Two Iranian destroyers, sent to the Gulf of Aden to protect commercial ships, have reached the entrance of Bab el-Mandab, a strategic strait between Yemen and Djibouti, Iran's navy said Thursday.
In another sign of tensions between Gulf rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, the Saudi charge d'affaires was summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran to hear a "strong protest" over Saudi military action which prevented an Iranian plane from landing in Sanaa.
"We are present in the Gulf of Aden in accordance with international regulations to ensure the safety of commercial ships of our country against the threat of pirates," said the head of the Iranian navy, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayari, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
The navy has sent the Alborz and Bushehr destroyers to patrol the entrance to the strait, he added.
Bab el-Mandeb, a narrow body of water, is the key strategic entry point into the Red Sea, through which around four million barrels of oil pass each day on ships headed to or from the Suez Canal.
Last week, US officials said an American aircraft carrier and a cruiser left the waters off Yemen and headed back to the Gulf after an Iranian naval convoy also turned back from the area.
Washington suspected the convoy of carrying weapons destined for Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia, which heads a Sunni Arab coalition conducting air strikes on Yemeni rebels since March, has imposed an air and sea blockade.
Sayari said the two destroyers would stay posted around Bab el-Mandab until late June.
Sabre-rattling much? For the first time in history, Chinese and Russian navies will begin a significant joint naval exercise in The Mediterranean Sea in mid-May. As RT reports, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng, "The aim is to deepen both countries' friendly and practical cooperation, and increase our navies' ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats," but diplomatically added "these exercises are not aimed at any third party and have nothing to do with the regional situation." Against a background of this week's "upgraded Japan-American military relationship" following Abe's visit to Obama, as one analyst notes, "the geopolitical significance of its exercising alongside Russia will not be lost on the U.S. and NATO."
The implications and messaging are significant, as The NY Times reports, the two countries want to show they have escalated their strategic partnership.
“It suggests Russia and China are sending a political signal to the U.S. and Europe that the continental powers are standing together to support each other’s expanding interests in the face of maritime opposition,”
...
“The geopolitical significance of its exercising alongside Russia will not be lost on the U.S. and NATO,” Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing said, “although it would be churlish of anyone in the West to complain about it, given the number of joint drills the U.S. and its allies conduct in China’s near seas.”
Following yesterday's US decision to safeguard vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, it appears the proxy wars are becoming less proxy.
The Syrian and Hizballah military delegations visiting Tehran this week achieved their purpose...in three days of talks up until Friday April 30, Syrian Defense Minister Gen. Fahad Jassim al-Freij procured from his Iranian counterpart Hussein Dehghan, approval for a stepped up terror campaign against Israeli forces and civilians on the Golan, to be executed by terrorist surrogates. Iran pledged its support for this campaign and promised to make the Revolutionary Guards and Afghani Shiite forces present in Syria available, in the event of an Israeli counter-attack.
A stamping ground, designated “the open area,” was to be provided for all terrorist militias willing to attack Israel. It would stretch from Damascus to the Golan – a distance of 60 km by road – and take in the Syrian Hermon and Lebanese Chebaa Farms. Syrian and Hizballah military intelligence services will take responsibility for coordinating their operations and providing them with arms and intelligence.
According to the plan approved in Tehran, Syria and Hizballah will establish new militias for their campaign as well as deploying existing terrorist groups.
One such framework, made up of Syrian Druzes, was set up in recent weeks. Its first attack last Sunday April 26 – an attempt to plant a bomb near an Israeli Golan border position - was a flop. All four bombers were killed in an Israeli air strike and the device did not detonate.
One such framework, made up of Syrian Druzes, was set up in recent weeks. Its first attack last Sunday April 26 – an attempt to plant a bomb near an Israeli Golan border position - was a flop. All four bombers were killed in an Israeli air strike and the device did not detonate.
Israelis as the murderer of the Haran family of Nahariya and two police officers, who got out of prison in 2008 after serving 36 years of a life sentence. Kuntar is a rare Lebanese Druze who joined Hizballah in his youth.
Our sources note that President Bashar Assad many times suggested setting up a special Syrian-Palestinian “resistance movement” for taking back the Golan, which Israel captured during Syria’s 1967 invasion and later annexed.
However, the terrorist attacks on Israel were left until now mostly to Palestinian squads created ad hoc for single operations. They were often drawn from Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-General Command group or recruited in the Yarmuk refugee camp in Damascus.
However, the terrorist attacks on Israel were left until now mostly to Palestinian squads created ad hoc for single operations. They were often drawn from Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-General Command group or recruited in the Yarmuk refugee camp in Damascus.
For a major terror offensive, they are building new frameworks with local recruits mustered in South Lebanon and the Syrian Golan. Some of those militiamen have been seen moving about in the Druze villages scattered over Jabal Druze and the Hermon up to the Chebaa farms.
Great Britain has informed the UN panel responsible for monitoring compliance with Iran sanctions that they have discovered "an active Iranian nuclear procurement network" associated with their centrifuge program. Iran's secretive efforts to acquire technology to upgrade their centrifuges is explicitly forbidden in the agreement they signed in November, 2013 that got the nuclear talks underway.
Iran, which is has been under sanctions for years, has a long history of illicit nuclear procurement using front companies and other methods of skirting sanctions.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf played down the report's significance. She acknowledged that Iranian sanctions violations have continued, and noted that Washington has repeatedly blacklisted Iranian entities due to illicit procurement while negotiations with Tehran were underway.
The report could add to skepticism in the U.S. Congress over the wisdom of engaging Iran, as senators vote on a bill subjecting the agreement to congressional review. Some Republicans are seeking to inject amendments that would toughen the demands on Iran.
Incredibly, the panel's report admits that other member states have evidence of Iranian efforts to circumvent the sanctions but are keeping their mouths shut so that a deal can be struck. This makes those countries complicit in threatening genocide, as the Iranians have made no secret of their desire to wipe Israel off the map.
The sad fact is, no one cares what Iran does to build up their nuclear program. The sanctions have been little more than an inconvenience for Iran, as they play their shell games with cash in order to purchase nuclear technology and hardware on the sly. Everyone knows Iran is violating the sanctions and violating their agreement signed two years ago - the one that President Obama told us would be a test to see if Iran was serious about negotiations.
Instead, it turned out to be a test for the west regarding Iranian intentions that we have failed miserably.
The Obama regime and its neocon monsters and European vassals have resurrected a Nazi government and located it in Ukraine. Read this statement by Elena Bondarenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament: http://slavyangrad.org/2015/04/18/statement-by-elena-bondarenko-peoples-deputy-of-verkhovna-rada-of-ukraine/
The Western media has created a fictional account of events in Ukraine. The coup organized by the Obama regime that overthrew the elected democratic government in Ukraine is never mentioned. The militias decked out in Nazi symbols are ignored. These militias are the principle source of the violence that has been inflicted on the Russian populations, resulting in the formation of the break-away republics. Instead of reporting this fact, the corrupt Western media delivers Washington’s propaganda that Russia has invaded and is annexing eastern and southern Ukraine. British and European politicians parrot Washington’s lies.
The Western media is complicit in many war crimes covered up with lies, but the false story that the Western media has woven of Ukraine is the most audacious collection of lies yet. Truly, truth in the Western world has been murdered. There is no respect for truth in any Western capital.
The coup in Ukraine is Washington’s effort to thrust a dagger into Russia’s heart. The recklessness of such a criminal act has been covered up by constructing a false reality of a people’s revolution against a corrupt and oppressive government. The world should be stunned that “bringing democracy” has become Washington’s cover for resurrecting a Nazi state.
One of the easiest ways to unhinge the Left is to question what it really cares about. But to test the veracity of what the Left preaches is to question not what they care about, but how they care… Such a test immediately reveals that Leftist “caring” is all a ruse. The Left really doesn’t care about much of anything except for itself.
Oh sure, they begin the fanfare of dramatically defining the “problem.” But the so-called problem is always falsely defined, generally manufactured through the creation of a social “crisis” of their own making -- which is specifically designed to incite violence. Through this sleight of hand, they make sure that all attention is upon them, poised to rip anyone to shreds who doesn’t agree with the legitimacy of their cause. Yet all the while, their true end game is to gain power over others, forcing their failed social programs down other people’s throats.
In reality, it’s quickly obvious that they care little about the success of their programs because rarely do they ever follow up and test whether or not their Leftist programs have helped anybody but themselves and their own parades. And there’s the rub… Rarely, if ever, does the Left actually follow up and test whether their programs actually help or hinder their proposed targets. They don’t care. They care only about the power they amass in the process.
Violent, ginned-up racial riots as seen in Ferguson, New York City, and Baltimore are all examples of bastions of decades-old Leftist “wrong-direction” failed ideology. When the Left rules for any length of time, our cities tend to ruination, not only evidenced by recent tragedies, but those historical failures attested to in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Cleveland.
Especially hurt in these burrows of Leftist experimentation are black families, which unfortunately tend to keep the Left in control of their own demise. It’s not news that the Left maintains its own “Black Plantations” by ensuring that only their failed economic policies run the burrows and only failed unionized public schools educate their children. Everyone knows about Leftist school and social-community “controlled” problems have become insulated from real change, while all growth potentials hibernate. Overrun by “Leftist by Design” governmental bureaucracies, private business cannot thrive -- nor without “real” school choice will children ever get a fair shake. And the list goes on and on. The Left suffocates anything that breathes, while blaming America and its uniformed finest (the police) for the woes of its own manufacturing.
Everyone now knows that most everything that fails in the inner cities is directly related to failed Leftist/Socialist et al administrations. But Leftist administrations tellingly never seem interested in reflecting upon how their once trumpeted racially-biased political platforms actually played out in real life. They never even have shown the slightest interest in discovering that their own systems of government have proven false -- their own premises misguided, damaging whole communities and individual families. They have selfishly never even asked how to fix their own errors of judgment and make the situation better for everyone. The Left will seemingly never repent…
But surely, if you really cared and were really interested in helping others, you would perform some worthy and exacting measure to determine how and if the governmental programs instituted were actually working and helping those intended. Surely, such measures and interest would lead to the means of improving such programs; cutting the fat, making them leaner and stronger while ensuring the people’s money was not wasted.
But that hardly ever happens. Leftist social programs are never to be changed, remaining under bloated protection for their own purposes. Their answer to all “problems” is to continuously throw more public money at it, never changing direction, never abandoning a faulty premise no matter how socially destructive it truly becomes. The Left never seem to care about anything but furthering the imposition and implementation of their already failed agendas over and over again. Truly, they’re not interested in “success,” but how much power they can attain through the turmoil of “crisis.”
Why, we ask? Because through such failure, they have continually habitualizethe course of creating ever more “crisis” to their advantage, securing their absolute tyrannical control through the decades, spreading the lie of the advantages of their leadership. And once they have managed to institute control, their own egos are saturated with the selected memories of the blind legacies of their failed programs, which, they assert, prove how much they really cared for others. How wonderful they really appear to themselves, basking in their own false glory….
How long it will take for folks, especially black families among other minorities, to finally awaken to the realities of these destructive shenanigans is hard to say. How many more Leftist failures do they have to personally witness before they demand real consequential and measureable change for the better in their own personal lives? Even though some of our cities have been bankrupted from 30+ years of such failed leadership, the hapless “entitled” residents are still voting for Democrats, choosing what they imagine are the “freebies” in exchange for their own personal liberties and freedoms. All the while the “victims” continually support the failed agendas of the Left, while unwittingly blaming everybody else for throwing them the real lifeline. In the end, it appears that you can fool some of the people all the time….
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