US President Donald Trump said in an interview that he is interested in direct talks with Iran without preconditions. At the same time, he dismissed the European point of view that Tehran is complying with the 2015 nuclear deal, arguing that it is EU business interests talking.

Trump commented on Washington’s point of view on the 2015 Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran in a Sunday interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, saying he would accept any kind of deal with Iran, as long as it prevents Tehran from getting nuclear weapons. Trump suggested that he has no issue with the deal being bilateral or multilateral.

“I don't care which, what kind of a deal. It can be separate or it could be total,” he said.

Sooner or later the US “maximum pressure” on Iran would inevitably be met by “maximum counter-pressure”. Sparks are ominously bound to fly.

For the past few days, intelligence circles across Eurasia had been prodding Tehran to consider a quite straightforward scenario. There would be no need to shut down the Strait of Hormuz if Quds Force commander, General Qasem Soleimani, the ultimate Pentagon bête noire, explained in detail, on global media, that Washington simply does not have the military capacity to keep the Strait open.

As I previously reported, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would destroy the American economy by detonating the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market; and that would collapse the world banking system, crushing the world’s $80 trillion GDP and causing an unprecedented depression.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed Washington’s intentions to impose additional sanctions on Iran.

"Thanks to crippling American sanctions, Iran is facing unprecedented economic pressure as a result of its aggression. So I was pleased to hear President Trump make clear yesterday that pressure will continue and that pressure will increase", Netanyahu said during a joint press conference with US National Security Adviser John Bolton ahead of the security summit between the United States, Israel and Russia.

The statement comes after US President Donald Trump said on 22 June that new "major" sanctions would be imposed on Iran on 24 June.

The US should think about the lives of its military forces before considering further military action in the Middle East, an Iranian general has warned, predicting that a US-Iran conflict would devastate the entire region.

“The US administration should behave in a responsible way to protect the lives of American forces,” Maj. Gen. Gholamali Rashid said on Sunday, while addressing Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Rashid stressed that if war does come, it would be the fault of “US interventionist policy,” and would have disastrous consequences for the entire region.

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Tensions in the Persian Gulf are reaching a point of no return. In recent weeks, six oil tankers have been subjected to Israeli sabotage disguised to look like Iranian attacks to induce the United States to take military action against the Islamic Republic. Some days ago Iran rightfully shot out of the sky a US Drone. In Yemen, the Houthis have finally started responding with cruise and ballistic missiles to the Saudis’ indiscriminate attacks, causing damage to the Saudi international airport of Abha, as well as blocking, through explosive drones, Saudi oil transportation from east to west through one of the largest pipelines in the world.

Many Trump Administration officials have been, by way of reconciling President Trump’s insistence that he doesn’t want war with Iran and their desire for something very much resembling a war, been presenting US military action, and the US backing of such action, as necessarily stabilizing to the region.

So with Special Envoy Brian Hook on Friday. Hook, who made headlines Wednesday by claiming not to be a “scholar” when asked if Iran was behind 9/11, is now pushing for Iran to be “countered” in Yemen. He says the alternative risks regional conflict and destabilizing the area.

To be clear, Iran isn’t actually in Yemen in the first place. Rather, there is the Shi’ite Houthi movement, whom the Saudis have attempted to brand as Iranian proxies, as it facilitates an ongoing Saudi war in Yemen, which the US is supporting.

The world was very close to witnessing yet another US preemptive strike war in the Middle East this week, and though a last minute White House decision to stand down caused a collective sigh of relief, even a minor incident could yet trigger a major conflagration.

Early Saturday a top Iranian general warned Iran is ready to initiate a full retaliation if even "one bullet" is fired at the Islamic Republic. “Firing one bullet towards Iran will set fire to the interests of America and its allies” in the Middle East, armed forces general staff spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi told Tasnim News Agency.

As a nation, you’re certifiedly (is that a word?!) in deep trouble if and when Donald Trump is your most peaceloving man. But nevertheless, that is America today. It all harks back to the days when Trump was first -grudgingly and painstakingly- recognized as an actual presidential candidate.

He campaigned as a man who would end the costly and neverending decades-old and counting US wars far away from American shores and territory. He hasn’t lived up to those campaign goals at all, far from it, and he hired doofuses like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to show everyone that he didn’t, but in the early hours of June 21 2019 he apparently decided at the last minute that it just didn’t add up.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump called off a strike against targets in Iran minutes prior to launch, as he discovered some 150 Iranians would be killed. The strikes were set to be launched in retaliation to Iran's downing of a UAV, which, according to Tehran, breached its airspace, though Washington denies it did so.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi has stated that the country's stance on the defence of its borders won't change "regardless of any decision" that Washington may take in regards to Iran, Tasnim News Agency reported.

"We are ready to counter any threats against the (territorial) integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Our decisions do not hinge on their decisions and we will counter any aggression whether it mingles with threats or not", he said.

George Galloway has warned the US and its allies in the Gulf that if they were to start “World War III” with an attack on Iran they will live to regret it because, unlike Iraq in 2003, they are capable of fighting back.

The Scottish firebrand, who famously took US lawmakers to task over the Iraq war when he testified in front of the senate in 2005, has given his take on the recent ratcheting-up of tension in the Gulf region after Iran shot down a US drone, which, it says, had entered its airspace.

Washington maintains its UAV was shot down while patrolling over international waters in an “unprovoked attack.” On Friday President Donald Trump took to Twitter to claim the US were 10 minutes away from bombing three Iranian sites, before calling off the strikes.

With sanctions re-imposed on Iran’s oil exports last year and recently applied in part to its petrochemicals exports as well, the U.S. is now looking to roll out the next phase of its sanctions plan against the Islamic Republic. This is to gradually employ increasingly tight sanctions on Iran’s gas sector, whilst ensuring that Europe’s mechanism for enabling ongoing business with Iran does not succeed. These policies taken together are aimed at limiting Iran’s energy export revenues to no more than US$14 billion per year, a senior energy source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com last week. “This is the level of revenue targeted by the U.S. as being required to catalyse a popular uprising to remove the current regime in Tehran but not to cause an outright humanitarian disaster,” he added.

Whistleblower David Goldberg, a resident of New York City, has reportedly died of unknown causes.

Yesterday, the governmentslaves.news site reported that the White House insider who was quoted — David Goldberg (59 years old) — has since been found dead in his New York apartment on June 8th. His death is being investigated and no cause of death has yet been disclosed.

Goldberg also said that a false flag attack would be used to escalate the situation, which appears to be what we’ve seen take place in the Gulf of Oman with the two attack of two oil tankers.
(Source: False Flags, Cooked Intelligence and the ‘War on Terror’ Con)

In April of 2019, Goldberg warned the world of a false flag attack planned by the U.S. Military and Intelligence Community working in concert with Israel’s Mossad.

Since Donald Trump decided not to attack Iran Thursday, it has been stated again and again that the American people don’t want another war in the Middle East. NPR says so, PBS says so, the Washington Post says the Congress is “war-weary,” the Times notes the considerable support Trump has gotten from Republicans; and even Lindsey Graham has backed Trump’s decision. So do Democratic liberals and centrists and Nancy Pelosi.

Trump himself said a war with Iran is unpopular when he told his Orlando rally Thursday that great nations don’t fight “endless wars,” and he was removing troops and putting “America first.”

The reasonable question here is, Who wants a war with Iran, and why do they want it? The answer is, far-right Republicans like Adam Kinzinger, Tom Cotton, and Liz Cheney who say it’s a sign of weakness not to attack Iran. And the Israel lobby, which wants the U.S. to take on Israel’s regional rival.

Bolton arrived in Israel after US President Donald Trump claimed he had "stopped" an airstrike against the Islamic Republic on Thursday night just ten minutes before it was slated to occur.

"Neither Iran nor any other hostile actor should mistake US prudence and discretion for weakness", US National Security Adviser John Bolton said ahead of a meeting with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, adding that the American military "is rebuilt new and ready to go".

He also confirmed that Washingtom would continue imposing sanctions on Tehran, stressing that the US reserves the right to attack it at a later point, because the US president had only "stopped the strike from going forward at this time".

It's been revealed that President Trump did order an attack on Iran - but not a military assault - instead, the US initiated a major cyber attack against an Iranian intelligence outfit the Pentagon believes was part of last week's limpet mine incident involving two tankers in the Gulf of Oman.

According to Yahoo News, which first broke the story - which was later confirmed Saturday evening by CNN and The Washington Post - the "retaliatory digital strike" was launched on Thursday evening just as the world was bracing itself for possible US airstrikes on Iran:

On Thursday evening, U.S. Cyber Command launched a retaliatory digital strike against an Iranian spy group that supported last week’s limpet mine attacks on commercial ships, according to two former intelligence officials.

After meetings with advisers focused on Iran at Camp David on Saturday, President Trump said "major additional sanctions" will be imposed on Iran, to be unveiled Monday.

"Iran cannot have Nuclear Weapons! Under the terrible Obama plan, they would have been on their way to Nuclear in a short number of years, and existing verification is not acceptable," he said, explaining his rationale for keeping up the "maximum pressure" campaign through more sanctions.

“We want to be proportionate,” Trump told reporters previously on Saturday, while saying he'll never fully rule out using military force on Iran. “It’s always on the table until we get this solved,” he said of future potential US military attack. “We have a tremendously powerful military force in that area.”

President Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that there was an American Boeing P-8 airplane with 38 people on board that had entered Iranian airspace when they targeted the drone — and he appreciates that they did not target it.

According to a statement from Aerospace Force head Amir Ali Hajzadeh, the Iranians could have shot down the manned Navy plane, but decided not to.

“There is definitely some kind of divide in the White House. I think we have to take everything we are hearing in the media about the ‘10 minutes till an attack’ with a grain of salt. We have to question almost everything in the media,” Zeese John Kiriakou and Brian Becker, the hosts of Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear, on Friday.

US President Donald Trump has called off military strikes against Iran according to The New York Times, in response to Iran’s shooting of a US drone inside the country's airspace over the coastal province of Hormozgan on Thursday. The decision to avoid escalating the standoff with Iran in the Persian Gulf suggests that Washington is well aware that “Iran has many options available to raise the cost for the US and its friends in the region,” in the event of a military confrontation.

The following is an opinion piece -- written by Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky -- published by National Public Radio (NPR) on the recent developments:

Surfing the cable channels the evening before my Friday a.m. blog duties, I came upon Sean Hannity at Fox News completely losing his shit in a colloquy with Geraldo Rivera about the Iran drone incident. “Bomb the crap out of them!” Mr. Hannity ranted, several times, the veins in his neck throbbing visibly on the high-def screen. I thought I was having an acid flashback to Doctor Strangelove. Geraldo himself seemed a bit nonplussed and embarrassed by Mr. Hannity’s tantrum, but his attempts to calm down the raving anchorman only ramped up the hysteria. One wondered: are there any adult producers off-screen on that network?

Israeli military analysts are afraid that a weak US attack on Iran could provoke an Iranian attack on Israeli interests.

Currently, Israel is worried about ongoing US-Iranian tensions and is preparing for any possible escalation which could affect its own interests.

Israeli daily Ynet yesterday reported Israeli security officials as warning that US President Donald Trump might order a limited “surgical assault” to quell Iran’s provocations. However, these officials worry that, in return, Iran might attack Israeli interests via one of its proxies in the region.

Sooner or later the US “maximum pressure” on Iran would inevitably be met by “maximum counter-pressure”. Sparks are ominously bound to fly.

For the past few days, intelligence circles across Eurasia had been prodding Tehran to consider a quite straightforward scenario. There would be no need to shut down the Strait of Hormuz if Quds Force commander, General Qasem Soleimani, the ultimate Pentagon bête noire, explained in detail, on global media, that Washington simply does not have the military capacity to keep the Strait open.

As I previously reported, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would destroy the American economy by detonating the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market; and that would collapse the world banking system, crushing the world’s $80 trillion GDP and causing an unprecedented depression.

Russia has signaled its willingness to secure Iran's interests in the oil and banking sectors if Europe's non-dollar mechanism aimed at facilitating trade with the Islamic Republic is not launched.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday that Moscow is ready to help Iran export its crude and ease restrictions on its banking system if Europe fails to launch its mechanism, officially called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), with Tehran.

The three European signatories to the 2015 nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), unveiled late in January the long-awaited direct non-dollar payment mechanism meant to safeguard their trade ties with Tehran following the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal and in the face of the "toughest ever" sanctions imposed by the United States against the Islamic Republic.

Iran has released the first photos of the wreckage of a US spy drone which was shot down early Thursday after intruding into the Iranian airspace.

The IRGC Aerospace Force displayed parts of the doomed drone on Friday noon, refuting earlier claims by the US that the UAE was flying over international waters, and had not violated the Iranian airspace.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (!) is making noises about ties between al Qaeda and Iran. The intent is clear.

The decision by the United States to exit the Iranian nuclear agreement – signed in 2015 by Teheran with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany – causes a situation of extreme danger not only in the Middle East.

To understand the implications of such decision, taken under pressure by Israel that describes the agreement as “the surrender of the West to the axis of evil led by Iran”, we must start from a precise fact: Israel has the Bomb, not Iran.

For over fifty years, Israel has been producing nuclear weapons at the Dimona plant, built with the help mainly of France and the United States. It is not subject to inspections because Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, does not adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed fifty years ago.

SOURCE: STRATEGIC-CULTURE.ORG

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation

The tenth international meeting on security has just concluded in the Russian the city of Ufa. The forum has been under-reported, but it represents one of the few global examples of multilateral meetings between high-level representatives of countries that are in conflict. Hundreds of representatives from as many as 120 countries attended the meeting over three days to discuss humanitarian crises, hybrid warfare, terrorist threats and ways to recover from armed conflict.

President Putin’s opening speech was read aloud by Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, which explained the forum’s agenda and objectives, namely, to create a positive atmosphere that should succeed in reducing various areas of tension between countries around the globe.

SOURCE: BUSINESSINSIDER.COM
United States Cyber Command on Thursday reportedly launched an operation against an Iranian spy group with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, despite President Donald Trump's last-minute scrapping of a direct military strike, former intelligence officials said in a Yahoo News report.

The Iranian group is believed to have supported the limpet mine attacks against two tanker ships earlier last week, which resulted in the US increasing its military posture against the country. The group reportedly tracked and targeted both military and civilian vessels sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian hackers are threatening US computer systems, cybersecurity firms FireEye and CrowdStrike have claimed, just as tensions between Washington and Tehran pulled back from the brink of war.

“Really, we're seeing increased cyber activity that seems to be focused on the West,” Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike, told Politico. “In early June, mid-June is when it really started to kick off.”

Ben Read, senior cyber-espionage analyst at FireEye, confirmed the timeline and told the paper that the latest campaign is led by a government-connected Iranian hacker group known as APT33 or “Refined Kitten.”

President Donald Trump was accused of "rape" by a feminist journo one day after he refused to go to war with Iran.

Despite massive pressure from neocons in his administration to attack Iran after they shot down a US drone over the Gulf of Oman, Trump elected not to carry out a strike Thursday evening because he said the military's planned attack would have killed 150 people, which he said was not "proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone."

Shortly after Tucker Carlson warned against a war with Iran on his show Thursday night, Sean Hannity told his viewers that Trump needs to bomb Iran or else it's mathematically guaranteed there will be another holocaust.

"A-squared, B-squared equals C-squared," Hannity said. "Radical Islamic mullahs married to weapons of mass destruction, nukes, equals a potential holocaust."

"We can't let that happen," he said. "That's it -- it's mathematical."

Mainstream media outlets were of a lot of different minds on the Iran question earlier this week, counseling different approaches for US-Iran tensions. Friday, those outlets were broadly united, upset by the lack of a new war they thought sure was coming.

To be sure, Thursday was meant to be the start of the US-Iran War which hawks have been trying to piece together for generations. Trump ordered the attack, but ultimately, called it off a mere 10 minutes from a strike.

What had been a subject of debate was now USA Today accusing Trump of “not following through.” As concerning as blundering into a huge war in the Middle East had been, the new talking point was Trump showing weakness, and per Kori Schake of the Atlantic, damaging “America’s credibility.”

Channel 13 says Tehran has ruled out striking at US bases; quotes Arab sources saying some in IRGC want to hit Israeli targets, others warn of ‘suicidal’ risk of conflict with US

Donald Trump warned Tehran about an imminent attack as retaliation for a downed US drone, also giving “limited” time to respond, Reuters says. Trump reportedly ordered the strikes, but then pulled back.

The US president “gave a short period of time to get our response but Iran’s immediate response was that it is up to Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei to decide about this issue,” an Iranian official told the news agency.

The US Navy drone shot down by Iran over the Strait of Hormuz was in a full stealth mode and engaged in a spying operation, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht Ravanchi, said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres obtained by Sputnik.

"A US unmanned aircraft system, taken off from one of the bases of the US military forces in the South of the Persian Gulf, conducted an overflight through the Strait of Hormuz to Chabahar port in a full stealth mode as it had turned off its identification equipment and engaged in a clear spying operation", Ravanchi said in a letter on Thursday.

The US military is incrementally building up forces in the Middle East to ensure the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz but is unlikely willing to start an unwinnable war with Iran, according to former Defence Department adviser Karen Kwiatkowski.

"It [US troop deployment] is part of an incremental buildup to be seen as preserving the transportation lines and oil flow in the region", Kwiatkowski said. "The Pentagon has long understood that no sustained ground or air war against Iran is winnable or desirable".

Military experts emphasize that attaching and removing limpet mines on ships is risky and requires a great deal of expertise. The explosive devices are magnetically attached to ships, usually below the waterline. Limpet mines are usually manually placed by a swimmer or combat diver on the underside of a ship's hull. The blast that tore into the hulk of the Kokuka Courageous, according to US data, was a good meter above the waterline. American evidence against Iran focuses on this ship.

Conspicuous in this context is a different portrayal of the incident by the head of the Japanese shipping company that owns the tanker: Yutaka Katada told the press on June 14 that members of the crew had seen something fly towards the vessel just before the explosion.

The FAA has issued an Emergency Order to US Civil Aircraft, prohibiting all American aircraft operators from entering the Tehran Flight Information Region (OIIX) FIR in the area above the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.

Notam A0019/19 was issued at 0148 UTC, June 21st.

The Notam specifically prohibits any airline or aircraft operator from flying within Iranian airspace in the region that the US drone was shot down in on June 20th.

** JOIN THE PROTEST - Weds 26 June, 17:00 - Outside Downing Street

Planes are said to have been in the air and ships in position when the attack was called off by Trump’s team. They have been on the war path since escalating tensions with the Islamic Republic following Trump’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the nuclear deal and impose crippling sanctions on Iran, against the advice of key allies in the West as well as Russia and China, who are also signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday that the Kingdom is aware of the arrest of a Jordanian national in Israel over his alleged communication with Iran. The ministry is following up on the issue through diplomatic channels with the aim of verifying the details, ministry spokesperson Sufian Qudah added.

Israel’s Shin Bet security agency announced earlier on Thursday that the Iranian intelligence service had recruited 32-year-old Tha’er Sha’afut, a Jordanian citizen originally from Hebron, south of the West Bank.

Given the involvement of National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has a history of making "false or misleading" statements, many people fear that US President Donald Trump's policy goal is to provoke Iran, a US lawmaker said.

At a hearing on Wednesday, Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch warned Brian Hook, a special US envoy for Iranian affairs, that some lawmakers are sceptical of intelligence reports citing increased threats and attacks by Tehran.

US President Donald Trump on Friday said he blocked a planned military strike against Iran because it would not have been a proportionate response to Tehran's downing of an unmanned US surveillance drone.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent statement blaming Iran for the attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman has curiously embraced this long historical record, through a simplistic and biased version of events.

Pompeo said: “This is only the latest in a series of attacks instigated by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its surrogates against American and allied interests, and they should be understood in the context of 40 years of unprovoked aggression against freedom-loving nations."

Pompeo has ignored the mother of all provocations: the US withdrawal from the JCPOA nuclear deal in May 2018, followed by the tightening of sanctions against Iran and the strong pressures on allies and third countries to align to this policy.

The net result, so far, is a full-blown, unprovoked economic war against Iran. Just for the record, the International Atomic Energy Agency has not denounced any violation by Tehran of the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have been at fever pitch since an unmanned US surveillance drone was shot down by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

A dispute between the two countries over whether or not the drone had violated Iran's airspace followed, with US President Donald Trump on Friday reportedly approving military attacks on Iran in retaliation.

With ships in position and planes in the air primed to hit radar and missile targets in Iran, Trump reportedly abandoned the plan.

Al Jazeera spoke to analysts about what could happen next:

The president approved military strikes on Iranian targets in retaliation for a strike on a U.S. drone but later backed away, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported Thursday night, citing multiple administration officials.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he hadn’t given final approval to any military strikes against Iran and that no planes were in the air.

In an exclusive interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd for “Meet the Press,” Trump was asked if planes were in the air and he responded, “No, but they would have been pretty soon, and things would have happened to a point where you would not turn back, you could not turn back.”

“Nothing was green lighted until the very end because things change,” Trump said during an interview with Chuck Todd on Friday.

These are men who are reckless with violence, willing to do anything if it means provoking a war against Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday called on the international community to support the United States against Iran as tensions between the two countries escalated after the downing of a U.S. drone by Iran.

“In the last 24 hours Iran has intensified its aggression against the United States and against all of us. And I repeat my call for all peace-loving countries to stand by the United States in its effort to stop Iranian aggression,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “Israel stands by the United States on this.”

US National Security Advisor John Bolton will travel to Israel at the weekend for "regional security talks" with top Russian and Israeli officials, the White House said Thursday amid spiking tensions with Iran.

Bolton will meet Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, followed by talks with his Israeli and Russian counterparts, Meir Ben-Shabbat and Nikolai Patrushev, NSC spokesman Garrett Marquis said.

Bolton also will meet with the director general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission Zeev Snir.

Helen of Troy was apparently pretty hot, so while I’m not condoning it, you can at least sympathize with King Menelaus for launching a war on Troy when he lost her. But launching a war over a drone?

I know these war drones are expensive, and who knows, perhaps it is easy to get attached to one, but I really question whether there is any need to set the Middle East alight just because you’ve lost one.

It’s been reported that Donald Trump actually ordered military strikes in retaliation for Iran shooting one of its drones out of the sky, but then apparently changed his mind despite warplanes and ships having already been moved into position to strike.

Donald Trump backtracked a bit on his hostile rhetoric toward Iran: when he said they "made a big mistake” he more meant they shot down the drone “by mistake.” He then baffled the press saying at least no one was “in the drone.”
While Trump might have simply been emphasizing that no one was actually killed in the Thursday downing of an American surveillance drone near Iran, his word choice left more than a few people in between puzzled expressions and face-palms.

In the present era of 24/7 “breaking news”, the journalistic information intermediated by the internet and the cable networks has largely been reduced to noise, devoid of signal. Or at least any historical context beyond the here and now.

The currently threatened escalation of Washington’s economic war on Iran into an actual shooting war is a fraught case in point. Based on the news coverage since the two oil tankers were damaged yesterday you’d think that a crew of bloody-minded aggressors in Tehran had up and decided out of the blue to attack the whole world via disrupting its 18 million barrel per day oil lifeline through the Straits of Hormuz.

The truth of the matter, however, is just the opposite. The blatant aggressor is Washington and the dangerous confrontation now unfolding is utterly unnecessary.

Following China's warning this week that the United States is poised to open "Pandora's Box" in the Middle East should it escalate military action against Iran, Russia's President Vladimir Putin has weighed in, on Thursday saying any American military strike would have "catastrophic" consequences.

Putin warned further that US attack "would trigger a surge in violence and a possible refugee exodus," according to Reuters. During an annual televised question and answer session hosted by the Russian leader, he reiterated Moscow's position that Tehran is in full compliance with its nuclear commitments under the 2015 JCPOA. He also slammed the US-imposed sanctions now choking the Iranian economy as "groundless".

"I want to say at once that this would be a catastrophe for the region" — Putin said.

President Trump warned Thursday that America "will not stand" for Iran shooting down a U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz, while at the same time leaving open the possibility that the attack was unintentional.

“They made a very big mistake,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I find it hard to believe it was intentional, and it could have been someone who was loose and stupid,” he added.

According to the Senator, the best way to stop Iran from building its own nuclear bomb is to threaten to destroy the nation’s oil refineries and sink the Iranian Navy if attacks on tankers in the Persian Gulf continue.

US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-KY) gave an interview to Fox News on Wednesday, in which he repeatedly asserted that Tehran seeks nuclear weapons, while accusing Iran of being responsible for the recent tanker attacks.

"If the Iranians follow through on their threat to start enriching again... and basically take their enrichment program to a nuclear level in terms of weapons-grade production, Israel's in a world of hurt,” the Senator said. "How do you stop that to make Iran understand you're not going to let that happen?"

The White House is actively considering launching airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to press reports quoting Pentagon insiders. A historian told Sputnik that war between the US and Iran could be extremely dangerous and even lead to the loss of more lives than the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

"According to the officials, since Friday, the White House has been holding incessant discussions involving senior military commanders, Pentagon representatives and advisers to President Donald Trump," the Jerusalem Post reported Monday, citing anonymous diplomatic sources at the New York-based UN headquarters. "The military action under consideration would be an aerial bombardment of an Iranian facility linked to its nuclear program."

Iran has opened a new air terminal at Tehran’s main international airport, designed and built by local contractors after European companies pulled out of the project in 2017.

The Salam Terminal is the second of three at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA) inaugurated by President Hassan Rouhani Tuesday to handle 5 million passengers a year.

Salam will increase the airport’s overall annual capacity by 80 percent to about 12 million passengers, officials of the IKIA Airport City told Tasnim news agency.

Iran and Russia have signed a dozen cooperation agreements covering energy, railway, agriculture, pharmaceuticals and tourism, with senior officials stressing the political will of the two countries to reinforce ties in the face of US sanctions.

The agreements were signed as Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak visited Iran with a delegation of 120 businesspeople, including representatives of private and public companies.

The two sides held their 15th meeting of the joint commission for economic and trade cooperation in Isfahan Tuesday, which was also attended by governors of several Iranian provinces and ministers of several Russian republics.

“Both Iran and Russia are affected by illegal sanctions. It is hoped that the sanctions can be used as an opportunity to expand ties and increase cooperation,” Iranian energy minister Reza Ardekanian said, stressing that there is “political will” on both sides to do that.

In recent days we have focused on the many media enablers of a possible war with Iran. But a wide array of political figures are trying to block the war plans, and many are doing so valiantly. A galvanized coalition will be necessary to stop the “idiocy,” warns Joe Cirincione of Ploughshares, so it is important to highlight the statements of opposition so that the American people who are feeling left out by this hawkish policy know who is standing up for them now.

California Rep. Ro Khanna and several other congresspeople, including presidential hopeful Seth Moulton, have sponsored a resolution to stop the Trump administration from proceeding on the path toward war.

“A war with Iran would be an unconstitutional and illegal strategic blunder,” said Congressman Khanna. “I will continue to work with my colleagues when the defense bill comes to the floor next month to prevent funds from being used for a war with Iran.”

US security officials have been summoned to the White House to discuss a response to the shooting down of a US spy drone, which Donald Trump has called a “big mistake” by Tehran.

Iran said it shot down the unmanned aircraft in its airspace. The US military has said it was downed over international waters in the strait of Hormuz.

A meeting of senior security officials, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Joseph Dunford, convened in the White House on Thursday morning to discuss how to react. As his officials were conferring, Trump tweeted: “Iran made a very big mistake!”

Later the president chaired a meeting with his national security adviser, John Bolton; the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo and the acting defence secretary, Patrick Shanahan. Bolton is reported to be planning to fly to Israel for consultations on the worsening situation.

Iran released a statement today saying they will not extend the deadline on salvaging the nuclear deal. European countries will have until July 8th to save the Obama-era deal and take concrete steps to shield Iran from U.S. sanctions or they will continue their program to enrich uranium.

I wrote last month in “Trump Pushes Back On War With Iraq But For How Long” whereby a White House insider had reported in April that “President Donald Trump and his advisors are planning an invasion of Iran and plan to use tactical nuclear strikes. The plan calls for Iran to be wiped off the map, and will cost U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars”.

He also said, “the mainstream media will promote the war and Trump will go right along with it”.

According to a new article from English-language Israeli publication The Jerusalem Post, the Hebrew-language Israeli publication Maariv has reported that diplomatic sources in the UN are assessing a US plan to conduct a “massive” airstrike on “an Iranian facility linked to its nuclear program” in response to alleged attacks on two sea vessels in the Gulf of Oman.

“The sources added that President Trump himself was not enthusiastic about a military move against Iran, but lost his patience on the matter and would grant Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is pushing for action, what he wants,” The Jerusalem Post reports.

This news comes after public statements by Pompeo that the US is considering a “full range of options” against Iran. It also comes as 1,000 additional US troops are being sent to the Middle East to “address air, naval, and ground-based threats” there. It also comes amid sightings of depraved war criminal Henry Kissinger at the Pentagon.

So that’s great.

The Pentagon says its planned deployment of 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East would also include a Patriot missile battalion, manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft and "other deterrence capabilities."

The US Defense Department made the announcement in a Wednesday statement, further asserting that Washington does not seek war with Iran.

"The United States does not seek conflict with Iran, but we are postured and ready to defend US forces and interests in the region," a Pentagon spokeswoman said in a statement, according to Reuters.

According to the statement, the Global Hawk had flown from one of the American bases in the southern parts of the Persian Gulf region at 00:14 a.m. local time, with its identification transponders off in breach of all international aviation rules.

It also went on to say that the drone had stealthily continued on the route from the Strait of Hormuz towards Iran’s port city of Chabahar.

While returning towards west of the Strait of Hormuz, the drone violated Iran’s territorial airspace and began gathering intelligence and spying, the statement said.

The drone had been targeted and shot down by the IRGC at 04: 05 a.m. local time, it added.

An informed IRGC source in Hormozgan province said the drone had been targeted near the Kouh-e Mobarak region and fell down in the area of Ras al-Shir in Iran’s territorial waters.

He told the IRNA news agency that the downing came after repeated violations of Iran’s airspace by US reconnaissance drones in the Persian Gulf region.

US 2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders says a war with Iran would “be based on a lie” just like the US invasion of Vietnam and Iraq in the past, vowing to do whatever he can as an American senator to “stop US attacking Iran.”

The Vermont lawmaker made the comment in an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, further calling the Saudi Arabian government a “brutal regime.”

Sanders called the Iraq and Vietnam wars “the two worst foreign policy disasters… based on lies that came from the White House.”

Iran's state news agency claims the drone was shot down when it entered the country's airspace over the province of Hormozgan; U.S. official says the drone, Navy MQ-4C Triton, was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile

The US Navy is sending ships to where debris from the downed drone is reportedly floating (in international waters, according to reports).

The US has been increasing the number of military assets in the region as tensions with Iran have flared. The USS Abraham Lincoln is stationed nearby with a full carrier strike group.

With all the tools for escalation present in the region, is it possible that we could be at war with Iran by the end of the day?

Iranian shot down a United States military drone on Thursday, further escalating the already volatile situation playing out between Washington and Tehran in the Middle East.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it had shot down an "intruding American spy drone" after it entered into the country's territory Thursday.
A US official confirmed to CNN a drone had been shot down, but said the incident occurred in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most vital shipping routes.

US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said in a statement Thursday that the drone that was shot down by Iran was a RQ-4A Global Hawk High-Altitude, Long, Endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS).

By ROSS IBBETSON FOR MAILONLINE

The US Navy says mines used to carry out a Gulf tanker attack 'bear a striking resemblance' to those used by Iran, as investigators retrieve fingerprints from the ship.

The Navy today displayed limpet mine fragments and a magnet removed from a Japanese vessel, one of two oil tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman last Thursday.

'The limpet mine that was used in the attack is distinguishable and also strikingly bearing a resemblance to Iranian mines that have already been publicly displayed in Iranian military parades,' said Commander Sean Kido at the Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), near the Fujairah port in the UAE.

He added that fingerprints retrieved from the stricken Japanese vessel would be used to mount a criminal case.

White House National Security Adviser John Bolton said the United States is willing to talk to Iranian leaders to ease tensions but also is set for retaliatory action against Iranian military provocations.

Bolton revealed in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon that intelligence reports over the past month warned of covert attacks in the Middle East and South Asia by Iranian proxies, including the Quds Force, Iranian intelligence operatives, and other Tehran surrogates. The Quds Force is part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran's Islamic shock troops.

"It's a very precarious situation," Bolton said during a meeting in the White House West Wing when asked about the standoff with Iran.

On May 12, a supposed sabotage attack targeted very large crude carrier Amjad and crude tanker Al Marzoqah (both owned by Saudi shipping firm Bahri). The UAE-flagged fuel bunker barge A Michel and Norwegian-registered oil products tanker MT Andrea Victory were also targeted, all off of UAE’s Fujairah. The attack did not cause any casualties or an oil spill.

Jaber Al Lamki, an executive director at the UAE’s National Media Council, claimed that the attack was “aimed at undermining global oil supplies and maritime security.” Mainstream media outlets came out with various speculations regarding the incident providing contradictory claims from ‘anonymous sources’. Most of these speculations were focused on supposed Iranian involvement in the situation.

UN sources reveal that the United States is planning to carry out a “tactical assault” on an Iranian nuclear facility in response to recent attacks on two tankers in the Sea of Oman, which Washington and some of its allies blamed on Tehran without providing any credible evidence.

Diplomatic sources at the United Nations headquarters in New York told the Hebrew-language Israeli newspaper Maariv that they are weighing the United States’ plans to conduct the assault.

According to the officials, the White House has been holding incessant discussions involving senior military commanders, Pentagon representatives and advisers to US President Donald Trump since Friday, the Jerusalem Post reported.

It quoted the officials as saying that the US military action would probably include an aerial bombardment of an Iranian facility linked to its nuclear program.

“The bombing will be massive but will be limited to a specific target,” a Western diplomat said.

The United States continues to amass military forces in the vicinity of Iran, following tanker incidents near the Strait of Hormuz and the alleged threat that Iran poses to US forces operating in the Middle East.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one of the architects of Washington’s hard-line policy on Iran, has relayed a message to Tehran that the death of a single US service member would trigger a military response, the Washington Post reports.

According to the broadsheet, one such message was sent during Pompeo’s emergency visit to Baghdad, after the White House picked up intelligence allegedly showing that Iran or its proxies were threatening US interests in the Middle East.

Here we go again. The shadow of war is again cast over the Persian Gulf. Having already destroyed Iraq over the past decade and more, the US is now threatening to do the same to Iran.

The escalation of events in recent weeks is, frankly, alarming, but a military invasion of Iran will not end in the same way as it did in Iraq. While Iraq itself as a country was never really subdued, the US and UK-led war of aggression did succeed in killing more than a million people. It also ignited a brutal sectarian civil war which tore the country apart for years, as well as birthing ISIS/Daesh, the so-called Islamic State. Moreover, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein fell quite easily.

There is so much disinformation that it is difficult to judge the Israeli news report below that the US is planning a military attack on Iran. Israel wants the US to attack Iran and the report could be an attempt to push events in that direction.

There is no valid reason for Washington to serve Israeli interests.

It would be extremely irresponsible for Washington to risk starting another war.

President Rouhani blasts US leader Donald Trump as ‘a serious threat to regional and world stability’, offers preferential treatment to SCO companies that invest in his country