Mediaboss Marketing

Sir, Without any sense of irony, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson proclaims that Iran is on notice and that the era of strategic patience is over. Meanwhile it is business as usual with Saudi Arabia, with both Theresa May and Donald Trump busying themselves courting the House of Saud for arms sales. This in the state where the biggest donors to Sunni terrorist groups, such as Islamic State, reside.

Of course, with Mr Trumps promise of an additional $100 billion per annum to the Pentagon, there is a ravenous military industrial complex to feed, from an unaudited budget.

Indeed it was recently reported that an investigation outlining $125 billion of waste at the Pentagon was buried.

The recent activities of the North Korean regime and the continued demonising of the Iranian bogeyman has been a boon to international arms industry.

The politics of fear allows the US arms industry to feed from the trough of the taxpayer while social infrastructure is eroded. The proposed increased Pentagon budget will come at the expense of items such as social security and healthcare.

Michael Jansens excellent review of the chequered history US interference in the Middle East (US intervention in Middle East has a long, difficult history, Opinion & Analysis, April 19th), along with the dubious credentials of the Trump regime, can only leave one assuming the worst. Yours, etc,

BARRY WALSH,

Blackrock,

Cork.

Link:
The US, Iran and the politics of fear - Irish Times

In two statements in August 2014, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed that the Islamic State was a threat to the region. The danger does not recognize Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, or Druze, Yazidis, Arabs, or Kurds, he said. This monster is growing and getting bigger. He argued that ISIS threatened the Arab monarchies stretching from Jordan to the Gulf. Then he revealed the real goal of his Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement. Going to fight in Syria was, in the first degree, to defend Lebanon, the resistance in Lebanon and all Lebanese.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Iran, Hezbollah, and the various Shia militias in Iraq that make up the Hashd al-Shaabi are riding a wave of victories. Never before have Irans proxies, extremist militias, had such legitimacy and power in some areas, while in others they play a polarizing role.

To fight Iranian influence, some have argued, ISIS and other jihadists should be encouraged to fight a war of attrition against Hezbollah and its allies. In Syria, Trump should let ISIS be Assads Irans, Hezbollahs, and Russias headache the same way we encouraged the mujahedeen fighters to bleed Russia in Afghanistan, columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times on April 12. Friedman was the Timess Beirut bureau chief in 1982 and was posted to Jerusalem later in the 1980s. He was familiar with the initial rise of Hezbollah and with U.S. policy in Afghanistan, where America spent hundreds of millions aiding fighters resisting the Soviets.

Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies argued in August 2016 that the destruction of Islamic State is a strategic mistake. It would be best to keep bad actors focused on one another rather than on Western targets and hamper Irans quest for regional hegemony, he explained. In this theory, like the one Friedman later advanced, Hezbollah was being seriously taxed by the fight against ISIS.

From a moral perspective, ISIS must be defeated in Iraq and Syria because of its crimes against humanity, particularly its massacre of Yazidis, a religious minority, in 2014, and its selling 5,000 women into slavery. Those who argue that nonetheless ISIS should be left to bleed Iran and contend that this strategy is pragmatic, based on U.S. or Western interests.

The problem is that there is no evidence that ISIS has bled Iran, the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, or Shia militias any more than it has advanced Tehrans interests. Before ISIS attacked Iraq in 2014, the Baghdad government still had to pretend to curry favor with Sunnis. After ISIS arrived, Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued his famous fatwa calling on all Iraqis to defend their country. Tens of thousands flocked to the Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Units. In December 2016, they became an official arm of the Iraqi security forces.

As Iraq has battled ISIS, Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, has been a frequent visitor to the front lines: ISIS didnt weaken Iranian influence in Iraq, it put it on steroids. Before ISIS, Iran would never have been able to create a Shia militia coalition and make it an official part of the government. Its militias were seen as sectarian extremists. Now on the battlefields around Mosul, as I witnessed in a visit there in early April, the Shia flags fly everywhere, and they pose as liberators.

Similarly in Lebanon: On the arrival of pockets of ISIS on the border in 2014, Nasrallah, a turban-wearing blowhard who runs an extremist religious militia, spoke of barbarians at the gate. Hezbollah leveraged the crises with Syria and the supposed threat from jihadists to hold the presidency of Lebanon hostage for more than two years until it maneuvered Michael Aoun into power in 2016. Lebanons sectarian constitution requires that the countrys leader be a Christian, but Nasrallah wanted a Hezbollah-allied Christian. Fighting ISIS and other jihadists in Syria allows him to pose as a defender of Christians and minority communities in Lebanon. He continues to claim that Hezbollah is resisting Israel by fighting in Syria. How is that? Nasrallah claims that Israel supports ISIS.

The extremism of ISIS has discredited the Syrian rebellion. Prior to the arrival of ISIS and the beheading of Steven Sotloff and James Foley, the worlds attention was focused on the brutality of Bashar al-Assad. After August 2014, the U.S.-led coalition of 68 nations was busy bombing ISIS. The claim that letting ISIS off the hook would have somehow bled Assad is incorrect. In 2014, ISIS concentrated its war against Kurds in Syria and Iraq and rarely posed a threat to the Assad regime. That was threated by the Syrian rebels. The regime identified the rebels as ISIS and al-Qaeda, monsters. ISIS didnt counterweight Assad. It provided him legitimacy, as the lesser of two evils.

Supporting religious extremists, as the U.S. did in Afghanistan in the 1990s, is not a counterweight to other extremists. The struggle against Iranian hegemony must be waged alongside other pro-Western or allied administrations such as Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. Supporting jihadists leads to instability. It doesnt countervail Iran.

Seth J. Frantzman is a researcher, a Jerusalem-based journalist, and an op-ed editor of the Jerusalem Post.

Link:
Syrian Civil War -- ISIS Is No Counterweight to Iranian Influence ... - National Review

OC Media (blog)

OC Media (blog) Ukraine is to begin transporting agricultural products to Iran by railway, passing through Georgia and Azerbaijan, according to Ukraine's Minister of Infrastructure, Volodymyr Omelyan. Omelyan, met with a delegation from Iran in Kiev on 19 April, where ... and more »

More here:
- OC Media (blog)

A judge wants to know more about the work of President Trumps pals to get U.S. charges dropped against a Turkish gold trader charged with helping Tehran dodge sanctions.

Even as President Donald Trump says Iran is not living up to the spirit of its nuclear deal, his friend Rudy Giulianiformerly a harsh critic of the mullahsis working to bypass the Justice Department and cut a deal for a Turkish gold trader accused of aiding Tehrans economic jihad.

A federal judge Monday will hold a conference about work done by Giuliani and Michael Mukasey, a former attorney general under George W. Bush, on behalf of a Turkish citizen accused by the U.S. of violating sanctions on Iran. That case, by far the most significant one against an alleged sanctions-buster as the Obama administration raced to reach a deal with Iran, was brought by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who Trump fired last month. (Trump has reportedly considered replacing Bharara with Marc Mukasey, who is Michaels son and also Giulianis longtime law partner.)

Federal prosecutors, now working under Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, say Reza Zarrab used a network of companies to help Iran evade sanctions by trading the country gold for oil and gas. He was arrested in Florida last year, while on a trip to Disney World with his wife and daughter.

Zarrab has been in federal lockup ever since, but Giuliani and Mukasey are trying to get him off the hook through diplomatic, rather than judicial, means.

Giuliani said in a deposition unsealed last week his role is to determine whether this case can be resolved as part of some agreement between the United States and Turkey that will promote the national security interests of the United States and redound to the benefit of Mr. Zarrab.

He and Mukasey have met with top-level leaders in Turkey, including autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, and in the U.S. to try and cut a diplomatic deal. Giuliani anticipates further meetings or conversations with senior officials of the governments of the United States and Turkey.

This turn of events is not entirely unexpected for Zarrab, who has ties to the Erdoan family, and who is married to a top pop singer in Turkey (who is believed to have filed for divorce). Foreign Policy reported he was at the heart of the probe in Turkey into a group of people accused of crimes including fraud, gold smuggling, and bribing high-ranking Turkish government officials. (Those charges were dropped after Erdoan intervened.)

In the U.S. case, Zarrab is charged with using a network of companies to make wire exchanges involving U.S. banks that would omit mentions of Iran. The plan supposedly arose after Iran was barred from the SWIFT international money transfer system, and instead routed the transactions through Turkish banks. The complaint also accuses Zarrab of conducting transactions on behalf of the Iranian Ministry of Oil and other companies. But eventually they got tripped up. In May 2011, an American bank allegedly stopped a nearly 4 million transfer because of potential Office of Foreign Assets Control violations. Such warnings continued.

The prosecutors allege in their complaint that Zarrab received a letter in Farsi, prepared for his signature and addressed to the general manager of the Central Bank of Iran, detailing a plan by Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the bank that wisely neutralizes the sanctions and even turns them into opportunities by using specialized method.

It is no secret that the trend is moving towards intensifying and increasing the sanctions, and since the wise leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran has announced this to be the year of the Economic Jihad, the Zarrab family [] considers it to be our national and moral duty to declare our willingness to participate in any kind of cooperation in order to implement monetary and foreign exchange anti-sanction policies, the letter allegedly continued. Hoping that the efforts and cooperation of the zealous children of Islamic Iran will result in an upward increase in the progress of our dear nation in all international and financial arenas.

Less than a year ago, Giuliani didnt mince words when attacking Iran.

The ayatollah is insane. The people around him are insane, Giuliani said in September, also calling them suicidal homicidal maniacs, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Thank You!

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason

But in the affidavit, he dismissed Zarrabs alleged crimes as second-tier, because none of the transactions in which Mr. Zarrab is alleged to have participated involved weapons or nuclear technology, or any other contraband, but rather involved consumer goods.

Giuliani and Mukaseys role didnt go unnoticed by prosecutors, who pleaded with judge Richard Berman to investigate what they were doing. Zarrabs attorney Ben Brafman objected that Giuliani and Mukasey would never even appear in court, so their work was out of its purview and fell under attorney-client privilege.

But the judge decided the court has dual interests in the case: to protect the integrity of the judicial process, and to ensure that Zarrab gets a fair trial. And because the objections raised by the assistant U.S. attorneys included cries of potential conflicts of interest on the part of the mens firms, Berman opted for special precautions. (Both Giuliani and Mukaseys firms do business with U.S. banks designated as alleged victims in the complaint, and Giulianis firm is a registered agent of Turkey.)

Both Giuliani and Mukasey submitted court-ordered depositions ahead of Mondays hearing, outlining in the most general terms their work on the case. And Berman said he will appoint a separate lawyer to make sure Zarrab has a grasp of his new lawyers potential conflicts of interest.

Read the original:
Rudy Giuliani Called Iran 'Insane.' Now He's Trying to Free an ... - Daily Beast

By Ulf Laessing | ERBIL, Iraq

ERBIL, Iraq High on a rocky outcrop, just 50 miles from the fighting that is wrecking historic sites across Iraq, workers are busy laying out floor tiles, determined to save at least one ancient structure amidst the turmoil.

The team is rebuilding the last remains of the fortified citadel in the Iraqi-Kurdish capital of Erbil, constructed on top of the world's longest continuously-occupied site according to UNESCO, parts of it up to 8,000-years-old.

While Islamic State sends out suicide bombers and snipers in Mosul to the east, the authorities in Erbil are already looking ahead to the day when they can pull in more visitors.

"We not only want to preserve the citadel but also revive it," said Dara al-Yaqoobi, head of the project. "Around 14 sites are ready for visits. More will come as this is a long-term plan."

The autonomous government has taken advantage of the region's relative stability to invest $15 million in rebuilding the citadel, say authorities.

After years of work, the first buildings are opening, among them two museums, one dedicated to gem stones, the other to textiles.

"We've got carpets some 100 to 150 years old which were bought from residents and shops," said Sertip Mustafa, in charge of the museum.

CARPETS, GEMS, MISSILES

Archaeologists have uncovered ancient artifacts - and some more modern remains, including artillery shells dating back to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Saddam Hussein's crackdown on a Kurdish uprising in 1991.

History is piled layer upon layer. The new floor tiles are going down in a 19th-century mansion. In another part of the site, a dilapidated public bath marked with a Star of David is testament to the large Jewish community that lived there before leaving for Israel in the 1940s.

Other houses were left abandoned when the government moved out the citadel's last permanent residents around 2008 to start renovating the site.

Restoration work was held up after Baghdad cut off state revenues in 2014 to the regional government in a row over oil exports.

But residents and visitors have already started returning, partly spurred on by the fact that there are few other places to go to in a region surrounded by war.

"We have hundreds of thousands of ancient sites in Iraq but they are all in a poor state because of the security situation," said Riyadh al-Rekabi, a public servant from Baghdad, where the main museum was looted.

"It's nice," he adds, looking round at the small area open to tourists, including the museums and a souvenir shop. "But it would be better if there was a cafe."

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

KABUL Afghanistan's defense minister and army chief of staff resigned on Monday after the deadliest Taliban attack on a military base, and U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he was "under no illusions" about the problems facing the country.

PARIS France's outgoing president, Francois Hollande, on Monday urged people to back centrist Emmanuel Macron in a vote to choose his successor next month and reject far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose place in the runoff represented a "risk" for France.

See the original post:
As war wrecks ancient Iraq, Erbil works to rebuild citadel - Reuters