Former UK Diplomat Alastair Crooke Explains Why Hezbollah Still Will Likely Win

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“Alastair Crooke: Netanyahu Gambles on Slaughter”

30 September 2024, Judge Napolitano interviews Crooke

That’s the best commentary I’ve seen on Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Iran, but here are two other commentators whom I have likewise found previously to have an exceptionally high percentage of their predictions come true, and they likewise agree with Crooke — Brian Berletic, and the anonymous “Moon of Alabama” blogger:

https://journal-neo.su/2024/09/24/washington-sets-trap-for-iran-will-iran-take-the-bait/

https://archive.is/RNjP1

“Washington Sets Trap for Iran, Will Iran Take the bait?”

24 September 2024, Brian Berletic

Amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and growing tensions in the Asia-Pacific, Washington is moving toward an equally dangerous, regional war in the Middle East between its Israeli proxies and a growing list of neighboring states and organizations.

This includes Lebanon and the Lebanese-based military and political organization Hezbollah, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iran, as well as Shi’a militias across Iraq and Yemeni-based Ansar Allah referred to across the Western media as the “Houthis.”

This large group of nations and organizations stretching across the region share a common denominator – they all serve as obstacles to US primacy over the region, with the US itself having waged war directly and/or indirectly against each since the end of World War2.

Just as the US has recruited Ukraine to wage war on Russia by proxy in Eastern Europe and has politically captured and used the island province of Taiwan against the rest of China in the Asia-Pacific region, the US has carefully cultivated Israel politically and militarily for decades to serve as a proxy used to carry out assassinations, terrorist attacks, military strikes, and even provoke wars the US itself seeks plausible deniability in regard to.

Washington seeks war – by proxy or otherwise – with Iran sooner rather than later

Toward this end, the US provides Israel with billions in aid annually, including a steady flow of arms and ammunition Israel’s various wars of aggression would be impossible to conduct without. While Washington publicly poses as seeking peace and stability in the Middle East, its continuous support for Israel enables the perpetual conflict and instability undermining the region.

Most recently, the US has repeatedly claimed to have urged Israeli restraint regarding its military operations against Gaza. In practice, however, the US has enabled the large-scale destruction of Gaza through the continual shipment of munitions including thousands of bombs used in Israeli airstrikes. …

The nature of Israeli belligerence is transparent, part of a well-documented US policy to provoke wider war across the Middle East the US can then justify intervening in – and war both the US and its Israeli proxies can cite when using weapons and tactics otherwise difficult or impossible to justify – up to and including nuclear weapons.

In 2009, the Brookings Institution in its 170-page paper titled, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran” [by the six neocons Kenneth M. Pollack, Daniel L. Byman, Martin Indyk, Suzanne Maloney, Michael E. O’Hanlon, and Bruce Riedel], would detail various means to coerce, contain, and ultimately overthrow the government of Iran, including waging war against Iran.

The paper admits how difficult it would be for the United States itself to launch military strikes against Iran, stating:

… any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. 

It also says:

… it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it.

An entire chapter was dedicated to the use of Israel to carry out an initial strike on Iran, allowing the US to distance itself from culpability. Titled, “Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike,” it explicitly states:

… the goal of this policy option would be to destroy key Iranian nuclear facilities in the hope that doing so would significantly delay Iran’s acquisition of an indigenous nuclear weapons capability. However, in this case, an added element could be that the United States would encourage — and perhaps even assist — the Israelis in conducting the strikes themselves, in the expectation that both international criticism and Iranian retaliation would be deflected away from the United States and onto Israel.

The paper notes that an Israeli strike could, “trigger a wider conflict between Israel and Iran that could draw in the United States and other countries,” giving Washington the pretext it seeks ahead of any war of aggression it itself wages against Iran.

With this policy in mind, Israel’s steady cadence of increasingly provocative attacks against Iran and its allies is easier to understand. The US, through Israeli provocations, seeks to provoke a wider war the US itself can wade into, appearing to be aiding an ally rather than initiating yet another war of aggression in the Middle East.

Ultimately, for this trap to work successfully, Iran must retaliate to one of these many provocations, and do so in a way the US and its allies can portray as disproportionate or even “unprovoked.”

So far, Iran’s responses have been exceedingly measured. …


https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/10/israel-invading-lebanon-to-prolong-and-expand-its-supremacists-war.html

https://archive.is/tb9Ug

October 01, 2024

“Israel - Invading Lebanon To Prolong And Expand Its Supremacists War”

Is it a trap?

That is the question the Zionists should ask themselves. To me the answer seems to be 'Yes!'

The Zionist entity is invading Lebanon - again. All earlier such invasions have ended in failure. Zionist troops had to retreat under fire. The current invasion is unlikely to see a better fate.

The Izzies, and their U.S. sponsors, are delirious over their perceived success in killing a number of Hizbullah officials including its leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah.

Don't they understand that Hizbullah has explicitly been built in ways that allow it to sustain such losses? All the murdered officials have already been replaced. If these new ones get killed their replacements are ready.

Before last week the war between the resistance was restricted to an (unequal) exchange of missiles. Israel fired many more than the resistance but not to more effect. The nature of that slow walking war of attrition will now change.

An Israeli ground invasion is exactly what Hizbullah has prepared for. It has readied its ambush sites. Its weapons and the people need to launch them are down in their well prepared bunkers.

The invading forces will be subjected to all kind of surprises. The ground troops are expected to proceed only after heavy preparatory bombing. But the mountainous grounds will allow the defenders to survive the bombing and to attack when and where they are least suspected. I do expect heavy military casualties but mostly on the attacker's  side.

This war will likely go on for several months. It could easily extend into a years long and much larger conflict.

The Biden administrations is in full support of the invasion. It may even have urgedNetanyahoo to proceed with it:

Senior White House figures privately told Israel that the U.S. would support its decision to ramp up military pressure against Hezbollah — even as the Biden administration publicly urged the Israeli government in recent weeks to curtail its strikes, according to American and Israeli officials.

Presidential adviser Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told top Israeli officials in recent weeks that the U.S. agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad strategy to shift Israel’s military focus to the north against Hezbollah in order to convince the group to engage in diplomatic talks to end the conflict, the officials told POLITICO.

The Pentagon though is not convinced that this operation will be a success. It fears that, at some point, the U.S. forces will be sent in to rescue the Izzies from a severe defeat.

The Netanyahoo government will try its best to expand the war into Syria or, even further, into an all out war on Iran. It will need the full military support from the U.S. to do so. Its political maneuvering towards the U.S. will thus be done with the intent to further drag it into the war.

Without the full support of the U.S. Israel will fail to become the regional superpower it is striving to be.

With full U.S. support their might be a chance, a small one though, for Israel to win this round. …



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“Wartime Cafe” EP11— Dr Marandi “Nasrallah assassination: beauty of resistance is what motivates us.”

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Wartime Cafe
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Laith Marouf sits down with Prof M. Marandi


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"Wartime Cafe" EP11: Dr Marandi "Nasrallah assassination: beauty of resistance is what motivates us."


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  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
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Israel, the ICC and the global structures of power | Norman Finkelstein

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Middle East Eye
Norman Finkelstein 


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  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
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Hillary Floats PROSECUTING Speech, Trump Suspect Details EMERGE, Final RED LINE in Ukraine War?

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Due Dissidence 
Keaton Weiss • Russell Dobular


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  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
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Nyet Means Nyet

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Billy Bob's Blowback Roundtable
THE WORLD THROUGH AN INDEPENDENT LEFT LENS


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The Lies of Burns and Moore

The Chiefs of MI6 And CIA Publish A Statement of Lies.

(This article was first published on New Eastern Outlook on September 12, 2024. It is reposted here since it has been removed from Facebook by the American censors.)

On September 7 the British and American chiefs of their secret intelligence services, Richard Moore and William Burns, released an op-ed piece in the Financial Times and, on that day took part in a live talk hosted by the same journal.  They had one common objective, to lie to their peoples and the world about the real causes of the violence and insecurity in the world, to provide them with the pretext for their attempt to rule the world.  In other words they openly displayed the conspiracy of their governments to commit aggression against anyone in the world who resists them, the supreme war crime.

Criminal actions ignored by the ICC

The criminal case for conspiracy to commit aggression can be built easily against the USA and UK from their op-ed and their interview. So let’s examine what they wrote and said for they condemned themselves out of their own mouths.  But they began their op-ed piece with this strange statement,

The facts of history distorted and denied.

Which branch of US intelligence was working with British intelligence in 1909 is not stated, but it is a complete mystery what state-on-state violence in Europe these two are referring to that occurred in 1909.  History reveals none.  But it is with this historical fantasy that they begin their propaganda piece. It gets worse from there.

They go on to refer to the close collaboration between Britain and the USA in WWI, WWII and the so called war on terrorism, in fact, their war of terrorism to try to take over the oil and other mineral supplies of the middle east and central Asia. History tells us that in fact the British and Americans were just as much rivals all through those wars as collaborators, and were often at odds on how to conduct those wars and to reap the benefits. Since Britain lost its empire right after WWII, and the Americans took over their dominance of the world, the British have been subservient to the Americans. American forces are still stationed there. They were not liked in Britain during WWII and they are not liked now. The common saying in Britain about the Americans during WWII, which reflected public feeling at the time, was that, “There are three things wrong with Americans. They are over paid, over sexed, and over here.”  That is still the opinion of many.

As for the hard struggle against terrorism, they really refer to their wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, wars against sovereign states and peoples to steal and loot their resources and markets.  The terrorism was theirs.

Their war against Ukraine and Russia, the World

They continue with this statement,

“The CIA and SIS stand together in resisting an assertive Russia and Putin’s war of aggression (sic) in Ukraine. We saw it coming, and were able to warn the international community so we could all rally to Ukraine’s defence. We carefully declassified some of our secrets as a new and effective part of this effort.”

Of course they saw it coming. They were the ones that engineered the war against Russia by expanding their NATO alliance east towards Russia in betrayal of their promises made to Russia not to do so, an obvious act of aggression, and then attacked Yugoslavia in 1999, to remove a potential Russian ally and to place their large military base, Camp Bondsteel in the Serbian heartland of Kosovo-Metohija. The attack on Yugoslavia, a brutal act of aggression, during which they also attacked China, was a phase of their war against Russia.

Their wars of aggression continued with the NATO organised coup in Ukraine of 2014, in which they overthrew the elected president and installed a gang of Nazi cutthroats in his place which immediately began an armed attack on the peoples of the eastern regions of Ukraine who refused to accept the coup or the Nazis who seized power.  The UK and US and their allies, fuelled this conflict, promoted it, provided arms and encouragement for it and are complicit in all the war crimes committed against those peoples all through the ten years since.  It was put an end to this aggression against those peoples and the threat is represented to Russia itself that Russia finally decided to enter into the conflict to put an end to it.  This is the aggression, of the US and UK, not Russia.

Secrets Revealed

As for the secrets they revealed, they must be referring to Victoria Nuland’s admission that the British and Americans told Zelensky to renege on the peace deal Ukraine and Russia had concluded in Istanbul in the spring of 2022 and to carry on the war against the Russians.  Zelensky seemed to have been carried away with his campaign promise to bring peace to Ukraine and had to be brought into line. Or maybe they are referring to Angela Merkel’s admission that the Minsk Accords, which were backed by the UN Security Council and in which President Putin put so much effort to make work, was just a ruse used to fool the Russians while NATO built up Ukraine’s army to attack Russia.

Their Propaganda

They continue with this,

“Staying the course is more vital than ever. Putin will not succeed in extinguishing Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence. Russia’s actions are a flagrant breach of the UN Charter and global norms.”

It is the UK and the USA that have extinguished Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence with the overthrow of democracy in Ukraine reducing it to their puppet state. All their actions were and are illegal and in violation of the UN Charter, whereas Russia’s actions were and are in conformity with Article 51 of the UN Charter.

They then meander off to talk about how technology is changing the war in Ukraine. What this has to do with their intentions and objectives is not clear nor why they made this frankly absurd statement since Russia has demonstrated its superiority in technology on the battlefield and has revealed that NATO weapons are just so much junk to be destroyed as soon as they are used.

NATO Sabotage

Next they state,

“Beyond Ukraine, we continue to work together to disrupt the reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe being waged by Russian intelligence, and its cynical use of technology to spread lies and disinformation designed to drive wedges between us.”

Such cynicism and outright lying is difficult comprehend when the entire world knows that it was the USA and UK that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline cutting off Germany and Europe from cheap natural gas supplies, an act of sabotage unequalled anywhere and they do not refer to any Russian sabotage for which there is no evidence whatsoever. As for lies and disinformation, well we know where the lies and disinformation come from.

The Threat Against China

Then they state that,

“In the 21st century, crises don’t come sequentially. While significant attention and resources are being deployed against Russia, we are acting together in other places and spaces to counter the risk of global instability.”

It is true that they are throwing everything they have short of nuclear weapons against Russia, and even threaten to use them as well. The claim they are countering global instability is unconscionable when it is they that have caused most of the wars in the world since 1945 and are causing them now.  But the real meaning of their statement appears in the next paragraph of their op-ed when they state,

“For both the CIA and SIS, the rise of China is the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century, and we have reorganised our services to reflect that priority. Meanwhile, counterterrorism remains core to our partnership, and we work closely with others to protect our homelands and thwart the resurgent threat of Isis.”

What can one say about such a preposterous statement?  China is a challenge? To who, and in what way? They don’t tell us, because China is a threat to no one except the US industrialists and financiers who seek to dominate the world. British industry is declining fast, and not because of the success of China in rebuilding its economy, but because of internal contradictions in Britain, its loss of empire and cheap resources and labour power. The Americans constantly talk about free enterprise and competition in the market, but they don’t believe a word of it. It’s all dust to obscure the fact that they do not want any competition, and free enterprise to them means the complete dominance of the world economy by their companies.

As for the “resurgent threat of ISIS” again what are they talking about? It is an open secret that they created and controlled ISIS and use its vaporous existence as a pretext to invade and occupy Syria and Iraq, both illegal and brutal occupations in defiance of international law which continue to this day.

Phony Peace in the Middle East

But they continue with their lies when they claim they are seeking peace in the Middle East, while supporting the on-going Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. But Israel was partly their creation, their cat’s paw in the region. Its existence is essential for their attempt to dominate the region and they could care not care less how many people are killed by the Zionist war machine so long as that dominance is maintained. And so they push for a greater war with Iran. They are not seeking “de-escalation” but escalation, just as they are in Ukraine.

After more chaff about artificial intelligence, thrown in for no other reason but to make the op-ed piece long enough to be published and to obscure the lies that fill the rest of it, they end with,

Their Threat To Global Security

“There is no question that the international world order — the balanced system that has led to relative peace and stability and delivered rising living standards, opportunities and prosperity — is under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the cold war. But successfully combating this risk is at the very foundation of our special relationship. Trust, openness, constructive challenge, friendship. These characteristics can be relied upon into the next century, as can our shared determination to remain champions for global peace and security.”

What balance system are they talking about? They have both engaged in one war after another throughout the world since they stepped onto the world stage. Their constant aggressions against the peoples of the world have been a catastrophe for human development and progress. It is they and their wars that have held back the development of world society.  And living standards in the West are declining and have been since the fall of the Soviet Union, since the capitalists of the West found it no longer necessary to offer their workers something to make their lives easier to award off the threat of socialist revolutions in the West.

They Must Be Held Accountable

And what is their “world order” but a structure of war and violence, of chaos, of brutality, maintained by more wars and threats of wars, a destruction of international law, of the principles enshrined in the UN Charter. These men and their governments are not champions of global peace and security. They are the architects of world destruction, and it is clear they are willing to risk another world war and the death of us all to get their way so irrational have they become. They use deception and smooth words to try to fool humanity but they have failed.  They are exposed. They must be condemned, and held accountable for their crimes, before it is too late and there is no one to hold them accountable.


Christopher Black is a widely respected Canadian lawyer and activist involved in international law issues, free speech and human rights defence, and peace activities. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
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