War with Iran remains a deeply unpopular prospect among the American people, but a new opinion poll conducted by Reuters and polling organization Ipsos found there's not much optimism concerning the likelihood of getting entangled in a future conflict. The poll released Tuesday found that half of all Americans see the US and Iran being at war "within the next few years".

As of early this week it appeared the White House as well as Pentagon were firmly signaling the US has climbed down the escalation ladder, with statements claiming the US military build-up near the Persian Gulf of the past two weeks had forced Iran to put its planned actions against US troops "on hold" in order to "recalculate".

Iran's president has told a group of clerics that he is seeking expanded, wartime executive powers to better deal with an "economic war" triggered by the Trump administration's pullout from the nuclear deal and escalating US sanctions.

The state IRNA news agency reported late Monday that President Hassan Rouhani cited the 1980s war with Iraq, when a wartime supreme council was able to bypass other branches to make decisions regarding the economy and the war.

The report didn't say what the new powers would entail but quoted Rouhani as saying that "today, we need such powers".

Congress never authorized a US war in Iran. Under the US Constitution, Congress has sole authority to do that, so that’s seemingly an important deal. With the US engaged in other unauthorized wars, however, it has been little more than a side note, and the Trump Administration has considered Congressional involvement in the process to be optional, at best.

Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Tom Udall (D-NM) led an effort on Wednesday to try to reassert Congressional authority, by trying to preemptively de-fund any US war against Iran unless Congress authorized it ahead of time.

This proposal was brought forward at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and immediately failed, 13-9. Murphy said this vote would remind the administration that they don’t have authorization for the war.

Citing ongoing US-Iran tensions and the secret intelligence on Iranian “threats” officials keep mentioning, CENTCOM is requesting that the Pentagon approve substantial numbers of additional US ground troops to be deployed somewhere in the Middle East.

Though initial reports claimed that CENTCOM was only requesting “about 5,000” ground troops, subsequent reports said that the Pentagon are preparing a plan to present to President Trump seeking 10,000 troops.

It’s not clear where these troops could be stationed, though officials emphasized they would be purely defensive. It is unlikely Iraq would welcome a large influx of US troops, however, especially when it is presented as being directed against neighboring Iran.

A United Nations team investigating the massacre of Ezidis and other atrocities has unearthed 12 mass graves in Iraq, AFP reported on Tuesday (May 21).

British lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan said in a UN report sent to the Security Council said efforts were focused on three initial investigations: the 2014 massacre of Ezidis, crimes committed in Mosul from 2014 to 2016, and the mass killing of Iraqi military recruits in the Tikrit area in June 2014, according to AFP.

The UN Security Council agreed in 2017 to establish the UN probe to ensure Islamic State (ISIS) faces justice for war crimes in Iraq and Syria.

The team began work in October with the first mass grave containing ISIS victims uncovered in March and April the village of Kocho in Sinjar. Kocho is located 20 kilometers from Sinjar and many of its residents were killed or abducted when ISIS militants attacked.

Once upon a time, the United States launched a war on Iraq with the help of false allegations of WMD.

The corporate media - and most memorably the US newspaper of record, the New York Times -thrust itself onto the PR frontlines by presenting as reality the unhinged claims of the George W Bush administration.

A repeat performance

Now, more than 16 years and an obscene quantity of Iraqi deaths later, it seems we may be witnessing a repeat performance of the same old media tricks, this time targeting Iran - although at least Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman has not yet decreed that the Iranians be made to “suck on this”.

First off, of course, there’s the ongoing nuclear hysteria, which apparently can’t be put to rest no matter how many times we review the facts.

SOURCE: THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

The more steps that we take toward a war with Iran, the more likely it becomes that somebody will do something really stupid that will actually trigger one. By cutting off Iran’s oil exports, we are threatening to completely wreck their economy, and at this point they feel backed into a corner. And the Iranians have already watched the U.S. invade two countries that they share a border with (Afghanistan and Iraq), and so it is understandable that they are a bit paranoid that it could happen to them too. President Trump keeps saying that he doesn’t want a war with Iran, but the Iranians do not believe a single word any U.S. politician says. Instead, they watch what we actually do very, very closely, and the fact that the Pentagon wants to deploy thousands of new troops to the Middle East is definitely going to freak them out. The following comes from Fox News…

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iraqi leaders that if they are not going to stand with the US against Iran, then they should stand aside, AP reported.

Pompeo’s message came last week as he met with Iraqi leaders to discuss the mounting tension between Washington and Tehran.

The news agency said the message was relayed to it by two Iraqi officials who refused to be named, pointing out that Pompeo’s visit to Baghdad came as intelligence had received information about Iranian threats to US interests in the Middle East.

“There are fears that Baghdad will get caught again in the conflict between Washington and Tehran after recovering from the effects of its war on the Islamic State,” the news site reported, in reference to Daesh.

As Washington and Tehran trade threats, a number of influential Iraqi Shia leaders have warned that a conflict between the US and Iran would be disastrous for Iraq, possibly destroying the country beyond repair.

A prominent Shia cleric, a leading politician and two militia representatives each voiced opposition to a possible war with the Islamic Republic on Monday, warning of apocalyptic consequences for their country.

“This war would mark the end of Iraq,” said Shia cleric and politician Muqtada al-Sadr, whose populist ‘Sadrist’ movement enjoys a large following. “We need peace and reconstruction.”

Authored by Janine Jackson via Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting,

The Washington Post editorial’s headline (5/14/19) had the US “drifting” toward war with Iran—another example, as analyst Nima Shirazi quipped, of the “world’s superpower somehow having no agency over its own imperialism.”
If we can still call things “surreal,” that would describe watching corporate media do the same things they did in the run-up to the Iraq War, things they later disavowed: the credulous repetition of administration claims about the supposed threat; the reliance, for interpretation of “intelligence,” on officials with well known records for manipulating intelligence; the stenographic reporting of ‘troubling’ actions by the enemy state, that later have to be walked back.

A Katyusha rocket crashed Sunday into Baghdad's Green Zone which houses government offices and embassies including the US mission, Iraqi security services said in a statement.

The rocket -- which came after Washington ordered the evacuation of non-essential diplomatic staff from the Baghdad embassy and the Arbil consulate citing threats from Iranian-backed Iraqi armed groups -- caused no casualties, it said.

"A Katyusha rocket crashed into the Green Zone without causing casualties," it said in a brief statement without giving further details.

A police source told AFP that "initial reports indicate that the rocket was fired from an open field" in southern Baghdad.

Iraq has spent the better share of the last 16 years under US military occupation. Despite this, time and again US-Iraqi relations have come to be defined by US hostility toward neighboring Iran, and Iraq’s desire to not get mixed up in that.

So while Iraq’s parliament was already bristling under Pentagon talk of staying in Iraq, and Trump saying that the US was staying in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran,” the recent escalation of US rhetoric about a war against Iran has sparked action within parliament.

It has been said for awhile that Iraq will be voting on a bill that would aim to expel all foreign troops from Iraqi soil, and singles out US troops in particular as needing to leave. The bill is endorsed by Iraq’s top two Shi’ite blocs, and is expected to pass fairly easily. Exact timing of the vote is unclear, but it is expected to be sooner rather than later.

Iraq has spent the better share of the last 16 years under US military occupation. Despite this, time and again US-Iraqi relations have come to be defined by US hostility toward neighboring Iran, and Iraq’s desire to not get mixed up in that.

So while Iraq’s parliament was already bristling under Pentagon talk of staying in Iraq, and Trump saying that the US was staying in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran,” the recent escalation of US rhetoric about a war against Iran has sparked action within parliament.

On Saturday, Iraq will be voting on a bill that would aim to expel all foreign troops from Iraqi soil, and singles out US troops in particular as needing to leave. The bill is endorsed by Iraq’s top two Shi’ite blocs, and is expected to pass fairly easily.

The Trump administration’s war hawks couldn’t have asked for a more docile casus belli than the Katyusha rocket that landed a mile outside the US embassy in Baghdad’s American-occupied Green Zone on Sunday night, sparing persons, property, and the pride of a president who must have begun to doubt whether the mounting tensions between the US and Iran had any basis in reality at all – or whether the deliberately vague “credible intelligence” on the Iranian “threat” supplied by the Mossad was not a trick to convince the US to take out Israel’s last regional rival.

Source: deepstateblog.org

In the growing confrontation between the United States and Iran, the Iranian special forces, known as the Qods Force, will play a leading role in defending Iran.

[For more on the Qods Force and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, click here.]

While the U.S. officials have claimed knowledge of specific and credible threats against American interests, the Iranians do not have a record of attack Americans, at least not recently.

A 2017 Congressional Research Service report lists all known Iranian attacks or planned attacks on Western targets. Only three of them took place in the 21st century. Only one took place in America and none resulted in the death or injury to any American.

Reuters on Wednesday quoted two Iraqi security sources who revealed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued warnings about Iran-backed Shiite militia threatening U.S. bases in Iraq with missiles when he paid a surprise visit to Baghdad on May 7.

Pompeo reportedly warned the Iraqi government to keep those Shiite forces at bay, or else the U.S. military would deal with them:

Iran's permanent UN mission in New York in a statement strongly dismissed the US media and psychological warfare inducing Tehran's intention to attack Washington's interests in Iraq.

The statement was issued after the US State Department ordered a partial evacuation of the embassy in Baghdad and consulate in Erbil on Wednesday.

Iran's statement denounced the move as “the latest escalation in the propaganda war”, suggesting that Washington is trying to use them as a pretext to initiate a conflict.

"Iran is no threat to anybody in Iraq or elsewhere, and Iran is not preparing for any attacks anywhere,” it said.

It’s not enough to want untold thousands to die and the country destroyed, now neocons in Congress want to steal more than a billion and a half dollars from Iran as compensation for something somebody else did or didn’t do.

From the Daily Caller:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday to make $1.68 billion worth of Iranian funds available to the families of 241 American servicemen killed in the 1983 suicide bombing on a Marine base in Beirut, Lebanon.

In Trump Bizarro World, as in the Obama and Bush versions of the same, reality and facts are only applicable when they serve the agenda.

London has raised the threat level for UK troops and diplomats in Iraq over alleged increased security risks from Iran, Sky News reported Wednesday, citing sources.

Great Britain also issued security alert for its personnel in Iraq. The threat leveal was raised for UK troops and diplomats in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia as well.

Earlier this week the US State Department ordered the departure of "non-emergency government employees" from Baghdad and Erbil after US Central Command spokesman Bill Urban that the US-led coalition was on high alert because it saw credible threats to American forces in Iraq.

This article was originally published by Kurt Nimmo on Activist Post.

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Germany and the Netherlands halted training of Iraqi troops hours after the US said it will partially evacuate its Baghdad embassy. Amid growing tensions with Iran, analysts offered differing views on the reasons behind the moves.

Washington announced the partial evacuation of its embassy in Baghdad as well as a consulate in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan on Wednesday, citing heightened tension in the region. Hours later, Germany and the Netherlands suspended their missions to train Iraqi troops. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had earlier warned that “Iranian activities” endanger American sites and soldiers stationed in the country.

Are the latest moves a sign that the US is preparing for military action against Iran, are they just a precaution, or do they signal something about a shift in the security situation on the ground in Iraq?

Helicopters ferried US staff from the American embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday out of apparent concern about perceived threats from Iran, which US sources believe encouraged Sunday’s attacks on four oil tankers in the Gulf, Reuters reports.

The sabotage of the tankers, for which no one has claimed responsibility, and Saudi Arabia’s announcement on Tuesday that armed drones hit two of its oil pumping stations have raised concerns Washington and Tehran may be inching toward conflict.

A US government source said American security experts believe Iran gave its “blessing” to tanker attacks, which hit two Saudi crude oil tankers, a UAE-flagged fuel bunker barge and a Norwegian-registered oil products tanker off Fujeirah near the Strait of Hormuz.

The source said the United States believes Iran’s role was one of actively encouraging militants but indicated the United States does not now have evidence that Iranian personnel played any direct operational role.

Saudi Arabia submitted on Wednesday a letter to the United Nations Security Council, in which it held Iran and the Yemeni Houthi group responsible for targeting their oil facilities on Tuesday.

The letter was handed over by the Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, according to Saudi TV channel Al Arabiya.

The letter included “Saudi Arabia’s holding of Iran and the Houthi militias it supports fully responsible for Tuesday’s attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities.”

According to the same source, a joint message was sent from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the UN Security Council and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, on the attack and sabotage operation that occurred last Sunday against four ships in the international sea off the UAE’s territorial sea and coasts.

The US’ reckless maximum pressure campaign against Tehran and nations dealing with it is deeply provocative and hurts international relations, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen said, warning against a major “crisis.”
Speaking at a joint press conference with the Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Wednesday, Van der Bellen slammed the US sanctions against Iran by saying that such policies “do not help international relations” and only erode the system of global treaties.

Earlier in the day, the US State Department ordered that all American government officials not dealing with emergencies leave Iraq, the US Embassy in Baghdad said in a statement.

Germany is suspending its participation in the Iraqi military training programme due to heightened tensions in the region, Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (DPA) reported citing military sources.

A spokesman for the Defence Ministry has confirmed this information, saying that Germany has no indications of potential attacks allegedly supported by Iran. But this does not mean the training programmes could not resume in the coming days, the spokesman added.

A UK military commander was rebuked by the US Central Command for questioning Washington’s claims that Iran poses an increased threat. Gen. Ghika, a senior figure in the anti-ISIS coalition, said none was evident in Iraq or Syria.

The awkward exchange on Tuesday came as the US is trying to rally its allies to confront Tehran over an unspecified threat to American interests in the Middle East.

Despite the beat of the war drum, even the US’ closest allies remain skeptical about the narrative furthered by Iran hawks in Washington like US National Security Advisor John Bolton and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. One of the doubters is British Army Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, a deputy head of the US-led coalition created to fight the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

The German army suspended its training programs for Iraqi troops due to increasing tensions in the region, the Defense Ministry said. The move comes after the US ordered partial evacuation of its embassy in Baghdad.

Berlin made the decision to suspend the training of Iraqi soldiers while “orienting itself toward our partner countries,” the Defense Ministry’s spokesperson, Jens Flosdorff, told reporters.

He said that there is “no concrete threat” to German troops at the moment but the decision to halt the training of local forces was made because the situation on the ground in general is becoming more tense.

Washington has ordered the withdrawal of its “non-emergency” staff from Iraq, the US Embassy in Baghdad said on Wednesday. The move follows an alert on tensions in the country.

Some government employees are set to leave the embassy in Baghdad, as well as the US Consulate in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Normal visa services will be temporarily suspended.

American nationals were advised to avoid US government sites in Iraq and leave the country “as soon as possible.”

Source: Common Dreams

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday came out forcefully against the Trump administration angling the United States into another costly and unnecessary war of choice in the Middle East—this time against Iran—delivering an online address in which he warned that any military action without approval from Congress would be an "unconstitutional and illegal" breach of office.

"Let me be as clear as I can be: a war with Iran would be an absolute disaster," said Sanders in the roughly six-minute speech. "Sixteen years ago, the United States committed one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the history of our country by attacking Iraq. That war was sold to the American people based on a series of lies about weapons of mass destruction. We should remember that one of the leading advocates for that war was John Bolton."

The US State Department has issued a security alert and ordered staff to evacuate Iraq amid escalating tensions with neighbouring Iran. The alert posted on the US embassy in Iraq today read: “The U.S. State Department has ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. Government employees from Iraq, both at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil. Normal visa services at both posts will be temporarily suspended. The U.S. government has limited ability to provide emergency services to US citizens in Iraq.”

A US embassy spokesperson is reported by the Financial Times saying that US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, had taken the decision to withdraw because of “the increased threat stream we are seeing in Iraq”. The spokesperson declined to say how, when, or how many staff were leaving, citing security reasons.

Iraq does not want a “devastating” new war in the Middle East and will not allow the US to use its territory for military action against neighboring Iran, Baghdad’s ambassador to Moscow has said.

“Iraq is a sovereign nation. We will not let [the US] to use our territory,” Haidar Mansour Hadi, the Iraqi envoy to Russia, told journalists at a press conference in Moscow when asked about Iraq’s stance on the rising tensions in the region, fueled by the feud between Washington and Tehran.

The US-led coalition is on high alert as it monitors credible threats to American forces in Iraq, US Central Command spokesman Bill Urban said in a statement.

"OIR [Operation Inherent Resolve] is now at a high level of alert as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq," Urban said in the statement on Tuesday.

Media-savvy U.S. government officials, political operatives, and lawmakers and their staffs from all political parties and ideological persuasions have no doubt, throughout the history of our great country, duped a fair-minded but unwitting reporter into writing a juicy story in order to get a piece of information into the public bloodstream without their fingerprints on it.

This is, in large part, how the Bush administration sold the U.S. invasion of Iraq to the American people: Feeding knowingly bogus or unsubstantiated intelligence on Iraq’s (nonexistent) WMD programs to reporters, who then published it as fact, without much in the way of critical scrutiny.

Despite the lessons we’ve learned from that debacle, it’s happening again with regard to the Trump administration’s march toward war with Iran.

Iraqi Shia cleric and leader of the National Wisdom Movement, Ammar al-Hakim, has warned that the country will “not stand idle” as Washington’s unabashedly aggressive and hawkish policies against Tehran risk jeopardizing Iraq.

“We have to protect Iraq from any potential fallouts of this conflict because when the call for war is made, reason and logic is forgotten,” said al-Hakim.

The US has recently announced military deployments in the region in a bid to counter “threats from Iran”.

“The United States’ push to cut Iran’s oil exports to zero signals a transition from a policy of pressure to a policy of suffocating Iran, its government and people. This move will have very dangerous and tragic implications for the region, specifically Iraq,” Hakim said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s anti-Iran threats are nothing but “bombastic” comments stemming from the same war rhetoric already used by Washington against Libya, Syria and Iraq, which itself receives “war marching orders from Tel Aviv,” says an American political analyst.

Rodney Martin, a former congressional staffer based in Scottsdale, Arizona, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV after Pompeo cancelled his scheduled meeting with German officials in Berlin to pay an unannounced visit to the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, where he continued attempts to sow discord between the two neighboring countries of Iran and Iraq.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Tuesday and met with both President Barham Saleh and Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi after telling reporters the United States was concerned about Iraqi sovereignty because of increasing Iranian activity, according to Reuters.

"I wanted to go to Baghdad to speak with the leadership there, to assure them that we stood ready to continue to ensure that Iraq is a sovereign, independent nation," Pompeo said as cited by Reuters.

US Army helicopters dropped food and medicine to ISIS terrorists hiding in the depth of Anbar desert, Iraq, as per locals.

Qussai Anbari, director of the Iraqi Badr Organization, stated ‘ISIS terrorist groups hiding in the depth of Anbar province where no one can reach except US planes and under strict US approvals.’

‘Local Beduin families living in the desert have seen US helicopters drop food and medicine packages to the terrorists who are hiding in the western desert,’ Mr. Anbari added. He explained that the ‘Anbar desert is vast and terrorists cannot travel for long distances to buy food there’.

It’s not a first for US helicopters to deliver aid to terrorists, the US army operates under an illegal coalition of similar evil countries has been spotted delivering food and other aid to ISIS terrorists while the Iraqis were trying to clean their country from the terrorists in Saladdin, Falluja, Musol, and Diyala.

Iraq has promised to guarantee the safety of US interests from Iran, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday as he paid a surprise trip to Baghdad where he accused Tehran of planning "imminent" attacks.

The top US diplomat's unannounced visit marked an effort to stand up Washington's ties with Baghdad as it pushes ahead with its "maximum pressure" against Tehran -- a US arch-rival, but an ally of Iraq.

Pompeo abruptly cancelled talks in Germany and made a lengthy detour from a European tour to spend four hours in Iraq, where he met both President Barham Saleh and Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi.

"We talked to them about the importance of Iraq ensuring that it's able to adequately protect Americans in their country," Pompeo told reporters after the meetings.

"They both provided assurances that they understood that was their responsibility," he said.

“Mission Accomplished” is now old enough to drive a car. A few people got rich, a lot of people got killed and the carnage rolls on because too many people thought it was real. My old bar friend was right. The fix was in, and still, too many forget.

Iran is about to raise gas exports to neighboring Iraq to 35 million cubic meters a day this year, head of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) Hassan Montazer Torbati said on Wednesday.

“Last year we exported gas to Turkey, Baghdad and Basra with an average of over 40 million cubic meters a day, and this year, gas exports to Iraq will reach more than 35 million cubic meters per day,” he told a news conference in Tehran.

Torbati also said Iran’s gas refinery and transmission capacity will reach more than a billion cubic meters a day by the end of the current Iranian year on February 20, 2020.

A US F-35A has carried out a pair of airstrikes against targets inside northern Iraq. They say the strikes were against ISIS, claiming to have hit a tunnel network and a weapons cache.

This marks the first time the F-35A has been used in combat. This was widely expected, with the jets deployed into the region on April 15, and officials hotly anticipating the first use of them.

The F-35 program has been wildly expensive, and the Pentagon are eager to start putting them into the field, where it can stop being an overpriced prototype and start being an overpriced vehicle in active combat.

Recent estimates are that the F-35 and its variants will cost conservatively $1 trillion over their lifetime for the Pentagon. Some estimates are even projecting this to go to $1.5 trillion, which seems reasonable given how many previous estimates have proven far below the reality of the matter.

Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, America set about implementing its administration across the defeated nation, which included the running of a vast network of prison complexes housing civilians and those suspected of participating in the Iraqi insurgency. One of those prisons was in Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of the capital Baghdad, which had been notorious for torture and poor living conditions in the Saddam Hussein era. It was demolished during the invasion and then renovated by the US coalition forces in 2003.

Frontier Services Group has not publicly stated it is working in Iraq, but documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show it was registered there last year.

A tribal conflict in southern Iraq has taken a leap into the modern world with drones being used to turn the tides of the battle in an apparent first.

The New Arab's Arabic-language service reported on Thursday that the Iraqi military has deployed to Basra province to contain the deadly clashes between the rival tribes.

Fighting between the Batout and the Hamadna tribes broke out last month in the Karmat Ali area north of Basra city, killing three people. The two Arab clans have long been at loggerheads.

A high-level Russian delegation is visiting Iraq to discuss trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.

The delegation, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov, met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Alhakim on Thursday.

Borisov said the two sides discussed trade in agriculture and industry and said his country is seeking to increase food exports to Iraq.

Iraq is reliant on imports to feed its population, and imports a significant portion of food items from Iran.

raq's electricity minister said on Monday that the country will be "deprived of power" if the US decides to end its sanction waivers that has allowed Baghdad to purchase Iranian energy such as gas and electricity.

The US has granted eight countries a six-month exemption allowing them buy Iranian hydrocarbon products despite Washington's embargo, which took effect in November, but Washington announced the end of the waiver on Monday.

Iraq has received separate extensions to continue importing Iranian gas since the imposition of the economic embargo.

Baghdad was granted an extra 90-day waiver in March and it remains unclear whether it will be extended once again.

“If this stops then we will be deprived of 4,000 megawatts of electricity,” Musab Al Mudaris, spokesman for the Iraqi ministry of electricity, said on Monday.

The waiver stipulates that the countries must take steps to reduce Iranian purchases and move towards ending imports.

US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century,” aimed at resolving the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestine, looks dead in the water, as speculation continues that the plan will be far more favorable to Israel.
Gérard Araud, France’s outgoing envoy to the US, dubbed Israel an “apartheid state” in a farewell interview with the Atlantic magazine on Friday and suggested that the secret plan is “very close to what the Israelis want” and 99 percent “doomed to fail.”

Still, Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, are exerting “immense pressure” on the Palestinians to accept Trump’s deal, a senior Fatah official told Iran’s Press TV on Monday. Those countries are “using all means, including political and financial blackmail” to force Palestinians into agreeing with the deal “despite all the dangers it poses to the Palestinian cause.”

See, my book wasn’t aimed at cataloging the failures in Iraq per se, but in trying to make sure we didn’t do the same thing in Afghanistan. The initial title wasn’t We Meant Well, but Lessons for Afghanistan from the Reconstruction of Iraq. The early drafts were pretentious scholarly stuff, outlining our mistakes. Harvard Business School-like case studies. Maps. Footnotes. It would have sold maybe five copies, and so my editors encouraged me to add more funny parts. NPR’s Fresh Airactually added a laugh track to my interview. I figured I’d get the lessons across with humor more effectively anyway. In such situations, you have to think that way. You can’t believe that what you went through didn’t matter and keep getting out of bed every morning.

I now know officially that it did not matter. It was pointless. SIGAR shows I accomplished nothing.

Plans to link the railway networks of Iran, Iraq and Syria have been revealed by a source at the Syrian Ministry of Transport.

“Now, the countries are working on the resumption of the project connecting the railways of Syria, Iran and Iraq,” the source told Al-Watan newspaper yesterday.

“[They] are determining the date of the meeting between the representatives of the countries to develop the points of view.”

The strategic project seeks to link Tehran and Baghdad to the ports in Syria’s north-western city of Latakia. Before the war, 97 per cent of construction of the project on the Syrian side was complete but, large tracts of the railways were bombed during the eight-year conflict.

The notion is illogical because the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is a state actor, not a non-state actor. Terrorists are civilians who commit violence against other civilians to achieve some political goal.

The IRGC is sort of like the US national guard. It isn’t the formal army, but it is an adjunct to it.

If the US has a problem with IRGC actions, they should accuse the Iranian government of war crimes. States commit war crimes. There are international laws and institutions for dealing with war crimes.

But the practical side of the issue is that Iraqi Shiite militias close to the IRGC are essentially the hosts and protectors of the some 5,000 US troops in Iraq.

When the Pentagon starts throwing around estimates of who got killed and how in its assorted wars in the Middle East, they are often wildly inaccurate. Nowhere was this more apparent than a new briefing this week on estimates in the 2003-2011 Iraq War.

Designed for Special Envoy Brian Hook to give hawkish speeches on Iran, the briefing estimated that Iran was "responsible" for the deaths of 608 US troopsduring the Iraq War. This was an upward revision from a 2015 estimate of 500, and seemingly was only done to allow Hook to bring it up now.

A more accurate estimate would, of course, be zero deaths. Despite years of anti-Iran rhetoric, the US has never conclusively pinned a single death on the Iranian government or its forces. Rather, these deaths are all loosely attributable to Iraqi Shi’ite factions.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on the Iraqi prime minister to expel US forces as Washington continues to seek excuses to remain there after a 16-year devastating presence and hundreds of thousands of lives lost.

“The US goal in Iraq is beyond mere military presence – they are behind long-term interests as well as establishing a government like the military governments that formed after the occupation of Iraq,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi during their meeting in Tehran.

“The Iraqi government must do something [for] the US military to leave Iraq as soon as possible,” he said, quoted by the television channel Press TV.

The Arabic-language al-Ma'alomeh news website quoted the head of Badr Organization's office in al-Anbar province as saying that the number of US forces deployed in Ein al-Assad and al-Habaniyeh bases has increased to 10,000, adding that they have been supplied with the state-of-the-art weapons and military equipment.

The official said that the two bases also host the US marines who have been transferred recently from Syria to the region, noting that 90% of the US soldiers in Iraq are combat forces and are not considered as military advisors.

Relevant reports said last month that the American forces had established two military bases in al-Anbar province on Iraq's international road close to the borders with Syria and Jordan as political groups and politicians are trying to expel the US military troops from their country.

Saudi Arabia has opened a consulate in Baghdad for the first time in nearly 30 years in a sign of improving ties, Iraq said. The new consulate, which will issue visas to Iraqis, was opened during a two-day visit by a delegation headed by the Saudi minister of commerce and investment, AP reported. Riyadh seeks closer ties to Baghdad in an effort to counter Iran’s growing regional influence.

President Trump has promised repeatedly to end “endless wars,” during both his campaign and his tenure so far in office. Despite this rhetoric, endless — and, frankly, pointless —wars are, sadly, still the American norm.

Two more Americans were just killed in Afghanistan — a war that the Trump administration realises needs to end, but seems in no hurry to actually do so. In December 2018, Trump announced that all US troops would be withdrawn from Syria, only to later rescind that declaration in favour of a small force of 400 to 1,000 troops to stay behind indefinitely, complementing the more than 5,000 troops in Iraq, who are there to satiate the administration’s obsession with Iran.

Soldiers who were children when the Afghanistan war began are dying. It’s well past time to bring all of our troops from Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq home.

n comments that are likely exactly what the US wants to hear, Iraqi President Barham Salih claimed that he sees no “serious” opposition to US troops staying in Iraq, and believes there is a general consensus that the US can stay “as long as it is necessary.”

This would be good news for the Pentagon, where officials want to stay in Iraq effectively forever. Is it true though? Not from the comments coming out of materially every other major Iraqi official.

MPs from every major Shi’ite political bloc in parliament have demanded a timeline for the US troop withdrawal, and with the US pushing for action against Shi’ite militias, they’ve got grudges with most of the key factions now.

Sixteen years ago this week, the United States invaded Iraq. We went in on an unconvincing excuse, articulated by George W. Bush in a speech days before invasion:

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.”

To the lie about the possession of WMDs, Bush added a few more: that Hussein “trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda.” Moreover, left unchecked, those Saddam-supplied terrorists could “kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country.”

gypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi held a tripartite summit with Jordanian King Abdullah II and Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi on Sunday, during which they enacted several agreements that aimed to boost their relations.

Earlier on Sunday, Al-Sisi received King Abdullah at the presidential palace in Cairo, prior to the summit, and attended a military parade held in honour of King Abdullah.

During the Egyptian-Jordanian-Iraqi summit, the leaders highlighted their countries’ deep historical ties and stressed the importance of working together to enhance the level of coordination between the three countries.

Furthermore, the leaders reviewed the latest regional developments, and agreed to coordinate strategically among themselves and with the rest of the Arab countries to restore stability in the region and to find solutions to the crises facing it, especially the Palestinian cause.

Ari Fleischer, the former White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush, ignited a firestorm of controversy Wednesday when, while commenting on the 16th anniversary of the U.S invasion of Iraq, he sought to defend the reputation of his boss when it came to the veracity of the claims about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that underpinned President Bush’s case for war.

“The Iraq war began sixteen years ago tomorrow,” Fleischer tweeted on March 19. “There is a myth about the war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs were found, the left claimed ‘Bush lied. People died.’ This accusation itself is a lie. It’s time to put it to rest.”

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has returned from his first-ever trip to Iraq with a raft of agreements for expanded trade, cross-border infrastructure, and pledges of greater cooperation with Baghdad.

Leaders of both countries embraced strengthening ties — something Washington has been watching closely.

Iran is upping its game in Iraq as U.S. influence recedes, deepening ties with its war-weary neighbor and betting on bilateral economic activity to help offset tough sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

Sixteen years ago, the US and Britain committed a crime of historic proportion, the invasion and destruction of Iraq. It was as egregious an aggression as Nazi Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland.

Large numbers of Iraqi civilians died from 2003-2007. Iraq’s water and sewage systems were bombed, causing widespread cholera. The UN estimated 500,000 Iraqi children alone died as a result. Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, said it was ‘a price worth paying.’

But not so much for the 4,424 US soldiers killed in Iraq, or the 31,952 wounded, many with devastating brain and neurological injuries. Nor for US taxpayers who forked out over $1 trillion for this botched war and are still paying the bill – which was hidden in the national debt.

On the sixteenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, as the US government threatens punitive action against International Criminal Court investigators for attempting to look into US war crimes, former George W Bush administration Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has decided to publish a Twitter thread claiming that Bush did not lie to the world about Iraq.

Here is a transcript of the full thread by Fleischer:

The Iraq war began sixteen years ago tomorrow. There is a myth about the war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs were found, the left claimed “Bush lied. People died.” This accusation itself is a lie. It’s time to put it to rest.

Ari Fleischer, a press secretary for President George W. Bush, marked the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with a full-bore effort on Twitter to exonerate his former boss of the charge that his administration invented the rationale for a war that has cost countless lives.

“The Iraq war began sixteen years ago tomorrow,” wrote Fleischer. “There is a myth about the war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] were found, the left claimed ‘Bush lied. People died.’ This accusation itself is a lie. It's time to put it to rest.”

US military's presence in Iraq falling out of favor across several political blocs.

In the wake of the ISIS War in Iraq, Pentagon officials will tell you what they’ve been saying all along, that America’s intention is to stay in Iraq, and that there is no consideration being given to leaving. It’s not clear the US has spoken to the Iraqi government about this, however.

While many Iraqis accepted the offer of help in the more desperate moments of the ISIS War, the US military has quickly worn out its welcome. Across a number of major political blocs in Iraq, there is growing consensus that the US, and indeed all foreign military forces, need to go.

This has been brewing for months. The Iraqis saw Trump’s visit to Iraq, during which he didn’t meet the Iraqi PM, as a sign of disrespect. That the Pentagon keeps insisting they’re staying in Iraq, without asking the Iraqis, only adds to the sense that the US isn’t really an invited guest in any real sense.

A rescue operation is currently underway, an emergency source told Sputnik. The source has named overloading as a reason behind the accident.

The death toll as a result of the ferry overturned in Iraq has climbed to 71, the country's Interior Ministry stated.

Earlier in the day, a source in the local emergency services told Sputnik that a ferry has overturned in Iraq. He specified that the accident was reasoned by overloading and the rise of the water table in the Tigris river due to unleashed floodgates.

The US granted Iraq a 90-day waiver exempting it from sanctions to buy energy from Iran, a State Department official said on Wednesday. The latest extension allows Baghdad to keep importing Iranian gas that is critical for Iraqi power production. “Iraq was granted a 90-day waiver to purchase energy imports from Iran,” Reuters quoted the official as saying. The last sanctions waiver for Iraq was granted by Washington on December 21. The Trump administration re-imposed sanctions on Iran’s energy exports in November, citing its nuclear program and meddling in the Middle East.

Turkey and Iran have launched a joint military operation against Kurdish rebels along Turkey's eastern border, according to an official.

Suleyman Soylu, Turkey's interior minister, said the offensive on Monday targeted the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"As of 8:00 this morning, we started an operation with Iran aimed at the PKK on our eastern border," he told a crowd in the Mediterranean city of Antalya. "We will announce the outcome [later]."

A prominent Iraqi security expert revealed intensifying US pressures on Baghdad to avoid approving a bill that envisages expulsion of foreign forces, saying that the American embassy in Iraq is acting as the US-Israeli operations room against the region.
Abbas al-Ardawi was quoted by the Arabic-language al-Ma'alomeh news website as saying on Monday that the US administration is exerting pressures on Baghdad and killing time to prolong its deployment in Iraq.

He added that relocation of terrorists from the town of Baqouz in Eastern Syria to the US bases in Iraq is aimed at security tensions in the country and finding a pretext for continued deployment of American forces, noting that the Iraqi parliamentarians certainly want expulsion of all US forces from the country as soon as possible given the fact that the Iraqi army is fully prepared to fight against the terrorist groups.

The investment commission of Najaf governorate signed on Tuesday an initial agreement with a Chinese company to build a monorail for the city.

An official statement said that the head of the commission Dhergam Keko signed the agreement with a Hong Kong-based company to build a monorail.

Last week, the company inked a memorandum of understanding with the investment commission of Najaf city after explaining the project details and the Chinese company's potentials and capabilities.

"The project will provide an accessible and fast transportation way to the people of the city as well as all tourists," Keko said.

On this day is the day in 2003 the US invaded Iraq.

How did this “little” point get lost in the NSA story?

The NSA’s JOB is to spy on the communications of our enemies, not to listen to and record your phone calls.

Here’s a case where they not only got it massively wrong, it also looks like they remained silent while their “evidence” was used to drive the US into a ruinous war.

Did they present false information to the Bush criminals or did they merely sit back and do nothing when that evidence was grossly misrepresented.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

The agreements sealed during the visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Iraq mark the start of the largest economic cooperation project between the two neighboring states in the region.

In the 1990s, when the US decided after Operation Desert Storm and annihilation of 70 percent of Iraq’s Army to re-instate Saddam Hussain rather than conquering Baghdad, there was only one thing revolving in the mind of Washington’s politicians: to prevent the Shiite revolutionary movement, which was gaining momentum after the Intifada (uprisings) in Southern Iraq and becoming an independent powerhouse, from getting strengthened.

Despite the fact that in 1991 the Iraqi army had lost control of all Shiite regions, the scale was tipped in favor of Saddam’s regime when the US-led coalition allowed the dictator to fly his Mil Mi-24 helicopters which led to the largest massacre of the Shiite population in Iraq.

While the US has had a strategy to contain and isolate Iran, Iran continues to seek and build friendships with its regional neighbors. There are many indications that the US will not tolerate this for much longer.

As an aspiring journalist, it is hard to keep up with which country is at the top of Donald Trump’s “to-bomb” list, given the target appears to change every week or so. Since the infamous days of his campaign trail up until the present day, the US president has held a deep animosity towards Tehran. However, the government’s focus appears to shift away from the Islamic Republic periodically – one minute it’s North Korea, every April since his election he also decides he briefly wants to bomb Assad in Syria, and most recently, his entire administration has raved incessantly about Venezuela.

I listened to John Kerry’s optimistic speech at the COP21 Paris climate talks about how the United States is allegedly stepping up to the financial challenge to help poor countries that are or will be facing life-threatening consequences from catastrophic climate change disasters with a sense cynicism.

Some might argue that it is possible that President Obama and John Kerry are trying, but their powers are limited for the reason that they owe their allegiance to the petroleum and weapon industries.

But why then would the US government spend trillions of dollars on missiles, drones, fighter jets, and an infinite supply of bombs to gain oil control in the Middle East if the White House and Congress cared about transitioning from fossil fuels?

The United States Entity lost the war in Iraq. That fact determines the Entity’s position in the Middle East today. After having destroyed Saddam’s army and dispossessing the Sunnis in favor of the Shi’ites, after Abu Ghraib and it’s indelible pictures, after the total destruction of Fallujah, in short after a victory achieved with the utmost brutality, contempt and humiliation of Iraq and Iraqis, the Entity was in charge. Then the “insurgents” appeared. They put improvised explosive devices along the roads so, with a phone call, they could destroy patrols of the Entity. They made car bombs so that every vehicle approaching a check-point might spell doom. They donned suicide vests to blow themselves and any nearby Entity soldiers up. Entity soldiers couldn’t go into the streets. Every move they made could be their last. The enemy was everywhere and nowhere. These people would rather die then be ruled by these idiotic mechanized barbarians.

A prominent security expert warned of the US attempts to establish concentration camps for the ISIL terrorists and their family members who have fled from Eastern Syria in the Western deserts of al-Anbar.

Hazem al-Bawi was quoted by the Arabic-language al-Ma'aloumeh news website as saying on Friday that the US aims to gather the ISIL terrorists in the Western deserts of Iraq after withdrawal from Baqouz region in Syria.

He said intel shows the Iraqi government is under pressure now to accommodate thousands of terrorists and their family members who have fled Baqouz region in camps in Iraq's Western deserts.

In relevant remarks on Saturday, a senior member of the Iraqi parliament's security committee revealed that the US forces were training terrorist groups at their bases in three provinces of Iraq.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says an upcoming visit by President Hassan Rouhani to Iraq — the president’s first — will be the beginning of a new chapter in Tehran-Baghdad relations.

“Mr. Rouhani is traveling to Iraq for the first time in his presidency, and we consider the trip a new start in our relations with Iraq,” Zarif told the Iraqi al-Forat satellite TV network in an interview aired on Saturday.

Zarif referred to the measures of cooperation that are scheduled to be bilaterally approved during the Iranian president’s visit to Iraq and called them “historic.” New cooperation, he said, will be in the areas of transit, oil, joint industrial work, and the dredging of Arvand River.

The Iranian president will be starting his three-day visit to Iraq on Monday.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is in Baghdad on a trip aimed at solidifying strategic ties despite US efforts to keep the two neighbors apart and curb Iran's influence in the region.

He met with his Iraqi counterpart Barham Salih shortly after arrival on Monday for important talks which the Iranian president described as “very good.”

“Strengthening ties between Tehran and Baghdad works to the benefit of both countries and we won’t let this positive path towards progress slow down to a halt,” Rouhani said at a joint news conference.

Salih described the trip as “very important” and said the two sides had agreed on new frameworks for cooperation which would be unveiled later in the day.

“We need to get past trivial details in mutual relations and think about the bigger and broader space for cooperation and ties because this would best serve the interests of both countries,” he added.

As Daesh loses its final sliver of territory in Syria, US and Iraqi leaders are warning the militant group isn’t gone for good, and some think tanks are warning that the group could reemerge powerfully in Iraq. Those dangers, however, seem nearly as overblown as those the Pentagon is employing to keep US troops in Syria.

Outside the town of al-Baghuz Fawqani, the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces, composed primarily of Syrian Kurdish militias, have captured hundreds of Daesh militants fleeing from the onslaught. Baghuz is only a couple of miles from the Syrian border with Iraq, across which the roughly 2,000 US forces in Syria will soon withdraw as the war draws to a close.

Despite having killed more than 4,000 fighters linked to the Daesh terror group in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the Royal Air Force (RAF) has only killed one civilian, the UK's Ministry of Defense claims.

Turkey says it is planning to carry out a joint attack with Iran against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, which has waged a three-and-a-half decade armed campaign against Ankara for independence.

"God willing, we will carry out a joint operation against the PKK together with Iran,” Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu told Anadolu news agency Wednesday.

He did not specify which PKK positions were going to be targeted in the planned operation or when the attack would take place. However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has in the past indicated that he would order the military to attack militant hideouts in Iraq.

March 2019 marks the 16th anniversary of the onslaught of the war on Iraq. The US-NATO led invasion of Iraq started on 20 March 2003 on the pretext that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

This month we are also commemorating the Vietnam War launched on March 8, 1965 following the adoption by the US Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to dispatch ground forces to Vietnam.

Later this month we will be commemorating NATO’s War on Yugoslavia which was launched on March 24, 1999 under Operation “Noble Anvil”.

All these wars, according to the media, are peace-making undertakings. They are tagged as “humanitarian wars” under the banner of “Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

This article by Iraq veteran war correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot was first published by Global Research in August 2010.

The Pentagon rerouted millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and vehicles from Iraq to Syria in the second half of 2018, Al-Monitor has learned, as US-backed forces cornered the last remnants of the Islamic State (IS).

In a series of notifications to Congress reviewed by Al-Monitor, the Defense Department said it had determined that a bevy of supplies purchased by the Pentagon for the Iraqi military would instead go to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Pentagon sent lawmakers its last reprogramming notification for 2018 on Dec. 31, 12 days after President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.

The stock of equipment includes nearly 50 Humvees, 20 mine-resistant vehicles, 40 enhanced armament carriers and nearly 700 light anti-tank weapons. The Pentagon also approved the transfer of more than 2,400 mortar rounds, 25 mine rollers and dozens of charges used to destroy mines and other explosives, the letters indicate.

Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military firm Blackwater, struggled to explain his apparent anti-Muslim sentiment when confronted by Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan.

During his Head to Head talk show, Hasan asked Prince why he called people in Iraq “chanting barbarians American troops had been sent to liberate” in his memoir. Prince explained that people who set off car bombs in packed squares to hurt American troops deserve the name, especially given that civilians are also hurt.

Hasan immediately called him out: “You were not sent to liberate terrorists. Sounds like you are talking about Iraqis.” Prince was left speechless for a moment as the audience burst into applause. Attempting to smooth things over, the Blackwater founder replied that he did not have any role in making the decision to “liberate” Iraq.

U.S forces are setting up new military bases in Iraq, particularly in the province of al-Anbar, to closely monitor the Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut resistance axis and to seize the large amount of gas present in this region. This will present a problem for resistance axis forces, and these moves go without the approval of the Iraqi government.

The Lebanese daily AlAkhbar reported that US forces were installing two new bases on the international road linking Baghdad to Damascus and Amman, defying Iraqi calls for their withdrawal from their country.