Congress will consider imposing new sanctions on Russia and Iran as well as North Korea, after Republicans and Democrats agreed to changes that will allow the legislation to move ahead. The bill also aims to prevent President Trump from relaxing sanctions without lawmakers' consent.

An earlier form of the sanctions legislation had sailed through the Senate with a 97-2 vote last month. But that legislation focused only on Russia and Iran. It then lost momentum in the House after representatives said they wanted to include North Korea. That conflict has been resolved, lawmakers say.

When he was 17, five years ago, Mujtaba al-Sweikat committed the “crime” of participating in a pro-democracy rally in Saudi Arabia.

Instead of attending Western Michigan University, as he had planned to do that fall, he was put in prison. Reports are now leaking out of Saudi Arabia that al-Sweikat will soon be beheaded for his transgression.

It’s just the latest reminder that Saudi Arabia is America’s worst best friend. The U.S. does get something out of its relationship with Saudi Arabia; there is real intelligence sharing, and the Kingdom has used its power over OPEC to drive oil prices down when we want to humiliate Russia or accomplish some other goal. That’s not nothing.

In 2007, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies declared with high confidence Iran had no nuclear weapons program. They stated this again in 2011. Under the nuclear deal, Iran exported almost all of its uranium, stopped enriching to 20 percent, shut down thousands of centrifuges, poured concrete into the core of its heavy water reactor, and allows U.N. inspectors to crawl all over every facility.

Is Iran, despite all this, operating a secret nuclear weapons program? Or is this War Party propaganda meant to drag us into another Mideast war?

To ascertain the truth, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should call the heads of the CIA and DIA, and the Director of National Intelligence, to testify in open session.

We are told we are menaced also by a Shiite Crescent rising and stretching from Beirut to Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran.

And who created this Shiite Crescent?

“Iran must be free. The dictatorship must be destroyed. Containment is appeasement and appeasement is surrender.”

Thus does our Churchill, Newt Gingrich, dismiss, in dealing with Iran, the policy of containment crafted by George Kennan and pursued by nine U.S. presidents to bloodless victory in the Cold War.

Why is containment surrender? “Because freedom is threatened everywhere so long as this dictatorship stays in power,” says Gingrich.

But how is our freedom threatened by a regime with 3 percent of our GDP that has been around since Jimmy Carter was president?

A senior Russian official has denounced fresh US sanctions against Iran on "unfounded" grounds, saying they will only undermine the implementation of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran.

The New York Times’ Tim Arango took what could have been an interesting topic for war journalism—Iran’s increased role in Iraq—and morphed it into a revisionist history of American and Saudi involvement in the Middle East. In doing so, Arango paints the U.S. as a noble, freedom-loving nation on a mission to improve the lives of average Iraqis, and Iran as a sinister imperial force working to expand its sphere of influence across the region.

Iran's fulfillment of its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did not stop the US from carrying on and even expanding its longstanding policy of sanctions against Tehran using different pretexts, yet this approach is unlikely to succeed in the goal of installing a US-friendly government in Tehran, experts told Sputnik.

Iran has dismissed as “baseless” the recent US allegation that Tehran is undermining regional stability, saying American officials perceive the Islamic Republic’s “wise” policies vis-à-vis the developments in the region as a threat to their meddlesome policies.

The United States seeks to retain its diminishing power as an empire by imposing new sanctions on Iran, says an American analyst.

Myles Hoenig, a former Green Party candidate for Congress, made the remarks in an interview when asked about new sanctions imposed on Iran by the administration of President Donald Trump.

The US Departments of Treasury and State said Tuesday they were targeting 18 Iranian individuals, groups and networks. The new sanctions freeze any assets the targets may have in the US and prevents Americans from doing business with them.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani responded to the latest batch of US sanctions, imposed on particular Iranian business entities and individuals, saying they contradict the purpose of the nuclear deal, adding that Iran will respond appropriately.

Less than 24 hours after formally certifying Iran’s compliance with the P5+1 nuclear deal, the Trump Administration has announced a new round of sanctions against Iran, nominally for having a ballistic missile program.

Iranian officials have struck back at the Trump administration’s verbal attacks on Iran, suggesting the U.S. should worry about its own domestic problems before turning a critical eye towards them.

The US has to move its bases 1,000km away from Iran’s borders if it plans to keep sanctions in place against Tehran, or risk paying a price, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said.

President Hassan Rouhani has vowed that Iran will reciprocate the sanctions that are imposed by the United States against the Islamic Republic “under any pretext.”

“Surely, if the Americans seek to apply sanctions against us under whatever title or pretext, the great nation of Iran would aptly respond to them,” President Hassan Rouhani told a government session on Wednesday.

The administration of US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that it was imposing new economic sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile program.

The US Departments of Treasury and State said they were targeting 18 Iranian individuals, groups and networks, freezing their assets in the US and preventing Americans from doing business with them.

Walk into almost any market in Iraq and the shelves are filled with goods from Iran — milk, yogurt, chicken. Turn on the television and channel after channel broadcasts programs sympathetic to Iran.

A new building goes up? It is likely that the cement and bricks came from Iran. And when bored young Iraqi men take pills to get high, the illicit drugs are likely to have been smuggled across the porous Iranian border.

The Trump administration shares Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's concerns over Iran's presence in southern Syria.

Pressures and sanctions against Iran’s missile power is aimed at weakening the Islamic establishment, Commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said.

Jerusalem maintains that Iran is not only interested in sending military advisers to Syria, but also is keen on establishing ground and air bases there.

Former NSC head says Iranian nuke deal source of problems Iran is causing in region, and deal is "worse than we imagined."

President Trump certified Iranian compliance with President Obama's nuclear deal despite repeatedly telling top advisers that he didn't want to certify Iranian compliance, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Trump certified that Tehran is abiding by its end of the deal on Monday — his second time doing so since taking office in January.

But the president has fiercely criticized the agreement, calling it "the worst deal ever." Trump made that position known in meetings with his top security aides and advisers, the Times reported.

In an hour-long meeting last week, for example, Trump spent 55 minutes telling some of his highest-ranking security advisers that he wanted to abandon the Iran deal.

But top Trump administration members, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, pressed the president to maintain the agreement for now.

The Trump administration told Congress for a second time Monday that Iran would face consequences for breaching "the spirit" of nuclear deal.

President Donald Trump, who lambasted the 2015 pact as a candidate, gave himself more time to decide whether to scuttle it or let it stand. Instead, senior Trump administration officials sought to emphasize their deep concerns about Iran's non-nuclear behavior and vowed that those transgressions won't go unpunished.

The officials also said the US would slap Tehran with new sanctions penalizing it for developing ballistic missiles and other activity.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and "the entire administration judge that Iran is unquestionably in default of the spirit" of the agreement, one official said.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is set to make an announcement on Iran's nuclear agreement "very shortly."

White House spokesman Sean Spicer made the announcement on Monday.

"The secretary of state will have an announcement very shortly on that deal," Spicer told reporters. "I think you all know that the president has made very clear that he thought this was a bad deal, a bad deal for the United States."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear today that he and his government opposes the ongoing ceasefire in Southern Syria, a deal negotiated between the United States and Russia, and which has continued to hold throughout the past week.

Netanyahu made the comments during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, declaring himself totally opposed to the ceasefire. Israeli officials revealed that the objections are primarily related to Iran still having forces inside Syria supporting the Assad government.

Israeli officials revealed that the objections are primarily related to Iran still having forces inside Syria supporting the Assad government.

Officials also say that during the US-Russia negotiations which led to the deal, Netanyahu presented the two sides with a “list of demands,” mostly insisting that Shi’ite forces couldn’t be allowed in southern Syria at all and that Iran could not be allowed to “consolidate” its position in Syria.

Israel uncovered on Friday that Iran has lately leased from the Assad regime an airport in central Syria, hinting it would target it.

Israeli military sources asserted that Tel Aviv would not allow Tehran to lease an airport in Syria, and would also confront current Syrian-Iranian negotiations to establish a land base capable of supporting Iranian-linked fighters.

According to the same sources, the land base would be able to back 5,000 Iranian militiamen believed to be mercenaries from Afghanistan and Pakistan under the command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the Islamic Republic has been abiding by its commitments under the historic nuclear deal with the world powers, but the US has been violating the agreement.

Iran's top military official has warned the US of the repercussions which Washington's possible branding of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization would have.

An Iranian court has sentenced a graduate student from Princeton University to 10 years in jail on spying charges, Iran's judiciary spokesman said on Sunday, the latest case involving dual citizens held on security charges in the country.

Xiyue Wang, 37, was accused of "spying under the cover of research," said Mizan, the Iranian judiciary's official news site. Wang was born in China but was naturalized as an American citizen.

Slaughter of the Houthis, indiscriminate bombing, famine, cholera — as recompense to the Saudis for the Iran deal? In his final year in office, President Obama’s foreign policy featured the bombing of seven Islamic countries by the U.S. military. Despite fears (and hopes) that President Trump would withdraw America from the world stage and institute a fortress-America foreign policy, the new guard has put Obama’s foreign policy on autopilot. The most significant adjustment Trump made was to give more discretion to his generals. The rate of bombing has increased in all seven nations.

Nowhere is this policy more craven and disastrous than in Yemen, where the U.S. has backed Saudi Arabia’s crusade to re-install Sunni general Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in power.

While President Trump campaigned repeatedly on the idea of the US pulling out of the P5+1 nuclear deal in Iran, much of that has hinged on being able to claim in some way that Iran isn’t keeping up its end of the bargain. The problem is, they are.

Facing a deadline of Monday, President Trump is going to have to re-certify to Congress that Iran is totally complying with its obligations under the P5+1 deal, which effectively delays his expected effort to force a “renegotiation,” an idea that no other party of the treaty seems at all interested in.

The fact that Iran is complying with the deal is no surprise, of course, as the IAEA issues monthly reports to that effect anyhow. Still, it wasn’t a slam dunk that the administration was going to tell the truth, and there was speculation that they might withhold the re-certification.

An analogue of the Russian surface-to-air missile complex C-300 will be created in Iran, reports Trend news agency.

According to Amir Farzad Ismaili, commander of "Khatam-al-Anbia" in Iran, the complex "Bavar-373" is an analogue of the Russian C-300, it will be transferred to the security forces in 2018-2019.

"Until the end of the year we will test the complex "Bavar-373" which will become a part of the unified system of air defense of the state," he said.

In its reporting on a dubious lawsuit alleging Iranian meta-involvement in 9/11, the New York Times badly misunderstood the case and maintained for more than three years, in the paper of record, that the government of Iran “sponsored” the September 11, 2001, attacks. The belated correction, issued late Wednesday night on two widely spaced articles on the topic, unceremoniously noted that Iran did not, in fact, help commit the 9/11 attacks.

The correction came after a report about a lawsuit last week mistakenly claimed that Iran sponsored 9/11, something that had not been alleged in the suit. The article (6/29/17,archived) originally read:

The government has agreed to distribute proceeds from the building’s sale, which could bring as much as $1 billion, to the families of victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks, including the September 11 attacks.

Israel seeks guarantees Iran-backed groups like Hezbollah won't operate near border once Syria is divided, Times of London reports

Iran’s homegrown long-range air defense missile system dubbed “Bavar-373” is planned to come into operation in the next Iranian year (begins on March 21, 2018), Commander of Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili announced.

Now comes President Donald Trump. His policies for the Middle East are similar to those of the previous two administrations but on steroids. Trump has already escalated the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. When Trump sends his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to solve the seventy-year-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu cannot hide his happiness with the appointment. The Democrats and the media are too busy with election results, hacking, and the Russian probe to pay much attention to Middle East policy, with one exception – Israel.

Commander of Iran’s Army Ground Force Brigadier General Kiomars Heidari said the country’s state-of-the-art tank dubbed “Karrar” that has been designed and manufactured by domestic experts will be delivered to his forces in the near future.

French energy giant Total is to sign a $4.8 billion agreement to develop an Iranian offshore gas field, the oil ministry said on Sunday, in the biggest foreign deal since sanctions were eased.

"The international agreement for the development of phase 11 of South Pars will be signed on Monday in the presence of the oil ministry and managers of Total, the Chinese company CNPC and Iranian company Petropars," a ministry spokesman told AFP.

Total signed a preliminary deal with Iran in November as the lead partner alongside China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)

Ken Taylor, the Canadian diplomat celebrated 30 years ago for hiding U.S. embassy personnel during the Iranian revolution, actively spied for the Americans and helped them plan an armed incursion into the country.

Mr. Taylor, ambassador in Iran from 1977 to 1980, became "the de facto CIA station chief" in Tehran after the U.S. embassy was seized by students on Nov. 4, 1979, and 63 Americans, including the four-member Central Intelligence Agency contingent, were taken hostage.

Had his espionage been discovered, Mr. Taylor told The Globe and Mail in an interview this week, "the Iranians wouldn't have tolerated it. And the consequences may have been severe."

The Iranian authorities have allocated about $300 million to develop the country’s missile program to counter "threats from enemies," Mehr agency reported, citing the chairman of the Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, Alaeddin Boroujerdi.

On Monday 26th June, the White House released a statement saying that the United States had “identified potential preparations for another chemical attack by the Assad regime…” It went on to say: “If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, followed that statement by tweeting,

“Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.”

On Tuesday morning, speaking on BBC 4 Today programme, the British Defence Minister Sir Michael Fallon was asked how Britain would respond to another American attack on Syria, and he responded “we will support” future US action in response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

And so, three months after the US State Department famously flip-flopped, when first at the end of March Rex Tillerson said at a news conference that “the longer term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people" adding that "our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out" only to follow one week later with Tillerson's warning to Russia that "coalition steps are underway to remove Assad" which in turn segued into the first US attack on Syrian soil with the launch of no less than 59 cruise missiles, the US has done it again and according to Foreign Policy, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has once again told the U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres that the fate of Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad now lies in the hands of Russia, and that the Trump administration’s priority is limited to defeating the Islamic State.

Shah of Iran Discusses Israel Lobby influence on US, 40 Years Ago.

In the wake of the Arab uprisings, we are now seeing an assertion of both of these tendencies. Specifically, the current blockade is a play by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to fully assert their hegemony over the region and to put Qatar back in its place.

But this is not just about Saudi Arabia and the UAE; it fundamentally expresses a general counterrevolutionary process that has been present since the beginning of the uprisings – restoring the status quo of authoritarian neoliberal states that has served the interests of the GCC as a whole (including Qatar) for several decades. All of this must also be seen through the lens of the Gulf’s continued and ever-strengthening alliance with the U.S. and other Western powers.

It’s very difficult to accuse Iran of being in violation of the P5+1 nuclear deal, because they are plainly not. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is responsible for policing the deal, confirms on a monthly basis that this remains the case, and that Iran has not been in violation of the pact.

That’s an inconvenience for the Trump Administration, which has repeatedly condemned the deal and insisted Iran would violate it. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley appears to have decided that the path of least resistance is overt lying, today claiming at the UN Security Council that Iran had “repeated violations” of the deal.

The claim was made literally during a meeting at which all the other permanent members of the Security Council were talking up how great it is that the deal is in place, and that Iran is showing such a deep commitment to its continued participation.

Regional military deployment is forming for the next stage. Iraqi Popular Mobilization forces, Syrian army and the allied forces, as well as Hezbollah are the main players on the ground, Elias Hanna told Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Saturday.

'The new situation covers a vast area from Quneitra in Golan heights to Lebanon, Syria and Iraq borders and Iran,' he added in his exclusive interveiw with IRNA.

Iran in the massive front with its rapid-response forces and various missiles have become a headache for Israel, the former Lebanese General believed.

“The Saudi king’s decision to elevate his son Mohammed bin Salman … is not merely the internal affair of the royal hierarchy, but a game-changing international event. The king’s son is ready to step into his allotted place in a new US-Arab-Israeli alliance established by President Trump in May, along with the UAE, Egyptian and Israeli leaders that will seek to dominate Middle East affairs. Israel will be accepted in a regional lineup for the first time alongside the strongest Sunni Arab nations who all share similar objectives, especially the aim to stop Iran” [emphasis added].

“A game-changing international event”? Why exactly are these Israelis so excited; why should the elevation of bin Salman, known by the initials MbS, be such a game-changer? Is there here something new? And how come the dismissal of Prince Nayef, whom MbS replaced as crown prince and who was a Western favorite, barely ruffled a leaf in protest?

Iran has emerged the victor in the Syrian civil war. And that bodes ill for the rest of us.

Commenting on the above report, Alexander Gusev, a political analyst and director of the Institute for Strategic Planning noted to Sputnik Radio that the US broadcaster has previously discredited itself more than once, however this time the information might be truthful.

He pointed out that CNN reported on the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, along with two destroyers and two cruisers being deployed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea for routine patrol positions.

"The destroyers and cruisers could fire Tomahawk missiles without putting pilots in manned aircraft at risk. In addition, dozens of aircraft already in the Middle East for operations against ISIS (Daesh) in Syria and Iraq could be used in a potential strike," the broadcaster said.

The long-simmering conflict between the United States and Iran is fast escalating toward war. The battlefield is the desert expanse of eastern Syria where civil war has raged for the last five years. Tehran wants to keep U.S. forces out of the area, while Washington wants to use the region to wage war against Iran’s ally, Syria.

After 15 years of unsuccessful war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the Trump administration is pursuing a policy of "regime change" in Iran that might lead to a third U.S. ground war in the Middle East since 2001.

Restraint is breaking down. While President Obama resisted U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war, Trump has approved it. While Obama pursued dialog with Iran, Trump has embraced the new Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who laid down his country’s new, harsher line in April. ‘We will not wait until the battle is in Saudi Arabia," he said, "but we will work so the battle is there in Iran."

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed the Security Council on Thursday for failing to take any action against Iran, which she said had “repeatedly and deliberately violated” sanctions imposed by the body.

“The Security Council has failed to even take minimal steps to respond to these violations,” Haley told a council briefing on Iran. “We must … show Iran that we will not tolerate their egregious flaunting of UN resolutions.”

Most UN sanctions were lifted 18 months ago under a deal Iran made with key world powers to curb its nuclear program. But Iran is still subject to an arms embargo and other restrictions, which are not technically part of the nuclear agreement.

Iran was one of Donald Trump’s favorite boogeymen on the campaign trail—specifically the Obama Administration’s deal to lift some sanctions in return for a rollback and/or slowdown of the Iranian nuclear program. The effectiveness of this exchange cannot be truly ascertained for years, as the swap created immediate relief for the Iranians and long-term concessions to the Western world, but we know that Iran has been freed up to funnel more support to their proxy groups promoting terrorism—like Hezbollah—and so it is very easy to denigrate this deal right now. However, the entire motivation behind the agreement was to push the United States and Iran off the path to war—as the main point of concern from Barack Obama’s perspective was allowing a country that harbors terrorism to own a nuclear weapon, which would likely set off a nuclear arms race in the most volatile area of the world.

So what’s with the continued U.S. presence in al-Tanaf, an area where there is no ISIS presence and where the Syrian army and its allies have been making huge progress against their militant Islamist opponents?

Since regime-change plans fell flat in Syria, Beltway hawks have been advocating for the partitioning of Syria into at least three zones of influence – a buffer zone for Israel and Jordan in the south, a pro-U.S. Kurdish entity along the north and north-east, and control over the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Since regime-change plans fell flat in Syria, Beltway hawks have been advocating for the partitioning of Syria into at least three zones of influence – a buffer zone for Israel and Jordan in the south, a pro-U.S. Kurdish entity along the north and north-east, and control over the Syrian-Iraqi border.

The Arabic-language al-Mayadeen quoted well-informed sources as saying that a US navy's P-8A Poseidon spy plane has been spotted flying over Syria's coastal line along Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The sources told al-Mayadeen that the US aerial operation to gather information along Syria's coastal regions has unusually increased in recent days, adding that unusual operation of the US reconnaissance flights show that the US army is paving the ground for carrying out a new move in the region.

The Spokesperson for the United States administration accused Syria of preparing to stage a chemical attack in the Arab country, threatening that Washington would make Damascus pay “a heavy price.”

Moscow has warned the US against taking unilateral action in Syria, as there is no threat from the Syrian military, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said. The statement comes after the US accused Syria of preparing for a chemical attack, without giving any evidence.

Asked if Russia had warned the US administration against any unilateral action in Syria, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, replied that Russian officials have “always spoken about that, including in relation to their [US] latest strikes on Syrian armed forces.”

“We believe that it’s unacceptable and breaches Syria’s sovereignty, isn’t caused by any military need, and there is no threat to the US specialists from the Syrian Army. So it’s incendiary, provocative action,” Gatilov said, as cited by RIA Novosti.

At present, the Young Prince of Riyadh, Mohammed Bin Salman, has been given the key to power. This has happened at a very difficult time for not only the Kingdom, but also for the whole Gulf region and its neighbors. The choice made by King Salman to promote his son is a remarkable one but could, from a Saudi perspective, be the only viable choice. The need for a 180 degree change in the economic and social policy which keeps Saudi Arabia a strategic regional player is essential. Without radical changes, such as those presented in Vision 2030 or the Aramco IPO project, the Kingdom’s future could be bleak, as the era for “Rentier States” is over.

'Zolfaqar' is a new 7.65mm home-made assault rifle with an unloaded weight of 3.5kg that was unveiled in Tehran on Saturday. The new enhanced marksman rifle is an adopted version of Heckler & Koch G36? ACR and FN SCAR assault rifles with a range of 400 to 800(with optics) meters

But the single most important reason for the Qatar tilt is obvious to anyone who knows how to read a map. The U.S. leases the al-Udeid Air Base, southwest of Doha, which is home to the Air Force’s 379th Air Expeditionary Wing. The U.S. (and the Qataris), not only mount fighter-bombers from al-Udeid against ISIS units in Iraq and Syria, the base serves as the first line of defense against Iranian encroachments in the region. Even more crucially, al-Udeid not only protects America’s Persian Gulf allies, it protects Israel – and would be a launching point for U.S. aircraft against Iran were Israel to be attacked by the Islamic Republic.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani warned the White House against any possible military move against the Syrian government under the pretext of “false claims”, saying it would be tantamount to “playing with fire”.

Last night, the White House issued a surprise statement accusing the Syrian government of preparing a chemical weapons attack and threatening to make them pay “a heavy price” for doing so. This immediately suggested another US attack on Syria was imminent. No one saw this coming, including the Pentagon and the State Department.

Pentagon officials say they were totally unaware if this putative evidence of a chemical attack until the moment the White House issued the statement, something they completely didn’t see coming. The State Department, which would normally be involved in coordinating such an important press release, also wasn’t consulted.

Raising speculation that the US is about to attack Syria again, the White House has issued a statement late this evening accusing the Assad government in Syria of conducting “potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack,” claiming that such an attack would involve the “mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.”

The late night report was extremely light on details, but threatened to make Syria’s government and military “pay a heavy price,” suggesting that the statement was only issued to lay the groundwork for a new round of US attacks on Syrian government targets.

The US last attacked Syria in earnest in early April, firing 49 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base. The attack was carried out despite reports ultimately showing that the US intelligence community found no evidence a chemical weapon attack took place.

A warning from the White House to Syrian President Bashar Assad about another possible chemical weapons attack was also aimed at two of Assad's key backers, Russia and Iran, the U.S ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday.

During testimony before the House panel on foreign operations, Nikki Haley also called Assad "barbaric" and said she can't envision a "healthy Syria" if he remains in power.

"The goal is at this point not just to send Assad a message, but to send Russia and Iran a message," Haley said. "That if this happens again, we are putting you on notice. My hope is that the president's warning will certainly get Iran and Russia to take a second look, and I hope that it will caution Assad."

Day after spillover from Syria prompts retaliatory IDF strike, PM stresses that Israel will not allow the Islamic Republic to establish a permanent presences on the Golan.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the Islamic Republic’s policy is based on strengthening relations with Qatar, stressing that “brotherly and friendly” Tehran-Doha ties will be beneficial to regional nations.

In a phone call with the Qatari Emir, president also says Iran's air space, ground and sea will be open to Doha.

“The goal of the recent incidents is to forget the cause of Palestine,” Nasrallah said while addressing a ceremony held in southern suburbs of Beirut.

The ceremony was held to mark the International Quds Day which is held worldwide annually on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan to demonstrate support for the cause of Palestine and express hatred towards atrocities of the Zionist occupiers against the defenseless Palestinians.

As the Saudi rulers have acknowledged, they are trying to take war into Iran with the help of the Takfiri groups., Nasrallah added.

Writing in the Guardian, Ali Akbar Salehi said “lavish arms purchases” by regional actors – a reference to the Saudi purchase of $100bn of US arms during Donald Trump’s recent visit to Riyadh – would be seen as provocative in Tehran and that it would be unrealistic to expect Iran to remain “indifferent”.

The new crown prince is known to be a bit unpredictable. In the early phase of the oil price meltdown, he said that prices did not matter. But the plunge below $30 per barrel in early 2016 seemed to have changed the calculus. Last year Saudi Arabia became the principle driver behind a return to “market management,” that is restraining output to stabilize prices.

The IPO is another signature initiative of the young prince. He hopes to sell off 5 percent of Aramco, which he argues could raise around $100 billion (some analysts dispute that figure) in order to finance his Vision 2030, which calls for a diversification of the Saudi economy. The elevation of Mohammed bin Salman is being interpreted in some corners as an effort to accelerate this economic transformation. With low oil prices, a sizable budget deficit, large but dwindling cash reserves, and a restive and young population, time is of the essence.

Instead of fulfilling a campaign promise to improve bilateral relations, Trump so far continues acting provocatively.

He’s pursuing the same reckless agenda as Obama, pushing the envelope toward possible direct confrontation with Russia.

Despite neither country wanting war, unfolding events may cause the unthinkable to happen by accident or design.

Among major powers, Russia is the world’s leading peace and stability champion – America just the opposite.

It’s recklessly waging wars in multiple theaters, threatening conflicts against North Korea, Iran, and perhaps Russia the way things are going.
Madness defines US policy, state terror on a global scale, naked aggression its main expression, controlling planet earth, its resources and people its objective – risking potentially life-destroying nuclear war.
Last week, Senate members near unanimously imposed new illegal sanctions on Russia, including on its energy sector. House action awaits.

US President Donald Trump is wavering between members of his team who want to expand the war in Syria by also targeting Iranian-linked elements and those who say such a step would mean endless conflict in the region. This internal US disarray further complicates already-complex field developments in the Syrian civil war and the battle against the Islamic State (IS).

Leader of Yemen's Ansarullah movement Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi has slammed the ongoing efforts to divert attention from Israel’s hostile policies by inciting Iranophobia among regional countries.

Israel and Washington seem to have been instrumental in the rise of Riyadh's new leader, a hot-headed young royal who leaves a trail of havoc behind him. But can they control him?

In the hilarious novel by Christopher Buckley, 'Thank you for smoking,' the central character, Nick Naylor, works for Big Tobacco as a chief spokesman. The reason why Naylor, who lobbies on behalf of cigarettes using ingenious ploys, was given the job in the first place was due to a blunder he made as a journalist before, where he incorrectly announced live on air the death of the US president.

A spokesman for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Brigadier General Ramadan Sharif, has threatened the newly-appointed Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman.

“Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who threatened to move the battle into Iran, must realise the range of the Iranian missiles,” Sharif said in an interview on Iranian television, adding that “Iran will respond clearly and swiftly to any provocative behaviour by Saudi Arabia”.

By most accounts, the young crown prince was, just three years earlier, an entirely obscure figure whose short period as defense minister was marred by several unfortunate setbacks, including billions of dollars lost in Yemen. Then there was the time he threw his weight behind an oil scheme that resulted in an oil price crash, which has left the Saudi economy decimated.

The new crown prince really does have an awful lot to prove. But that’s not a good thing.

Ruthlessly ambitious and an outsider, this makes him dangerous and unpredictable, yet for Donald Trump’s purposes the perfect partner to spearhead his ill-conceived campaign against Iran. Slowly, Trump’s pieces are falling into place in the Middle East, and it is no surprise that the first media in the region to praise Mohammed’s swift takeover of the cherished post was that of Israel.

As ISIS loses ground in Syria, the US continues to deploy additional forces in the area. There is no expectation of the war so much ending as the US transitioning to a war against Syria and Iran for control over Syria, something some members of the National Security Council are openly advocating.

America’s long-stated goal of regime change in Syria makes this transition something of an easy sell as part of the narrative, and hawks have been salivating at a shot at fighting Iran so long they’ll likely embrace anything Iran is involved in, much as they have wars like the Saudi War in Yemen, where Iran’s connection is largely a myth.

In backing the rebels in the early part of the Syrian Civil War, the US was rather cynically engaging in a proxy war against Russia, angling for regime change in Russia’s main Mediterranean ally, and the host of their lone Mediterranean base.

Syria’s been a source of tension ever since between the two countries, but as America’s direct ground involvement in Syria increasingly involves attacking government targets, the risk of direct military conflict between the US and Russia, with Syria as the backdrop, is growing precipitously.

US military involvement in Syria long was limited to attacks against ISIS targets, with the occasional attack against al-Qaeda forces in the Syrian northwest. Despite US assurances that strikes a few months ago against a Shi’ite militia in the country’s southeast were a one-time deal, those strikes have grown increasingly common.

Though the details are not yet a matter of public record, US officials are confirming that Saudi Arabia and its allies have prepared a “list of demands” for Qatar related to ending the blockade of the tiny Persian Gulf nation. It is not clear if the Qataris have been given the demands yet, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying he hopes they will be presented with them “soon.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Foreign Minister of Qatar
While we don’t know the content of this list of demands, we do still have the huge list of demands given to Qatar by Saudi Arabia two weeks ago, which may well form the basis for this latest list. This included severing all diplomatic ties with Iran, the permanent shut down of al-Jazeera, and a pledge never publicly contradict any GCC member nations, among other things.

President Trump wasted no time on Wednesday calling the newly named crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. Less than 24 hours after King Salman elevated Prince Mohammed, his 31-year-old son, Mr. Trump offered congratulations and celebrated the monarchy’s cooperation in rooting out terrorist financing and other issues.

Even more than Karen Handel, the Republican who won a hotly contested House seat in a special election in Georgia this week, Prince Mohammed was Mr. Trump’s anointed candidate — in this case, for the byzantine struggle to control the House of Saud.

On Tuesday, for the fifth time in recent weeks, US warplanes attacked Syrian military targets, flagrant acts of aggression.

They’re part of Washington’s diabolical regime change plan – at the same time, testing Russia’s resolve in the wake of its announced halt in cooperating with America in Syrian airspace, following the downing of one of its Su-22 planes.

The latest incident involved a US F-15 warplane, downing a Syrian drone near its border with Iraq and Jordan.

A US-led coalition statement lied, claiming the UAV “displaced hostile intent and advanced on coalition forces.” Calling naked aggression self-defense is the last refuge of a rogue state. America and Israel are Exhibits A and B.
On June 8, a US warplane downed another Syrian UAV in the same southern part of the country.

Washington claiming it doesn’t seek to fight Syria and allied forces is a bald-faced lie. Actions in the air and on the ground speak for themselves.

Syrian government troops and their allies have steadily positioned themselves in key areas on the flanks of the U.S.-led coalition battle for the Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa.

They are attempting to become an indispensable player in uprooting the extremists from Syria entirely.

That presents a major challenge for the coalition, which so far has shunned any cooperation with President Bashar Assad and has partnered instead with local Kurdish-led forces.

As the U.S. has intensified its fight against IS in Syria, Assad and his trusted allies of Russia and Iran are increasingly asserting themselves. A Syrian military offensive has unfolded on several fronts, coupled with Russian airstrikes and a show of force by Iran, which fired ballistic missiles on an IS stronghold this week and pushed militias that it sponsors deeper into the battlefield.

The downing of a Syrian fighter jet by the United States – and, more recently, of an Iranian drone – augurs a confrontation that could take us down the road to World War III. The US media is echoing the Pentagon’s explanation, which is that the Syrian jet bombed (or was threatening to bomb) units of the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) around the town of Tanf. The Syrians say they were attacking forces aligned with ISIS, which both the US and the Syrian government are supposedly fighting.

Stuck in the midst of this four-sided civil war is the United States, with no real policy, and with its military strategy ceded to commanders on the ground – who are pursuing the same course set by the previous administration, i.e. canoodling with radical Islamists bent on regime change in Damascus. In alliance with the Saudis, the British, the Israelis, and the Jordanians, Washington is seemingly still determined to oust Assad and establish a Sunni regime in Damascus.

Over the past several weeks, US military actions within Syria have been less and less ISIS-centric, with a handful of operations targeting Shi’ite militias in southern Syria, and even shooting down a Syrian government aircraft over the weekend.

This isn’t just the US idly getting into one-off fights in the course of a war they’re already fighting in Syria, but rather is reflective of a push by White House officials, with multiple National Security Council members looking at the Syrian War less as a fight against ISIS and more as a chance to pick a fight with Iran.

The Pentagon has made clear they object, with Defense Secretary James Mattis personally rejecting multiple proposals related to this. Still, attacks on Shi’ite militias whenever they got sort of close to a US-backed rebel base, and a public narrative presenting the militias as necessarily in league with Iran, have found the US heading down that path anyhow.

On June 19, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced that it had fired several missiles at ISIS positions in the Deir Az Zor province in Syria. The reason given for this unprecedented military strike was retaliation for double terrorist attacks which struck Tehran two weeks ago. Readers should not underestimate the significance of this event.

ccording to a statement issued by the news agency for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Sepahnews, “Multiple medium-range missiles were fired from the Iranian provinces of Kermanshah and Kurdestan, and a large number of terrorists were killed and their weapons were destroyed.”

Regarding the alleged ISIS attack, which killed 13 people and wounded 50 others, the Revolutionary Guard added, “The spilling of any pure blood will not go unanswered.”

Two days ago, when reporting on the surprising "terrorist attempt" by Iran's National Guard on a major Saudi offshore oilfiled (at least according to Saudi media), we said that "if the Saudi account of events is accurate, and if Iran is indeed preparing to take out Saudi oil infrastructure in retaliation or otherwise, the simmering cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is about to get very hot." This in turn followed an earlier analysis on the ongoing Syrian war in which we said that "the next major regional conflict appears set to be between Saudi Arabia and Iran. All it needs is a catalyst."

That catalyst, according to energy consultancy Petromatrix, may have been revealed overnight with the stunning Saudi royal shakeup in which the King announced he was stripping the current Crown Prince, his nephew Mohamed bin Nayef (MBF), of all titles and obligations, and replacing him with his son Mohamed bin Salman (MBS).

IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, AND AS RECOGNIZED BY THE U.N., SYRIA HAS BEEN INVADED BY THE UNITED STATES, WAS NEVER INVITED INTO THE COUNTRY BUT IS INSTEAD THERE AS AN INVADER. RUSSIA WAS INVITED IN; IRAN WAS INVITED IN; BUT THE U.S. ARE ONLY INVADERS. AND, NOW, RUSSIA AND SYRIA WILL START TREATING THE U.S. AS SUCH.

If the U.S. fails to apologize and to find some way to save face, but instead persists in its invasion, even after this warning, then either the U.S. or Russia will win that traditional war in Syria.

A US senator has warned against the United States' measures in Syria, which is pushing Washington "closer and closer" to a military conflict with Iran and Russia, describing the move as “another mistake on the scope of the Iraq War."

Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy made the comments in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.

"I think we're getting closer and closer to open conflict with Iran and Russia, and the American public needs to know that we're moving very fast toward what could be another war inside the Middle East," Murphy said. "Something by the way that Donald Trump promised he wouldn't do when he ran for office."

Former deputy defense minister Ehpraim Sneh warned that Israel should be prepared to react to unforeseen aggression from Lebanon by hitting it where it hurts the most.

That Iran would verbally threaten ISIS, Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel is not new. That it would launch six Zolfaghar ballistic missiles more than 600 kilometers into another country is.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday called the US the “source” of instability in the Middle East and said it was responsible for the creation of the Islamic State terror group.

“You and your agents are the source of instability in the Middle East…who created Islamic State? America … America’s claim of fighting against Islamic State is a lie,” Khamenei said during a meeting with government officials, in comments provided by Reuters from his official website.

He also lashed out at US President Donald Trump’s accusations during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia that Tehran was a sponsor of terrorism in the region, saying “It is really ridiculous for the US, standing next to the tribal and medieval Saudis, to talk about human rights in a place which has no notion of democracy, and to accuse Iran which is the emblem of democracy.”

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei on Tuesday called on the Iraqis to keep vigilance about the US divisive plots, underlining that Washington is not trustworthy since it is seeking to harm Iraq.

In an interview with Sputnik, Syrian MP Ammar al-Asad said that his country's army will not respond in kind to the US recently shooting down a Syrian military jet over Syrian territory, near the city of Tabqa.

US Navy F-18E Super Hornet

Additionally, the Syrian-Iraqi border will be strengthened and the logistics routes of terrorists from Deir ez-Zor to Jordan will be blocked, according to al-Asad.

He also said that the pilot of the Syrian fighter jet downed by a US aircraft is currency safe and sound.

"Using modern technology, the exact location of the plane crash was tracked to territory controlled by terrorists. The special units of the Syrian Army carried out a successful rescue operation and the pilot's health is out of harm's way now," al-Asad said.

The Saudis and Iranians are leaders of Islam’s two main factions, the Shiites and Sunnis. This makes them natural rivals, but until now they’ve mostly sparred through proxies rather than directly. Here again, the conflict is going from cold to hot.

And that’s in just the past few days.

The old stuff that caused most Americans to tune out hasn’t gone away:

The Syrian war continues to rage,

the Saudis and their allies continue to bomb Yemen even further back into the Middle Ages,

Israel continues to build new settlements in Palestine and threaten to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities,

ISIS is still burning and beheading its victims on YouTube,

and Turkey keeps slipping further into dictatorship.

The United Arab Emirates and Qatar are locked in a war of words as the diplomatic crisis between Qatar and its Sunni Arab neighbors enters its third week.
“Emiratis, not Qataris, were among the hijackers who flew planes into the Twin Towers,’’ Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar’s ambassador to the U.S., declared in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Sunday. “The UAE was singled out in the 9/11 Commission’s report for its role in laundering money to terrorists.”

The UAE shot back warning Qatar on Monday that sanctions imposed by several of its neighbours could last for years unless Doha accepts demands which Arab powers plan to reveal in coming days.

This statement comes a day after Qatar announced it will not cut off gas to the UAE despite the diplomatic dispute and a "force majeure" clause in its contract, the chief executive of Qatar Petroleum told Al Jazeera network, three weeks after some Gulf Arab states severed ties with Doha.

An Iranian-made drone was shot down by a US F-15 fighter jet in southern Syria, near At Tanf, the US-led coalition said. It is the fifth time in the past month the US has struck at forces allied with the Syrian government in the area.
An armed Shaheed-129 UAV “displayed hostile intent and advanced on Coalition forces” at 12:30 am local time on Tuesday, the coalition said in a statement. The drone was observed in the same area where another UAV was shot down on June 8.

The US version of the incident goes like this (courtesy of The Hill)…

A statement from the U.S. military said it shot down the Syrian SU-22 in self-defense and after contacting Russian counterparts through the established deconfliction zone. The Syrian aircraft was bombing U.S.-backed forces fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) south of Tabqa. It was the first time the United States has shot down a Syrian plane, and the first time a U.S. military jet has shot down any manned aircraft since 1999.
The reality is much more complex, yet simpler. Syria was flying its jets over Syrian sovereign territory, moving to attack Al Qaeda jihadists (aka “moderate rebels”) operating illegally in Syrian territory, and backed up by US forces, which have set up operations illegally within Syrian sovereign territory.

Iran's ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations says US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent anti-Tehran remarks are in violation of international laws and norms and against the Charter of the United Nations.

Gholam-Ali Khoshrou made the remarks on Sunday in a letter of condemnation to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Tillerson told the House Foreign Relations Committee on June 14 that the Iranian government “continues activities and interventions that destabilize the Middle East.” He added that Washington’s policy towards Iran was based on supporting internal forces who could bring about peaceful change.

Yesterday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced that it had fired several missiles at ISIS positions in the Deir Az Zor province in Syria. The reason given for this unprecedented military strike was retaliation for a double terrorist attacks which struck Tehran two weeks ago. Readers should not underestimate the significance of this event.

Apart from Turkey, whose president Erdogan went to the extent of relating the Qatar-blockade to a “death sentence”, a number of other countries both from Asia and Africa have refused to follow the House of Saud in its footsteps, marking yet another defeat for the king-to-be prince Muhammad bin Salman, who is not only known to have masterminded the Yemen war but also known particularly for injecting a new ideological framework to Saudi Arabia’s regional ambitions, a framework premised upon surgical weakening of countries that have the potential to challenge Saudi hegemony. This is becoming evident from the way people in Turkey have started to point fingers to UAE for spending US$3 billion for funding coup attempt in Turkey, a possible scenario which certainly points to the increasing Saudi dissatisfaction with the way regional politics has tilted to its disadvantage.

"Two fishing boats were in the Persian Gulf and strayed due to high waves. The Saudi coastguard say the boats entered Saudi waters and killed one of the fishermen," Majid Aghababaie, head of border affairs at the interior ministry, said in a statement published by Iranian media.

"We are pursuing this matter to determine if the Iranian boats had crossed the Saudi border or not, but the action of the Saudis does not comply with humanitarian and navigational principles," Aghababaie said.

"Even if the boats had entered Saudi waters, the coastguard were not authorised to open fire," Aghababaie added.

Iran's navy has conducted a joint exercise with a Chinese fleet near the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

The official IRNA news agency said Sunday's drill included an Iranian warship as well as two Chinese warships, a logistics ship and a Chinese helicopter that arrived in Iran's port of Bandar Abbas last week.

An Iranian fisherman was shot and killed on Saturday by the Saudi coastguard, which accused him of entering Saudi waters, Iran's interior ministry said, fuelling tensions between the regional rivals.

"Two fishing boats were in the Persian Gulf and strayed due to high waves. The Saudi coastguard say the boats entered Saudi waters and killed one of the fishermen," Majid Aghababaie, head of border affairs at the interior ministry, said in a statement published by Iranian media.

"We are pursuing this matter to determine if the Iranian boats had crossed the Saudi border or not, but the action of the Saudis does not comply with humanitarian and navigational principles," Aghababaie said.

"Even if the boats had entered Saudi waters, the coastguard were not authorised to open fire," Aghababaie added.

Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghastliness issued a similar statement.

And while the Syrian conflict has taken a back seat in recent weeks to the latest crisis to grip the Gulf region, namely the economic and territorial blockade of Qatar by its Arab neighbors, overnight China made an unexpected appearance, not surprisingly perhaps siding with the biggest supporter of the Assad regime, when as AP reported Iran's navy conducted a joint exercise with a Chinese fleet near the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. It was only the second time the Chinese flotilla has visited the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas since 2014, and comes at a tense moment as the Senate last week passed a new round of sanctions against Tehran.

According to Iran's official IRNA news agency, Sunday's drill included an Iranian warship as well as two Chinese warships, a logistics ship and a Chinese helicopter that arrived in Iran's port of Bandar Abbas last week, and adds that the scheduled exercise "came before the departure of the Chinese fleet for Muscat, Oman."

The IRGC announced on Sunday that the medium-range ground-to-ground missiles were launched from Iran’s western provinces of Kermanshah and Kordestan in response to the recent Daesh-claimed terror attacks in Tehran, which killed 18 people and injured 50 more.

Advisor to Supreme Leader's representative at the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Yadollah Javani warned ISIL and other terrorist groups that they will be hit with more missiles if they dare to attack Iran again.

Iran's missile strikes in Syria have been coordinated with Damascus, General Ramezan Sharif told Tasnim news agency.

"The firing of these missiles had previously been coordinated with Syria and the missiles entered the Syrian airspace through Iraq," he said.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said it has fired a number of mid-range ground-to-ground missiles at terrorist sites in Syria eastern region of Deir ez-Zor in response to the recent Daesh-claimed terror attacks in Tehran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran following its missile strike in Syria Monday that the Islamic Republic should not be threatening Israel.

Speaking to his Likud faction at the Knesset, he said Israel is always watching every step Iran takes in the region. He said this included Iran's attempts to entrench itself in Syria and to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah.

MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky told Javad Heirannia of Mehr News International Service that US seeks change in Iran because they cannot tolerate an independent force in the region:

Rex Tillerson, US secretary of state, has recently announced that US backs those groups who try for change in Iran. Who are these groups and why Trump’s government has focused on the expired policy of "change of regime in Iran”?

The policy hasn't expired. The US is unwilling to tolerate an independent force in the region. Furthermore, US leaders cannot forgive Iran for having overthrown the dictator it installed in the 1953 coup.

Speaking to the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was asked about whether or not the Trump Administration’s policy is one of trying to impose regime change on Iran. While Tillerson insisted that the specifics of administration policy on Iran are still under development, he did confirm that the goal remains regime change.

Exactly how they expect to pull that off remains to be seen, but Tillerson said the US policy as it stands is to rely on “elements inside of Iran” who can be supported toward the end goal of regime change, with the hope it would be a “peaceful transition of that government.”

In Donald Trump’s short time in office, he has already shown his propensity to use military force. From dropping the largestnon-nuclear bomb ever used on Afghanistan, to launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraq (oh wait, Syria), there is no doubt that the Trump administration has a prominent militaristic streak.

But is this just for starters? If Trump stays in power for the duration of his term, is there a major war, or even multiple wars, on the horizon? Judging by the rhetoric and actions already taken by the Trump administration, it will be a miracle if the US does not start a major war in the near future. Coincidentally, the main countries in the sights of the Trump administration just happen to be the three countries that the neoconservatives pinpointed for regime change 17 years ago, but have not yet been dealt with.

Iran has condemned US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's accusations that the Islamic Republic had "aspirations of hegemony in the region," saying the remarks violate international law.

The top US diplomat’s remarks are “interventionist, in gross violation of the compelling rules of international law, unacceptable and strongly condemned,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said in Tehran Thursday.

In a statement to the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, Tillerson said the Iranian government “continues activities and interventions that destabilize the Middle East.”

It’s a familiar pattern by now. From “we’re staying out” to “just some logistical aid to rebels” to “okay, some mere light arms to fight the evil dictator” to “well, a few anti-tank missiles wouldn’t hurt” to “we gotta bomb the new super-bad terror group that emerged!” to “ah but no boots on the ground!” to “alright kinetic strikes as a deterrent” to “but special forces aren’t really boots on the ground per se, right?” And on and on it goes.

As of this week the public is getting a rare glimpse of more US boots on the ground in southern Syria. Not just boots, but a US Special Forces Forward Operating Base, along with evidence of US operational control of a sovereign country’s border crossing.

Caleb Weiss reports the following for Long War Journal: