In an explicit warning to North Korea, Mattis on Friday said any use of nuclear weapons by the North on the United States or its allies would be met with what he called an 'effective and overwhelming' response
Donald Trump's defense secretary James Mattis has warned North Korean despot Kim Jong-un his hermit state faces an 'effective and overwhelming response' if it uses nuclear weapons.
During a visit to south east Asia, Mattis warned the dictator that he faces oblivion if he attacks either Japan or South Korea.
Pyongyang responded by claiming Trump was pushing the peninsula to 'the brink of nuclear war' as it emerged Kim Jong-un had sacked his spy chief Kim Won-Hong for 'abuse of power'.
Mattis issued the threat during a meeting with the South Korean defense minister Han Min Koo.
He said: 'North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behavior.
'We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region,' he added.
'America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming.'
Mattis's statement showed why he chose South Korea for his first visit overseas since becoming defense secretary January 20.
He sought to reassure South Koreans of the longstanding US commitment to a defense treaty that President Donald Trump suggested during the campaign was a bad deal for America.
President Donald Trump’s administration has executed a new round of sanctions against 13 individuals and 13 companies involved in procuring materials and technology in support of Iran’s ballistic missile program and the country’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“Iran’s continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States. Today’s action is part of Treasury’s ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the [2015 nuclear agreement with six world powers],” also said John Smith, director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The fresh sanctions have been implemented in the wake of Iran’s test last Sunday of a ballistic missile believed to have the capacity of carrying a nuclear weapon.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and engages in and supports violent activities that destabilize the Middle East,” noted retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, White House national security adviser. “This behavior seems continuous despite the very favorable deal given to Iran by the Obama Administration. These sanctions target these behaviors.”
“Iran’s senior leadership continues to threaten the United States and our allies… the days of turning a blind eye to Iran’s hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over,” he added.
The new sanctions also come as the American Navy destroyer USS Cole is patrolling the Red Sea and Bab el Mandeb strait off the coast of Yemen to defend waters where a Saudi frigate was attacked earlier this week by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Iran announced it will take “reciprocal action” against US individuals and companies after President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday imposed new sanctions on Tehran over its weapons procurement network.
“In response to the new move by the United States of America and as a reciprocal action, (Iran) will impose legal limitations for some American individuals and companies that have had a role in the creation and support of extreme terrorist groups in the region,” the foreign ministry said.
“The names of these individuals and companies will be announced later,” it said in a statement.
“Missile development and capabilities of the country, which is merely designed for defensive objectives and carrying conventional weapons and that will never be used except for legitimate defense, is the right of the people of Iran based on international law and the UN charter,” the ministry said.
The fresh US measures were in response to Iran’s latest ballistic missile test and its support for Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen who in the past week targeted a Saudi warship, US officials said.
The additional US sanctions list three trading networks and individuals allegedly involved in supplying Iran’s missile program.
Iran last Sunday test-fired a medium range missile, which the White House contends violated a UN Security Council resolution proscribing missiles that could carry a nuclear device.
Iran is to deploy missiles for a Revolutionary Guards exercise Saturday in a show of defiance a day after the United States imposed sanctions over a ballistic missile test launch last weekend.
Relations between Washington and Tehran have deteriorated sharply since Donald Trump took office last month promising a tough line on what he sees as Iranian belligerency towards US interests and allies.
Hours after the new US sanctions were announced, Pentagon chief James Mattis charged that Iran was “the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
The Trump administration imposed fresh sanctions on multiple Iranian entities and individuals on Friday after Tehran recently defied a United Nations Security Council resolution by testing a ballistic missile, the Treasury Department announced Friday.
The new sanctions mark President Trump’s first official action against Iran since taking office last month, a move likely to escalate tensions between the countries a little more than a year after implementation of the nuclear deal that lifted crippling oil and financial sanctions on Iran in exchange for rolling back its nuclear program.
Those targeted by the Treasury Department’s action include various agents, companies and associates involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. Iranians, Lebanese, Chinese and Emirati individuals and companies also are now blacklisted from doing any business in the United States or with American citizens.
“Iran’s continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the United States,” John E. Smith, the Treasury Department’s acting sanctions chief, said in a statement.
Attracted by a remote First World country that has the potential to be self-sufficient and is on no one’s list of nuclear targets, the super-rich kings of Silicon Valley and Wall Street are buying up vast tracts of its land — in anticipation of the day when they may need to live there.
The controversy has revealed the extraordinary precautions being taken by the mega- rich to ensure that WTSHTF — a crude survivalist acronym for ‘when the **** hits the fan’ — they and their loved ones will be safe and comfortable.
What the catastrophe will precisely be remains unclear, but possibilities include a devastating asteroid impact, giant earthquake, nuclear war, civil war, pandemic, zombie invasion and the Second Coming.
Tellingly, the geeks of Silicon Valley appear to be most worried that it will be a struggle between rich and poor in a world economy turned upside down by new technology — with them as the main targets.
But why are the country’s most privileged people, protected by immense wealth, quite so in fear?
For it is believed that at least 50 per cent of Silicon Valley billionaires have taken out so-called ‘apocalypse insurance’ by finding a refuge at home or abroad. Reluctant to admit the truth, they often describe it as a holiday home, so it’s difficult to know whether or not Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bought a 750-acre estate in Hawaii ‘just in case’.
The Saker is a level-headed person. I take it seriously when he spells out the threat to Trump’s presidency presented by the paradoxical alliance of the ruling oligarchs with what purports to be the “liberal/progressive/left.”
It is amazing that the “liberal/progressive/left” are aligned with war and not with peace and are aligned with the OnePercent against the working class, whom they despise as “Trump deplorables.”
The Saker believes that Trump is under serious threat of being overthrown and that he must strike first or go down.
As my readers are highly intelligent, I am not surprised that some of them have arrived at the same conclusion as The Saker. Here is what one had to say:
I am totally astounded by the madness - even at formerly reasonable left - liberal websites. Alternet is one big hysteria factory. Although Counterpunch has had good articles by Mike Whitney, you (I presume, since I read your articles on your website), Diana Johnstone and a few others, I can’t believe how they’ve jumped in, too. I’ve been reading CP since the beginning of the newsletter in the 90s. Until this year, they were (after yours) my go-to website when I turned the computer on. I can’t believe they have a new article titled “Beyond Resistance – Defeating Trump’s Burgeoning Dictatorship”. And another: “Democracy in Exile and the Curse of Totalitarianism”. And another: “Muslim Bans, White Supremacy and Fascism in Our Time”. Patrick Cockburn has an article titled: “Trump’s Muslim Ban Will Only Spark More Terrorist Attacks”. Even the World Socialist Website has gone bananas.
Almost all of the German left-mainstream sites have gone insane. On the one hand, it seems like almost every protest group, in the end, has a source of money from Soros. On the other, it seems like 40% of the population must have been put through an MK-Ultra program. How could such mass hysteria otherwise be produced?
Readers share my amazement that there are large numbers of people so stupid as to think that a ban on Muslim immigrants is far worse than murdering Muslims in seven countries for fifteen years. Bush and Obama conducted genocide against Muslims over the course of four presidential terms, and no protesters sought their impeachment for what are most certainly war crimes and crimes against humanity. But Trump’s perfectly legal immigration action is alleged to be grounds for impeachment!
The protesters are completely nonsensical, so much so that it must be an orchestration. As the protesting websites, if not all of the protesters in the streets, accept the 9/11 storyline and the hoax “war on terror” that the storyline justifies, it follows logically that Muslims, already “terrorists” by definition (just ask the neoconservatives and Israel), fleeing their death and destruction by Washington might harbor thoughts of harm to Americans. Considering the ruling storyline, to let them in would be irresponsible.
But not to the protesters. It wasn’t the killing of their families and destruction of their homes and countries that might make Muslims into terrorists. It is banning them from entry as refugees that turns them into terrorists!
Try to imagine the absurdity of political leadership in the US and Europe during the 21st century. Western governments inflicted so much death and destruction that they created millions of Muslim refugees in order to accept as immigrants peoples who might harbor thoughts of revenge.
Are we to conclude that there is no such thing in the US and Europe as a liberal/progressive/left, only Soros-funded protesters for hire, as in the orchestrated Maiden protests in Kiev and today in Macedonia and Hungary?
Correct or not, this is the conclusion of many.
Illegitimate protests discredit all protests.
Could we be witnessing the ruling oligarchy using its pawns to discredit in advance valid protests at the time when they move to reassert their control?
An astute citizen of Hungary sees similarity between the protests against Trump in the US and the Soros-orchestrated protests against the government of Hungary:
Dear Dr. Roberts,
Being the citizen of Hungary, a country heavily infested by Soros-financed NGO’s, and with a government that is openly anti-Soros, it breaks my heart to see the USA in a situation very much like what we have had to put up with since 2010, the year when Viktor Orban won a two-thirds majority, which he won again in 2014. Today, there is one piece of experience that is, I think, crucial for us, Hungarians, to share with the USA. It is this: nothing is sacred or too dear for Soros, his NGO’s and associates of all stripes in their fight for power. This has been a concept quite hard to come to terms with for many of us in Hungary. They will sacrifice the country, the future, the people, they will sacrifice anything, just to (re-)gain power. As I follow news from the USA, I see photos of crowds that appear to be filled with hatred. They are like the (fortunately quite diminished) crowds paraded around by the Hungarian opposition parties, who like to call themselves “democratic” as opposed to the government elected to office by the people, which they refer to as “fascist, nazi, anti-democratic, anti-semitic” etc.
These crowds are the embodiment of hypocrisy. Chanting slogans of “love”, they act out of pure hatred, for power, and refuse to be reasoned with. They refuse to consider facts. They call themselves liberals, but act against liberty through exercising total intolerance. I assume that the people who voted for President Trump are patriotic. If my assumption is correct, this also means that it will take quite some time, until the reality sinks in that Soros, his NGO’s and allies will trample down, unhesitatingly, the nation and the empire that they seek to rule unchallenged. This is because they do not rule for the people. They need the power to be in the position to exploit the nation and the empire, for their own benefit. This is not an easy thought to come to terms with for a patriot. The sooner the US electorate understands this, the more resistant it can become against the propaganda campaign and high visibility demonstrations so happily covered by the mainstream media. It is important to keep in mind that the room to maneuver President Trump has is directly proportionate to the popular supporthe enjoys, at any given time.
Dr. Roberts, thank you for all your valuable work invested into making the world a better – and safer – place, for the benefit of all Mankind.
Kind regards, Anita
Is it merely an accident that Brussels is simultaneously the capital of the European Union and Ground Zero for Islamic terror cells in Europe? And is it just an odd coincidence that almost without exception, modern progressives embrace the most egregiously sexist, patriarchal, and homophobic religion on Earth? No, because what unites the unelected EU bureaucrats who encourage open immigration and the deluded Marxists who welcome “migrants” with suicidally open arms is an unwavering moral conviction that everything innately European is evil to the core and needs to be exterminated.
Perhaps it’s the sadistic caveman in me, but I have a lifelong love for the “sweet science” of boxing. I especially love watching unstoppable knockout artists such as undefeated Kazakh monster Gennady Golovkin crushing his prey.
Within my savage white heart I also harbor an ever-growing hatred for blubbery, bearded, bespectacled neo-Marxists who are historically illiterate and grossly out of shape. I’m not exactly sure when being fat, sporting a beard, and wearing horn-rimmed glasses morphed into a “look”—it seems like a fusion of all the worst possible looks welded into one disgusting lump—but it’s the anti-style of choice for nearly all feminism-embracing, comic-book-collecting, Star Wars-worshiping, historically illiterate, snarky white male leftist hipsters these days.
Thus, a joyous lightning bolt of adrenaline shot down my spine when I first saw footage of a Belgian soccer hooligan knocking a barking commie flat on his fat a-- with one vicious right last week in Brussels. It was a masterpiece of a punch.
Here’s one angle of this glorious knockdown blow. And another. And here you can see the moments leading up to it. Witness the adipose anti-fascist nu-male getting right up in the faces of Belgian nationalists and taunting them with absolutely no fear nor respect. One suspects he treats the Muslims of Brussels—who now comprise roughly a quarter of the city’s population and make it Europe’s jihadist capital—much more gingerly.
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