the form of suicide attacks, deadly rockets and attempts to charge the borders, especially emanating from territories that Israel relinquished in the now-dashed hopes for peace and reconciliation.
Israelis are tired of waiting for a Palestinian leader, so they want to force the issue by taking the legal step of placing sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria, which are vital from a security, national and historic vantage point.
None of these steps precludes making a deal in the future if a Palestinian leader decides to free his people from rejectionism and instead wants to use its resources to build up a Palestinian polity and society. Until such time, Israel must take steps that it sees as being in its best interests, with the broad support of multiple parties from the right to the left, government and opposition.
Of course, it should be done sensibly, and not increase the numbers of Arab citizens of Israel and disrupt the delicate demographic balance in Israel. This also could be offset by offering the heavily Arab-populated Triangle area in northern Israel to the Palestinians.
Annexation can be seen as a step towards ending the deadlock between the parties. It should be the pressure to place on Palestinian leaders to acknowledge that they will not defeat Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish People. It will show the Palestinians that rejectionism has consequences and force them to give up longstanding violent aims.
Most of all, it will fulfill the vision of Israeli leaders — from the left, right, and center, such as Rabin, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon — who understood implicitly that Israel will always retain the settlements and the Jordan Valley. It is time to take them off the table. »
Gregg Roman
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/496784-the-israeli-consensus-of-annexation-can-break-the-peace-deadlock
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HOW TRUMP SAVED US FROM BOLTON (Talk about a backhanded way to help Trump’s reelection when his adviser-turned-archenemy comes up with a book that actually showcases not only Trump’s brilliance but… his extreme moderation in foreign policy !)
“It’s not clear to me that something equivalent to two more Iraq Wars would be better for the country. Here’s a man that makes Trump’s bellicose foreign policy look good. You don’t have to say Trump has done well to say America would be in a worse place if he listened to Bolton. »
Joshua Shifrinson (Boston University)
“In the places where those two men parted, it seems clear to me that Trump got it right. A lot of the ideas that [Bolton] holds have more currency in Washington than you would hope. Are the random [?] outbursts of an ill-informed, rich 70-plus-year-old white guy better than the views of the Republican establishment to which Bolton belongs? The answer is yes.”
Justin Logan (Catholic University)
“If that Iran attack had gone ahead, Trump would deservedly have shouldered the blame. But Trump deserves very little credit for pulling back after having dismantled so many off-ramps and gotten himself to the brink in the first place. Bolton’s approach to the world is a pure distillation of many of the worst impulses of the US foreign policy tradition: belligerence, overconfidence, greed, prejudice masquerading as sophistication. »
Heather Hurlburt (New America)
« On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space. (…) This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility. »
Barack Obama (March 2012)
« I explained why and how a preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs would work; how we could use massive conventional bombs against Pyongyang’s artillery north of the [Demilitarized Zone], which threatened Seoul, thereby reducing casualties dramatically; and why the United States was rapidly approaching a binary choice, assuming China didn’t act dramatically, of either leaving the North with nuclear weapons or using military force. The only other alternatives were seeking reunification of the Peninsula under South Korea or regime change in the North. »
John Bolton
“‘Too many body bags,’ said Trump, which he was not willing to risk for an unmanned drone — ‘Not proportionate,’ he said again. In my government experience, this was the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do. Trump had behaved bizarrely.”
John Bolton
« Do you want to do something historic? … We’re out. We’re not going to fight someone they’re paying. »
President Trump
“I’m the one that tempers him. That’s okay. I have different sides. I have John Bolton and other people that are a little more dovish than him.”
President Trump
After reading former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s tell-all book, it becomes exceedingly clear that President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is terrible — but Bolton’s is much, much worse.
Anyone who reads the 500-plus-page book will find their suspicions were correct: Trump’s approach to the world truly is that shambolic and dangerous. But there’s a twist: The author inadvertently offers readers hope that there’s been a major improvement — because the author himself is no longer in the White House.
By his own recounting, Bolton urged Trump to shy away from diplomacy and seek hardline positions against adversarial countries, namely in North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. In one particularly disturbing passage, Bolton says it was “irrational” for Trump not to conduct an attack on Iran that could have led to tens to hundreds of civilian casualties, after it downed an unmanned American surveillance drone.
Had Trump taken Bolton’s advice more often, then, the US would be engaged in multiple conflicts across the globe. “It’s not clear to me that something equivalent to two more Iraq Wars would be better for the country,” Joshua Shifrinson, a US foreign policy expert at Boston University, said.
“Here’s a man that makes Trump’s bellicose foreign policy look good,” he added of Bolton.
Trump, the book makes clear, was the reason Bolton’s most aggressive plans were foiled. As scenes inside the West Wing show, it was because Trump had created a chaotic national security process in which little to nothing could get done. “What happened on one day on a particular issue often had little resemblance to what happened the next day, or the day after,” Bolton wrote. “Few seemed to realize it, care about it, or have any interest in fixing it.”
Trump appointed Bolton in April 2018 after watching his Fox News appearances. An infamous archnationalist hawk, Bolton believes firmly in exercising unilateral American power around the world and cutting ties to international institutions. Trump, Bolton alleges, used American power less in any ideological sense and more to boost his reelection prospects, even if that came at the expense of defending human rights abroad.
Still, Bolton did leave a mark. During his 17-month tenure, Bolton offered Trump advice to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal “as long as Iran’s current regime remained” and seek regime change in Venezuela — two policies that received condemnation across the ideological spectrum [?].
In many instances, Bolton and Trump did have the same views. They both called for increased defense spending at the expense of bolstering diplomatic power; maximized sanctions to bend adversaries to America’s will, a play that has yet to work everywhere they tried it; and curbed the influence of international institutions, harming America’s global reputation the process.
But the book’s true virtue is its surprising, unmistakable conclusion: Given the choice between having Trump or Bolton leading US foreign policy, Trump is clearly the better option.
Bolton tells us Trump is a bad foreign policy president
Before understanding just how bad Bolton’s foreign policy is, it’s worth taking a moment to see Trump’s worldview through the aide’s eyes.
On the whole, the critiques of Trump aren’t new, but they now carry more weight because Bolton — a top person by Trump’s side during high-level foreign policy discussions and summits — made them. It’s no surprise the White House now claims Bolton wasn’t “in the room” as often he says. But such a defense rings hollow, because as national security adviser he had his hands on the levers of power like few other officials in the administration.
Which is why it’s worth taking Bolton’s three main Trump critiques seriously.
First, that Trump has no real intellectual or ideological heft to his foreign policy. “His thinking was like an archipelago of dots,” Bolton wrote, “leaving the rest of us to discern — or create — policy.” He mostly liked that, though, because it gave him more room to maneuver within the administration. But he also found it frustrating, claiming the most important rift in US foreign policy is “the split between Trump and Trump.”
Second, that Trump is historically unfit and unprepared to lead America in the world. Trump often went into tough negotiations with foreign leaders with minimal understanding of the stakes, making his top aides fearful of what he would do, say, or concede. Such concerns were justified, especially when Trump signed a toothless, vague agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore or sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the US intelligence community on election interference.
In the North Korean case, per Bolton, Trump mainly wanted a grand spectacle of the first-ever meeting between the sitting leaders of Washington and Pyongyang. “He was prepared to sign a substance-free communiqué, have his press conference to declare victory, and then get out of town,” Bolton said the president told him.
Add to that Trump’s impulsiveness. One of the most shocking scenes in the book involves the president casually advocating for withdrawing the US from NATO solely to make a splash. Before the alliance’s 2018 summit, Trump rallied his aides: “‘Do you want to do something historic? … We’re out. We’re not going to fight someone they’re paying,’” referencing how Europeans trade and do business with neighboring Russia.
When Trump was actually in the meeting shortly afterward, he turned to Bolton and asked, “Are we going to do it?” Bolton talked him down from doing so, saying, “Go up to the line, but don’t cross it.” Trump ultimately obliged, but it goes to show just how close the US really came to leaving the political-military alliance America has benefited from for decades.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, Trump used his position atop the American government solely for his own purposes. One of the newsiest items in the book details how Trump turned a trade negotiation with Chinese President Xi Jinping into a discussion about the 2020 election:
He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.
Importantly, Trump and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who was in the room, deny that this happened. But it’s worth noting Trump already openly asked China for reelection support when he encouraged Beijing to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
These are damning accounts, and should provide even more pause about the state of American foreign policy. In a Sunday interview with ABC News, Bolton added there should also be doubt about the state of Trump’s presidency. “I don’t think he’s fit for office,” he told Martha Raddatz. “I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job.”
Bolton, in other words, wants to leave readers with the sense Trump is a very bad president with very bad habits and very bad ideas. He succeeds in doing that, but Bolton also succeeds in showing he has some very bad ideas of his own.
Trump is right: American foreign policy would be worse if Bolton had his way
Trump is prone to exaggeration and lying, which is why it’s easy to dismiss his counterpunches that Bolton, left to his own devices, would have pushed the US into new wars.
Ironically, the person who makes the best case for Trump’s argument against John Bolton is John Bolton himself. The most surprising thing about Bolton’s book is how nonchalant he is about advocating war and denigrating diplomacy — and how he tried to impose that mindset on the president.
Even before Bolton became national security adviser, Trump sought his counsel on stemming North Korea’s nuclear program. Bolton describes how he detailed his view that a military attack would be the best course of action:
I explained why and how a preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs would work; how we could use massive conventional bombs against Pyongyang’s artillery north of the [Demilitarized Zone], which threatened Seoul, thereby reducing casualties dramatically; and why the United States was rapidly approaching a binary choice, assuming China didn’t act dramatically, of either leaving the North with nuclear weapons or using military force. The only other alternatives were seeking reunification of the Peninsula under South Korea or regime change in the North.
As national security adviser, Bolton worked fiercely inside the bureaucracy to stop Trump’s diplomatic effort with North Korea’s Kim. Not because of its (many) flaws, but because he inherently didn’t believe in diplomacy and would have preferred to launch a preventive attack that some regional experts say would have led to all-out war.
Trump also showed an inclination to open diplomatic channels with Iran, according to Bolton. “Trump mused that at some point he should meet with Iranian President [Hassan] Rouhani,” the former adviser wrote about what the president said during a meeting with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. This was a bridge too far for Bolton, who later typed up a two-sentence resignation letter if Trump ever met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Trump considered holding a meeting not only because he thought he could lower tensions, but also because he wanted a new, better Iran nuclear deal. Unsurprisingly, Bolton lobbied against such a policy in a Pentagon meeting:
I argued again that … there would be no “new” Iran deal and no “deterrence” established as long as Iran’s current regime remained. You could like it or not, but basing a policy on some other reality would not get us to any “end state” we sought.
Key in that passage is “as long as the current regime remained.” Before reentering government, Bolton consistently said he wanted regime change in Iran, and it appeared he held on to that belief as national security adviser. If Trump didn’t have some innate inclination to sign a new accord with Tehran, Bolton’s sentiments may have carried more weight.
Which may help explain why he was so angry Trump didn’t attack Iran last summer after the regime shot down a US surveillance drone. Trump at the last minute called off planned strikes on Iranian sites because he felt it wasn’t “proportionate.”
“‘Too many body bags,’ said Trump,” according to Bolton, “which he was not willing to risk for an unmanned drone — ‘Not proportionate,’ he said again.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Bolton tried to change Trump’s mind to no avail.
Bolton clearly is still furious. “In my government experience, this was the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do,” he wrote. “Trump had behaved bizarrely.”
Let that sink in for a moment. The most irrational thing Bolton says he ever saw a president do wasn’t, for example, invade Iraq over weapons of mass destruction it didn’t have (Bolton was in the State Department at the time as the undersecretary of arms control and international security). No, he saves that designation for Trump’s decision not to put Iranian lives in danger over a downed pilotless aircraft.
Granted, striking Iranian military sites may not have directly led to an all-out fight, but it certainly would’ve made one more likely. Trump clearly saw that danger; Bolton didn’t. “In the places where those two men parted, it seems clear to me that Trump got it right,” said Justin Logan, a US foreign policy expert at Catholic University.
Of course, Bolton does have a bit more leeway to advocate for conflict. At the end of the day, Trump’s name would be the one tethered throughout history to a war — not Bolton’s.
“If that Iran attack had gone ahead, Trump would deservedly have shouldered the blame,” Heather Hurlburt, a US foreign policy expert at the New America think tank, told me. But, she noted, “Trump deserves very little credit for pulling back after having dismantled so many off-ramps and gotten himself to the brink in the first place.”
Still, what these episodes — and Bolton’s book writ large — make clear is that despite his predilection for very publicly ramping up tensions with other countries, Trump isn’t the one most hungry for armed conflict in his White House. Veterans of Washington’s foreign policy world are.
That’s a troubling insight.
Bolton’s book highlights the one big upside of Trump’s foreign policy
Trump is a national security hawk. He has increased US bombing rates around the world and killed top American adversaries, most famously Iran’s Qassem Soleimani in January. [?] But his greatest virtue as a foreign policy leader is his reticence to actually start a new war, his many threatening boasts notwithstanding.
“I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration,” Trump tweeted last September when announcing Bolton’s ouster. That echoed comments he’d said in May 2019 when he told reporters, “I’m the one that tempers him. That’s okay. I have different sides. I have John Bolton and other people that are a little more dovish than him.”
Bolton, like other traditional foreign policy thinkers, has relied far too often on American military might, an argument that even former secretaries of defense now make. “Bolton’s approach to the world is a pure distillation of many of the worst impulses of the US foreign policy tradition: belligerence, overconfidence, greed, prejudice masquerading as sophistication,” Hurlburt said.
In the past, presidents initially devoid of hawkish instincts — like George W. Bush — got convinced to launch invasions because of the hawkish advisers around them. Trump similarly surrounded himself with Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but he has time after time stopped short of starting wars they wanted to wage.
And there will be future presidents who follow those impulses, with or without Bolton in the White House. Think, for instance, of a President Tom Cotton. If he were in charge now, his policies toward North Korea and Iran, among others, may have followed the Bolton playbook. “A lot of the ideas that [Bolton] holds have more currency in Washington than you would hope,” said Logan.
Make no mistake: War has a place in US foreign policy, and for good reason. It’s an essential element of statecraft, and a leader shouldn’t shy away from it when — and only when — absolutely necessary. But going to war for foolish reasons is the cardinal sin of foreign policy, and Bolton wanted to commit it all the time.
That Trump patently refused to consider all-out war a viable option when war wasn’t necessary, whereas Bolton clearly did, is an indictment of the foreign policy tradition the former national security adviser embodies. “Are the random outbursts of an ill-informed, rich 70-plus-year-old white guy better than the views of the Republican establishment to which Bolton belongs?” asks Logan. “The answer is yes.”
Again, it’s not to say Trump is a good foreign policy president — he’s far from that. But the book shows there are worse options out there. “You don’t have to say Trump has done well to say America would be in a worse place if he listened to Bolton,” Boston University’s Shifrinson said.
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/24/21300291/john-bolton-book-trump-review-room-foreign-policy
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LEBANON TODAY HAS A NUCLEAR BOMB
“Israel’s psychological warfare is of no use against us.(…) This would be exactly as a nuclear bomb, and we can say that Lebanon today has a nuclear bomb, seeing as any rocket that might hit these (Haifa ammonia) tanks is capable of creating a nuclear bomb effect. »
Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah, 2016)
Hours after Nasrallah issued the explicit threat to strike Haifa, Environmental Protection Minister Avi Gabbai said he had ordered that the ammonia storage facility be moved to the Negev desert…
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nasrallah-threatens-to-bomb-chemical-plants-kill-thousands-of-israelis
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LIKE FIVE NUCLEAR BOMBS (Hezbollah allegedly sought to acquire ammonium nitrate via Syria since 2009 and tried to infiltrate the agriculture ministry in Lebanon to do so while studying the use of ammonia as an accelerant that would multiply exponentially the power of its missiles, according to leaked diplomatic cables)
“Moreover there is a ship that brings the ammonia, and distributed it to the Haifa facility and I said that the Haifa facility is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb, but the ship that carries ammonia to occupied Palestine is like five nuclear bombs. »
Nasrallah (2017)
Hezbollah allegedly sought to acquire ammonium nitrate via Syria since 2009 and tried to infiltrate the agriculture ministry in Lebanon to do so, according to leaked diplomatic cables.
The archival footage has been circulating in the wake of the massive explosion in Lebanon that killed more than 100 and injured 4,000 and has left hundreds missing. It illustrates Hezbollah’s terrorist strategy of targeting civilians for mass murder, despite the organization’s claim that it is “resisting” Israel by defending Lebanon.
A source quoted in a cache of leaked diplomatic cables and other reports noted that Hezbollah’s supply of some explosive material had been cut off over the last decade. Hezbollah also allegedly sought to get the ammonium nitrate via Syria, bringing in thousands of tons of it from Homs. Hezbollah sought to dominate the agriculture ministry in Lebanon since 2009 to get a hold of the material.
In February 16, 2016 Nasrallah also said that ammonia is stored in Haifa and that there are 15,000 tonnes of gas Haifa and that explosions there might cause the deaths of tens of thousands of people. “the expert added that this is exactly like a nuclear bomb. In other words Lebanon has a nuclear bomb. This is not an exaggeration.” Nasrallah laughs as he says this in the video, noting that Hezbollah refrained from striking the ammonia in the 2006 war.
Nasrallah told his audience that with several missiles his terror group could set off the ammonia with the same impact of a nuclear weapon. He said he had consulted experts and that 800,000 people would be affects and tens of thousands killed. In February 2017 he made another speech mentioning ammonia stored in Haifa. On Al-Mayadeen TV he said that a decision was made ‘several days ago that the ammonia storage tanks must be emptied.” He claimed it was because the “resistance” had talked about the storage tanks.
“Moreover there is a ship that brings the ammonia, and distributed it to the Haifa facility and I said that the Haifa facility is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb, but the ship that carries ammonia to occupied Palestine is like five nuclear bombs,” Nasrallah said in 2017.
The footage of the speeches which has come to light after the explosion of ammonium nitrate that was stored improperly for years in the port of Beirut suggests that Hezbollah studied the use of ammonia as an accelerant that would multiply exponentially the power of its missiles. It may be that Hezbollah studied the warehouse in Beirut and the ships that deliver this chemical. Ammonium nitrate is commonly used in fertilizer but can be used in explosives as well.
Hezbollah’s comments in 2016 and 2017 suggest it consulted experts about how to cause mass death using other means than just missiles and how to strike at strategic or other infrastructure. That it considered using missiles to target a boat or destroying a ship by other mean suggests the level of terror threats that it has come to. 2016 was the height of the Iran deal era and it also illustrates that despite the US seeking to work with Iran and cases against Hezbollah’s drug trafficking even being slowed down in the US, the organization did not moderate but was actively thinking of ways to kill tens of thousands of people.
US officials in 2008 also tracked a shipment of 400 metric tons of ammonium nitrate from an Iranian firm called SAD Import and Export, which the US said was a “cover name used by Iran’s Defense Industries Organization. Iran’s Bank Saderat facilitated the transaction.” According to the report the nitrate went to Oman in October 2008.
The reports show that Hezbollah was well aware of ammonium nitrate as an explosive and that it sought to import it and also to potentially use it as a terrorist weapon.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/nasrallah-threatened-to-blow-up-israel-with-same-chemicals-as-beirut-blast-637582
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LIBAN: QUEL SECRET DE POLICHINELLE ? (Cherchez l’erreur quand le gouvernement et les médias français reprennent les fables officielles du gouvernement libanais, alors que dès le début des médias arabes pointaient du doigt la responsabilité du groupe terroriste chiite Hezbollah qui pourrait avoir caché, dans les sous-sols de la capitale libanaise, jusqu’à trois fois la puissance explosive qui a sauté mardi ?)
Dans le port de Beyrouth, le patron était connu de tous, c’était le Hezbollah. Les bâtiments qui ont explosé accueillaient et servaient à stocker les armes et les munitions, principalement en provenance d’Iran. Avant même qu’une enquête officielle ne commence, l’on connaît déjà les responsables de la catastrophe : c’est le Hezbollah qui a stocké 2 750 tonnes de nitrate d’ammonium à des fins militaires en plein cœur d’une métropole de deux millions d’habitants, et un gouvernement asservi et corrompu qui l’a laissé faire. A titre de comparaison, le 21 septembre 2 001, à l’usine AZF de Toulouse, l’explosion de 350 tonnes de cette substance avait creusé un cratère de forme ovale de 70 m de long, 40 m de largeur, et 5 à 6 m de profondeur. La détonation a été entendue à plus de 80 km de Toulouse. Elle avait tué 31 personnes et en avait blessé 2 500 autres. Cette mise en parallèle aide à saisir la violence du choc qui vient de dévaster Beyrouth et ses conséquences humaines et matérielles. Hier, la détonation a été clairement perçue à Chypre, à 250km de là, et des dégâts conséquents ont endommagé des infrastructures à l’aéroport international, à 10km du port. Toute la ville a souffert du souffle gigantesque de l’explosion, équivalent à un tremblement de Terre de niveau 5.4 sur l’échelle de Richter.
Le gouvernement libanais multiplie ses tentatives pour berner la population qui s’en rend très bien compte. Alors que la chaîne d’information saoudienne al Arabiya et d’autres media arabes expliquaient très vite que l’organisation terroriste chiite utilisait cette zone d’entreposage qui accueillait les hangars 9 et 12 qui ont sauté pour y déposer des munitions, les autorités avancent que le nitrate d’ammonium avait été confisqué au Hezbollah par l’Etat lors de sa livraison en 2013 par un navire marchand alors qu’il voyageait sous l’appellation d’engrais agricole. [Nous allons faire la preuve par la suite que cette allégation est mensongère].
Or tout le monde à Beyrouth sait pertinemment que, malheureusement, les Forces Armées Libanaises se trouvent dans l’incapacité militaire absolue de confisquer quoi que ce soit au Hezbollah sans provoquer une guerre civile, et qu’elles n’ont d’ailleurs jamais essayé de le faire.
Et quand bien même cela aurait été le cas, ce serait ainsi l’Etat libanais qui serait responsable d’avoir déposé sans précautions particulières des explosifs représentant la puissance d’une mini-bombe atomique en plein centre de sa capitale, sans surveillance et durant 7 ans..
Cette alternative, on le voit, ne vaut guère mieux que la vérité. Il faut souligner qu’à partir du début des explosions, le gouvernement n’a eu de cesse de diffuser des informations aussi puériles que changeantes quant aux marchandises qui les avaient causées. On a eu droit à des allumettes, des feux d’artifice, du pétrole !, des pétards, etc.
Un jeune adolescent blessé, croisé par Michaël Béhé dans la rue en train d’écouter ces annonces à la radio, a soulevé la tête en disant : « Si cela ne suffisait pas, ils nous prennent vraiment pour des imbéciles ! ».
Il ne serait pas venu à l’idée des « stratèges » du Hezbollah de stocker cette quantité astronomique d’explosifs dans l’une de ses bases à découvert, car elle aurait fait une cible facile pour le Khe’l Avir, l’Aviation israélienne.
Suivant cette considération, il était préférable pour ces esprits criminels de les disposer au nord-ouest de Beyrouth, à proximité des quartiers chrétiens et sunnites, en comptant sur le fait que Jérusalem ne prendrait pas le risque d’un massacre de ces populations absolument innocentes, déjà sous l’emprise de leur organisation terroriste.
D’ailleurs, si un doute subsiste, je rappelle que le Hezbollah a disposé 28 batteries de missiles dans son propre secteur, au sud de Beyrouth, entre les immeubles d’habitation de sa propre communauté, toujours persuadé que nous ne mettrons pas en péril la vie de civils, fussent-ils chiites.
Mais l’organisation supplétive de la théocratie iranienne a également installé des usines de modification de roquettes en missiles sous les rues d’autres quartiers de Beyrouth, notamment à proximité de l’hôpital Saint George et de l’ambassade d’Espagne. Nous CONNAISSONS à la Ména l’emplacement précis de ces fabriques souterraines.
Lors, dans ce calcul macabre, dans la transformation de la population en boucliers humains, le Hezb a partiellement raison : à moins d’y être obligés et contraints, nous n’attaquerons pas ces emplacements… si nous pouvons faire autrement. Car le raisonnement d’Hassan Nasrallah et de ses complices se termine là. En cas d’agression militaire de la part du Hezbollah, aussitôt la première salve tirée à partir de ces batteries enchâssées parmi les civils, Tsahal n’aurait d’autre choix que d’anéantir ces plateformes de tir ainsi que les fabriques et entrepôts de missiles.
A en croire Jean Tsadik, le sous-sol de la capitale libanaise recèle environ trois fois la puissance explosive qui a sauté hier. Et c’est encore sans comptabiliser les autres positions de la milice chiite à Beyrouth et ailleurs au pays des cèdres.
C’est là que le bât blesse et que la réflexion morbide des « experts » du Hezbollah devient absolument erronée : nous ne sommes pas humains au point de nous laisser massacrer pour sauver la population d’un autre pays. Même si nous prendrions le plus grand soin à limiter les pertes collatérales au maximum, même si nous interviendrions avec regrets et tristesse. La milice de Nasrallah établit de la sorte des positions de guerre qui ne serviraient pas longtemps lors d’une guerre, et qui causeraient des milliers de morts sans changer en aucune façon le cours du conflit.
Lorsque les généraux israéliens mettent en demeure Michel Aoun, le président du Liban, d’empêcher les Fous d’Allah de lui dicter sa politique étrangère et de supplanter l’Armée libanaise, lorsqu’ils l’avertissent que s’il les laisse agresser Israël à partir de son territoire, Tsahal ramènerait le Liban au temps de la pierre taillée, c’est au chaos dont les Libanais ont goûté hier qu’ils font allusion. A la puissance dix.
Or lorsque l’on constate qu’avec cent décès et une grosse explosion, les hôpitaux et tous les services publics sont hors d’usage, sachant la capacité destructrice de l’Armée israélienne, nous crions qu’il est nécessaire d’arrêter les agissements de ces détraqués et d’empêcher ce carnage par tous les moyens possibles. Ce qui est arrivé aux Libanais hier n’est que l’appartement témoin de ce qui leur tomberait sur la tête si le Hezb nous attaquait depuis leur pays.
C’est l’endroit de notre analyse pour y intégrer un autre paramètre également dérangeant que tous les autres media n’ont pas remarqué : l’explosion d’hier dans le port de Beyrouth nous était destinée. Le nitrate d’ammonium avait été amené et stocké dans l’entrepôt numéro 12 uniquement pour être militarisé et pour ravager Haïfa ou Tel Aviv. Où, toujours selon Jean Tsadik, il aurait provoqué la mort d’entre 5 et 10 000 Israéliens.
Ce qui fait clairement qu’il appartient à la même équation que les batteries enchâssées dans les cours d’immeubles et les dépôts de bombes souterrains. Si Israël avait causé l’explosion d’hier, cela aurait été strictement de la légitime défense, sous forme de prévention.
Cela nous amène naturellement à nous pencher sur les causes de la tragédie d’hier. Pour commencer par dire ce qu’elles ne sont pas. Ce n’est pas le résultat d’un raid du Khe’l Avir. Cela se serait su immédiatement, les nombreux radars présents dans la région, notamment russes et américains, ne pouvaient pas ne pas détecter des tirs de missiles à partir d’avions ou de drones israéliens, cette hypothèse est donc à exclure.
Est-ce pour autant que la piste d’un sabotage soit à écarter ? Non. Avant de se moquer de la remarque de Donald Trump lorsqu’il a réagi à la nouvelle du désastre, encore fallait-il écouter attentivement ce qu’il a déclaré : « Les explosions meurtrières à Beyrouth ressemblaient à un terrible attentat. J’ai rencontré nos généraux et il semble que ce n’était pas un accident industriel. Il semble, selon eux, que c’était un attentat, c’était une bombe », a-t-il commenté à la presse lors de sa conférence de presse quotidienne sur le Coronavirus.
Ce n’est donc pas sa perception que le président américain a évoquée, mais celle de l’Establishment U.S. de la défense. Une communauté qui base rarement ses évaluations sur la rumeur et les théories du complot. De plus, j’ai le regret d’informer les anti-Trump que nous partageons cet avis. Que nous pensons qu’il existe davantage de possibilités pour que la déflagration ait été causée par une intervention humaine qu’accidentellement. Cette évaluation n’est certes pas une preuve et nous n’en sommes pas certains, mais un large faisceau d’indicateurs plaide en faveur de cette hypothèse.
Elle se base sur le sens commun et la logique. Nous sommes parvenus à cette constatation après avoir maintes fois visionné les nombreuses vidéos figurant l’explosion et particulièrement celle-là, au ralenti : https://youtu.be/PxGiFIzenrs . Il n’était dès lors pas très compliqué (bien moins que lors de nos investigations habituelles) de retrouver la source de l’explosion, le fameux hangar 12 [en jaune sur la carte suivante, alors que le bâtiment des silos en béton – toujours partiellement debout – apparaît en orange].
Nous avons ensuite retrouvé sur le Net des images montrant des ouvriers au service du Hezb manipulant du nitrate d’ammonium d’une marque brésilienne appelée Nitro Prill Bombeamento de Explosivos. Comme le nom de cette entreprise l’indique ainsi que son site Internet [https://web.archive.org/web/20191223144408/http://www.nitroprill.com.br/home/produtos], le conditionnement du nitrate d’ammonium contenu dans ces sacs n’a jamais été prévu pour servir d’engrais à l’agriculture. Ce chargement est arrivé à Beyrouth et a été stocké dans le hangar 12 du Hezbollah comme un explosif industriel. Qu’il était très aisé dès lors de transformer en explosif à usage militaire.
Nitro Prill Bombeamento de Explosivos est la seule entreprise trouvée sur le Net à épeler Nitroprill avec un double L (comme sur la photo qui suit).
Avec deux L
Sur la photo suivante prise hier du hangar 12 déjà en proie à la première explosion/incendie, on s’aperçoit que la porte en fer présente les mêmes marques que sur la précédente, et que les hautes fenêtres sont strictement identiques. L’entrepôt qui mesure 130 mètres de long sur 40 de large est bien celui qui contenait les explosifs d’origine brésilienne. Cela ne fait pas l’ombre d’un doute sensé.
Le hangar qui brûle est bien celui qui contenait les sacs d’explosif industriel brésilien
Une fois cette démonstration faite, et les sacs d’explosifs rendus à leur propriétaire, le Hezbollah – qui d’autre importerait 2 750 tonnes d’explosifs au Liban ? -, on se dit qu’un lot d’explosifs à très haute capacité destructive appartenant à une organisation terroriste qui en a déjà fait un usage intensif, entreposé à dessein au cœur de Beyrouth, à l’instar d’autres quantités importantes d’explosifs, de roquettes et de missiles, lorsqu’il saute, c’est rarement la conséquence d’un accident.
La question suivante qui s’impose dans cette hypothèse est qui a fait le coup ? Nous ne possédons pas la réponse à cette interrogation. Probablement des Libanais au service d’ennemis du Hezbollah (ils sont légions), ou d’eux-mêmes, s’ils appartenaient aux communautés chrétiennes, sunnite ou druze, constamment maltraitées par les miliciens au service de l’Iran et de sa politique belliciste. Largement responsables de la crise que traverse le Liban.
Mais quel que soit celui qui a allumé la mèche, les coupables de ce désastre et de ceux qui peuvent s’ensuivre, ce sont le Hezbollah et le gouvernement libanais qui le couvre et lui obéit. Celui qui dissimule 2 750 tonnes de nitrate d’ammonium militaire qu’il destine à ses ennemis au centre d’une cité est condamnable dans tous les cas de figures, y compris, naturellement, si ses ennemis les neutralisent.
Ce qui est advenu hier est une calamité pour les Beyrouthins mais aussi un coup très dur pour le Hezbollah. Une multitude de voix convaincues se sont fait entendre aujourd’hui au Liban pour exiger le désarmement de la milice chiite. Il y a même eu des heurts, comme en témoigne cette vidéo de la visite de l’ancien Premier ministre (sunnite) Saad Hariri dans le port ravagé. Plus tard dans la journée, des partisans d’Hariri sont allés au contact avec des membres du Hezbollah.
Le secrétaire général de l’ONU, António Guterres, a ajouté sa voix à celle des Libanais en appelant le gouvernement libanais à désarmer la milice du Hezbollah dans un rapport qu’il a l’intention de présenter au Conseil de Sécurité mardi prochain.
« Le maintien d’armes non autorisées en dehors du contrôle de l’Etat par le Hezbollah et d’autres groupes armés non étatiques constitue une violation persistante de la résolution 1701 (de 2006) et est très préoccupant », a écrit Guterres dans un rapport publié sur le site Web de l’ONU plus tôt cette semaine, avant même l’explosion de Beyrouth.
La population libanaise quant à elle comprend plus que jamais que la présence de ces supplétifs de la théocratie persane sur son sol, leur fanatisme religieux, leur stratégie de confrontation avec les sunnites et Israël ainsi que leur mode opératoire criminel font peser un danger mortel sur sa tête.
La catastrophe d’hier tombe très mal pour l’organisation terroriste de Hassan Nasrallah, puisque vendredi prochain, le TSL, le Tribunal Spécial pour le Liban, va rendre son verdict à l’encontre de quatre miliciens du Hezb, accusés d’avoir assassiné le père de Saad Hariri, Rafik, lui aussi ex-Premier ministre du pays aux cèdres.
L’on s’attend à un verdict de culpabilité, ce qui dévoilera la responsabilité du Hezbollah dans cet assassinat. Dans ce pays ravagé par la misère dont il est largement la cause – les Etats arabes, l’Europe et le Fonds Monétaire International refusent de lui concéder des prêts tant que la milice chiite y fait régner sa loi – meurtri dans sa chair par l’explosion d’hier, des troubles et peut-être une nouvelle guerre civile sont prévisibles.
C’est dans cette atmosphère de chaos absolu qu’est annoncée la visite demain (jeudi) d’Emmanuel Macron. La France a déjà envoyé au Liban un détachement de la Sécurité Civile et l’Union Européenne, des pompiers spécialisés dans les catastrophes du genre de celle que vient de connaître le Liban.
On peut légitimement se demander ce que vient faire le président français dans cette tornade et ce qu’il a à offrir. A voir la manière peu glorieuse dont il a géré la pandémie chez lui, et le gouffre financier dans lequel la France est plongée – elle ne pourra pas rembourser le principal de ses emprunts à la Banque Européenne pendant cinquante ans -, Macron arrive à Beyrouth les mains vides. Et c’est d’argent dont le Liban a le plus urgemment besoin.
Emmanuel Macron a déjà assuré le Hezbollah que, quel que soit le verdict du TSL, il n’aura pas à faire face à des rétorsions internationales. On se demande à Métula sur quelle base il a fait cette promesse, ce qui l’a poussé à la faire, si les Français sont au courant de ce choix, qui l’a habilité à le faire, sur la base de quel débat politique, mais surtout, pourquoi Macron a pris cette option.
Au moment où les Libanais se révoltent contre le Hezbollah, la France, par l’entremise de son président, conforte leurs oppresseurs et marginalise la fonction du tribunal international.
L’Elysée a décidé de se faire le champion de la défense de la théocratie chiite et de ses suppôts sanguinaires, sans que nous ne soyons capables de discerner une raison quelconque dans cette option. D’autant plus qu’elle indispose fortement les chancelleries arabes (sunnites) qui représentent 1.4 milliard de musulmans sur les 1.6 milliard que compte l’islam.
La France, c’est une certitude, va perdre encore des marchés en Arabie Saoudite et dans les émirats du Golfe. Pire que cela, Ryad et Dubaï pourraient finir par décider de rationner les prêts qu’ils octroient chaque semaine à Bercy, ce qui placerait Paris dans une situation extrêmement périlleuse.
La démarche de la France n’a aucune logique, les économies de l’Iran et de ses alliés étant exsangues et leurs régimes dictatoriaux étant, avec celui de la Corée du Nord, les plus obscurs de la Planète.
Emmanuel Macron sait-il pourquoi il a adopté cette posture ? Nous en doutons. Ce qui est sûr, en revanche, c’est qu’il va au-devant d’un peuple blessé et remonté contre ses tourmenteurs. Il faudra demain au président français bien plus que l’un des discours lénifiants auquel il a habitué ses compatriotes pour les persuader du bienfondé du rôle de la France. Les Libanais avaient faim, maintenant ils ont mal.
http://www.menapress.org/
https://www.europe-israel.org/2020/08/explosions-massives-a-beyrouth-cest-le-hezbollah-qui-a-stocke-2-750-tonnes-de-nitrate-dammonium-a-des-fins-militaires
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