Khamenei's Friday Sermon

This morning both The New York Times and Reuters are leading with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's first Friday sermon in eight years. Neither news organization links to Khamenei's actual comments, which can be found on Imam Khamenei's website. Khamenei devotes choice words regarding the recent decision by Britain, Germany and France to trigger the dispute resolution mechanism of the JCPOA:

"With their turnout in the 10s of millions for Martyr Soleimani's funeral, the Iranian nation showed they support resistance against the enemy’s aggression. These American clowns lie in utter viciousness that they stand with the Iranian people. See who the people of Iran are."

"Are the few hundred people who disrespected posters of Iran's honorable Martyr General Soleimani “the people of Iran"? Or, are the tens of millions attending his funeral the Iranian people?"

"The villainous US govt repeatedly says that they are standing by the Iranian ppl. They lie. If you are standing by the Iranian ppl, it is only to stab them in the heart with your venomous daggers. Of course, you have so far failed to do so, and you will certainly continue to fail."

"The threat of the French and German governments and the vicious British government to send Iran's case to the Security Council proved once again that they are the footmen of the US. These 3 countries are the ones who helped Saddam as much as they could in his war against us."

"The German govt provided Saddam with chemical weapons to target our cities and frontlines, and its effects are still with us. The French govt provided Saddam with Super Étendards to attack our oil ships. The British govt served Saddam in every way too. This is how they are."

"Even when these governments negotiate, their negotiations are mixed with deception. The same people who appear at the negotiating table - the same so-called “gentlemen” behind the table - are the same terrorists of the Baghdad airport. They just change clothes."

It's an interesting question. Are the governments of Britain, Germany and France capable of independent action on issues of war and peace? I'd say no they are not. Therefore, in terms of their national "ontology," they are subsidiary to or franchises of the U.S. nation-state. British, Germany and French sovereignty is counterfeit.

When a threat emerges internally in one of these nations, like Jeremy Corbyn's anti-war, socialist politics, that threat is ruthlessly snuffed out.

The Necessary Theater of Congressional War Powers Resolutions

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives passed a War Powers Resolution 224 to 194 mandating that Trump must seek congressional approval for any further military escalation against Iran, the bare minimum, one hopes, from Democratic Party leaders who acquiesced in stripping Ro Khanna's amendment blocking funds for any military action against Iran from the National Defense Authorization Act.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi passed the War Powers Resolution as a concurrent resolution -- the kind that becomes enacted without the president's signature once both chambers pass it -- rather than a joint resolution which Trump would veto.

The problem is that senator Tim Kaine's yet-to-be-voted War Powers Resolution is a joint resolution. If it passes in the U.S. Senate, it will have to be voted again in the House, only for Trump to veto it.

If it all smacks of theater, I'm okay with it. It's theater that is driving voters away from the GOP. A very small segment of the public favors an open-ended war with Iran. The more Republicans are heard banging the drum for Trump's war on Iran, the closer we come to Medicare For All and a Green New Deal.

Return to the "Shadow War Ante"

The Iranians have extended an olive branch to the Trump administration in the form of 22 missiles fired at two military bases -- one, Al Asad, outside Ramadi in Anbar Province; the other, Erbil, next to the international airport in Erbil -- in Iraq. Craig Murray has an interesting assessment on the ornamental nature  of the Iranian missile strikes:

There is this morning a chink of light to avoid yet more devastation in the Middle East. Iran’s missile strikes last night were calibrated to satisfy honour while avoiding damage that would trigger automatically the next round. The missiles appear to have been fitted out with very light warhead payloads indeed – their purpose was to look good in the dark going up into the night sky. There is every reason to believe the apparent lack of US casualties was deliberate.

Even more important was the Iraqi statement that “proportionate measures” had been “taken and concluded” and they did not seek “further escalation”.

The "apparent lack of U.S. casualties" is muddied by Iranian news agency Fars reporting "at least 80 US arm personnel have been killed and around 200 others wounded." Then there's the mysterious fatal crash of a Ukrainian 737 leaving Tehran. A Moon of Alabama commentator noted

The Boeing 737-800 Ukrainian Airlines was most likely shoot down by one of these fine shoulder launched missiles. The plane has no problem flying on one engine even on take-off. Most of these missiles are heat seeking, so they would hit the engine and start that fire that we saw in the video. 

With just the video and radar information at this time it is all about statistics. Pilot error or mechanical problems are statistically unlikely compared to an eternal missile attack right after the Iranian attack on US bases.

As far as who did it? Just ask who benefits?

Trump, on the verge of political doom, will likely be mollified by the death of 147 Iranians compared to 80 U.S. servicemen; hence, there's a good chance of no further escalation. That puts us back to the status quo ante, but not quite, since the Iraqis are on record requesting that the United States military vacate the country.

Iran was winning the shadow war. So a return to the "shadow war ante" is in Iran's interest. But now Tehran will refocus its energies on the long-term strategy, as president Hassan Rouhani promised, of driving all U.S. forces out of the region.

Trump and his coterie of Likudniks, evangelicals and Wahhabites will favor a return to the shadow war ante until after he's reelected. Then we'll be treated to the regime change "full monty."

Trump's Keystone Kops

It's good to see that mainstream reporting on the aftermath of the Suleimani assassination is basically in agreement with alternative media. I was concerned that Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi's assertion that Suleimani was in Baghdad on a peace initiative -- a refutation of the Trump administration's rationale for its drone strike, that Suleimani was in Iraq to execute an attack on U.S. forces -- was going unmentioned in the Western prestige press. But it is featured in "Khamenei Wants to Put Iran’s Stamp on Reprisal for U.S. Killing of Top General" by Farnaz Fassihi and David Kirkpatrick:

[Iraqi prime minister] Abdul Mahdi met with Matthew Tueller, the American ambassador to Iraq, on Monday, and “stressed the need for joint action to implement the withdrawal,” according to a statement and photo released by Mr. Abdul Mahdi’s office. He also emphasized Iraq’s efforts to prevent the current tensions between Iran and the United States from sliding into “open war.”

The United States military stirred a media flurry by accidentally releasing a draft letter that seemed to describe imminent plans to withdraw from Iraq. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. William H. Seely III, the commander of the United States forces in Iraq, wrote to the Iraqi government that the American troops would be relocated “to prepare for onward movement.”

“We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure,” he wrote.

But Defense Department officials played down the significance of the letter. “Here’s the bottom line, this was a mistake,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, President Trump’s top military commander, told reporters at the Pentagon during a hastily called press briefing. “It’s a draft unsigned letter because we are moving forces around.”

“There’s been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq,” Mark T. Esper, the defense secretary, told reporters. “There’s been no decision made to leave Iraq. Period.”

Although the Trump administration has said that the United States killed General Suleimani because he was planning imminent attacks against American interests, there were indications Monday that he may have been leading an effort to calm tensions with Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi of Iraq said that he was supposed to meet with General Suleimani on the morning he was killed, and that he expected him to bring messages from the Iranians that might help to “reach agreements and breakthroughs important for the situation in Iraq and the region.”

In Washington, two top Senate Democrats urged President Trump early Monday to declassify the administration’s formal notification to Congress giving notice of the airstrike that killed General Suleimani.

Such notification of Congress is required by law, and to classify the entirety of such a notification is highly unusual.

There are still a few Trump ultras who insist that Trump is playing 5-D chess; that Trump's assassination of Suleimani will end up bringing U.S. troops home as originally intended. But the Pentagon's Keystone Kops revocation of the troop withdrawal letter to Iraq's ministry of defense, along with the Pentagon walking back Trump's threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites, not to mention the U.S. illegally barring Iran foreign minister Javad Zarif from appearing at the United Nations, illuminate an administration in free fall, destroying the U.S. world order.

There is no coming back from this. The only question is at what point does U.S. leadership break its fall?

"The Symbol of Ignorance"

Throngs of people chanting “Death to America” crowded the streets of Tehran on Monday as Iran mourned Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, whose funeral was held in the capital. The military commander was hailed as a martyr, and his successor swore revenge.

“God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger,” vowed Esmail Ghaani, the Iranian general who will take over the Quds Force, the foreign expeditionary arm of Iran’s elite paramilitary organization, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Certainly actions will be taken,” he added.

State-run news outlets reported that millions had gathered in Tehran, and images showed of a sea of mourners, many wearing black and waving the nation’s flag in an outpouring of grief.

General Suleimani was killed by the United States on Friday in Baghdad in a drone strike. American officials said the general had ordered assaults on Americans in Iraq and Syria and was planning a wave of imminent attacks.

His killing has set off fears of escalating retaliatory actions by Iran and the United States, and of a broader regional conflict. In the aftermath of the attack, Iran said it would no longer abide by a 2015 agreement to suspend uranium production.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, wept openly at the funeral while offering prayers over the general’s coffin. Ayatollah Khamenei had a close relationship with the general, who was widely considered to be the second most powerful man in Iran.

General Suleimani’s daughter, Zeinab Suleimani, said in a eulogy that the United States and Israel faced a “dark day.”

“You crazy Trump, the symbol of ignorance, the slave of Zionists, don’t think that the killing of my father will finish everything,” she said at the funeral.

"Successor to Slain Iranian General Vows Revenge: Live Updates" by The New York Times

David Sanger, the chief national security reporter for The New York Times, has declared Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran a total failure. Iran announced an end to all restrictions on it nuclear program, while holding open the door to a maintenance of the JCPOA if the Trump administration drops its sanctions. We know that is not going to happen.

Why? Because Trump strictly adheres to the wishes of hard-line Likudniks. Israel is the foreign power, along with the absolutist Gulf monarchies, Trump kowtows to, not Russia. The Israelis and the Saudis fear Iran, and they feared Qassim Suleimani. The plan all along has been to get the United States into a war with Iran. Now it appears that plan has been successfully implemented.

Barring a removal of office via impeachment, a removal that would require a sudden "Road to Damascus" conversion of one-to-two dozen Republican senators, the United States appears to be going to war with Iran. Even if Congress were to pass legislation requiring Trump to seek authorization for the use of military force against Iran, Trump would ignore it.

The mistake Trump has made is thinking that voters will forgive this provocation. They will not. Trump is out. "Endless wars" was Trump's principal populist, anti-establishment talking point. It's gone now, replaced by the usual Neocon Likudnik anti-Iranian perpetual warfare hooey, a product at least a decade beyond its "sell-by" date.

 I'm assuming that either Bernie or Biden can beat Trump now; Warren, too. Maybe even Buttigieg.

The End of American Exceptionalism

Americans are waking up this morning to the enormous magnitude of Trump's murderous blunder in the assassination by drone of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. The size of the crowds greeting the return of Suleimani's body to Iran will pierce the usual fog of the American consumerist-militarist-exceptionalist mindset. There was decent anti-war showing yesterday in towns and cities across the United States.

Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if it retaliates, targeting its cultural sites, a war crime. Iraq's parliament has voted to expel U.S. forces. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has introduced a War Powers Resolution requiring Trump to come to Congress before he escalates attacks on Iran any further.

Unless Trump can somehow get the tiger he has unleashed back in its cage, my guess is that he has significantly damaged his hopes for reelection. Tucker Carlson defended Trump's reticence to retaliate against Iran this past summer when Iran shot down a U.S. drone by asserting that to do so would have alienated Trump's base. Well, assassinating Suleimani, an Iranian national hero, is a unilateral declaration of war. How is that going to play with Trump's putative anti-war base? At this point I would think that even an addled Joe Biden, arguing for a restoration of JCPOA and the Obama status quo, could beat Trump.

Make no mistake, the situation is dire. The red flag has been unfurled. American exceptionalism -- the U.S. as "indispensable nation" -- is done. Kaput.

"All 'Red Lines' Have Been Crossed"

Trump charged that the Iranian general “has been perpetrating acts of terror to destabilize the Middle East for the last 20 years.” He declared, “What the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago. A lot of lives would have been saved.”

Who does the US president think he is fooling with his Mafia rhetoric? The last 20 years have seen the Middle East devastated by a series of US imperialist interventions. The illegal 2003 US invasion of Iraq, based on lies about “weapons of mass destruction,” claimed the lives of over a million people, while decimating what had been the among the most advanced societies in the Arab world. Together with Washington’s eighteen-year-long war in Afghanistan and the regime-change wars launched in Libya and Syria, US imperialism has unleashed a regionwide crisis that has killed millions and forced tens of millions to flee their homes.

Soleimani, whom Trump accused of having “made the death of innocent people his sick passion”—an apt self-description—rose to the leadership of the Iranian military during the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war, which claimed the lives of some one million Iranians.

He became known to the US military, intelligence and diplomatic apparatus in 2001, when Tehran provided intelligence to Washington to assist its invasion of Afghanistan. Over the course of the US war in Iraq, American officials conducted back-channel negotiations with Soleimani even as his Quds Force was providing aid to Shia militias resisting the American occupation. He played a central role in picking the Iraqi Shia politicians who led the regimes installed under the US occupation.

Soleimani went on to play a leading role in organizing the defeat of the Al Qaeda-linked militias that were unleashed against the government of Bashar al-Assad in the CIA-orchestrated war for regime change in Syria, and subsequently in rallying Shia militias to defeat Al Qaeda’s offspring, ISIS, after it had overrun roughly one-third of Iraq, routing US-trained security forces.

To describe such a figure as a “terrorist” only means that any state official or military commander anywhere in the world who cuts across the interests of Washington and US banks and corporations can be labeled as such and targeted for murder. The attack at the Baghdad airport signals that the rules of engagement have changed. All “red lines” have been crossed. In the future, the target could be a general or even president in Russia, China or, indeed, any of the capitals of Washington’s erstwhile allies.

After this publicly celebrated assassination—openly claimed by a US president without even a pretense of deniability—is there any head of state or prominent military figure in the world who can meet with US officials without having in the back of his mind that if things do not go well, he too might be murdered?

The killing of General Soleimani in Baghdad was compared by Die Zeit, one of Germany’s newspapers of record, to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. As in the prior case, it stated, “the whole world is holding its breath and anxiously waiting for what may come.”

This criminal act carries with it the threat of both world war and dictatorial repression within the borders of the United States. There is no reason to believe that a government that has adopted murder as an instrument of foreign policy will refrain from using the same methods against its domestic enemies.

The assassination of Soleimani is an expression of the extreme crisis and desperation of a capitalist system that threatens to hurl humanity into the abyss.

"The murder of Qassem Soleimani and assassination as state policy" by Bill Van Auken

The End of the Neoliberal Age

With the assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassim Suleimani the United States has started a war with Iran (see "U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces" by Michael Crowley, Falih Hassan and Eric Schmitt):

Hawkish Iran experts said the strike would be deeply painful for Iran’s leadership. “This is devastating for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the regime and Khamenei’s regional ambitions,” said Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, referring to Ayatollah Khamenei.

“For 23 years, he has been the equivalent of the J.S.O.C. commander, the C.I.A. director and Iran’s real foreign minister,” Mr. Dubowitz said, using an acronym for the United States’ Joint Special Operations Command. “He is irreplaceable and indispensable” to Iran’s military establishment.

For those same reasons, other regional analysts warned, Iran is likely to respond with an intensity of dangerous proportions.

“From Iran’s perspective, it is hard to imagine a more deliberately provocative act,” said Robert Malley, the president and chief executive of the International Crisis Group. “And it is hard to imagine that Iran will not retaliate in a highly aggressive manner.”

“Whether President Trump intended it or not, it is, for all practical purposes, a declaration of war,” added Mr. Malley, who served as White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the gulf region in the Obama administration.

[snip] 

The strike killed five people, including the pro-Iranian chief of an umbrella group for Iraqi militias, Iraqi television reported and militia officials confirmed. The militia chief, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was a strongly pro-Iranian figure.

The public relations chief for the umbrella group, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, Mohammed Ridha Jabri, was also killed. 

It is also a declaration of war on Iraq. Jason Ditz reports that in addition to the assassination of PMF leadership, U.S. forces have snatched Iraqi militia leaders:

Following the United States attack on the Baghdad International Airport on Thursday evening, a strike which killed seven people, including Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and two top Iraqi members of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), it is now being reported that US Marines carried out arrest raids inside Baghdad, capturing high ranking Iraqi MP Hadi al-Amiri and militia leader Qais al-Khazali.

Details are still emerging, but the Marines were reported by several Middle East sources to have conducted raids in the Jadriah district of Baghdad, and came out of it with Amiri and Khazali.

This comes a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Amiri to be “an Iranian asset,” citing his presence at the protests at the US Embassy in Baghdad. Amiri is the leader of Iraq’s second largest parliamentary bloc, as well as the head of the powerful Badr Brigade. In recent years he had been under consideration as a potential premier.

Khazali is the head of Qa’saib Ahl al-Haq, a substantial militia within the PMU in its own right. Though Khazali has politically been aligned to Amiri in recent years, in the past he was an aide to top cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, head of the main Iraqi parliament bloc.

This is dire. Muqtada al-Sadr is mustering the Mahdi Army. If the U.S. plans on staying in Iraq, it will have to fight to do so.

Caitlin Johnstone defines the politics behind Trump's assassination of Suleimani and his drive to war with Iran:

Many are understandably claiming that this geostrategically pivotal confrontation was precisely what Trump was installed to facilitate all along. The largest donor to any campaign in 2016 was oligarch Sheldon Adelson, who gave $25 million to the Trump campaign, and who in 2013 said that the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. After Trump’s election win, Adelson gave another $5 million to his inauguration, the largest single presidential inaugural donation ever made. Newt Gingrich, another of the billionaire’s hired politicians, has said that Adelson’s “central value” is Israel.

Make no mistake, Iran is not Iraq or Libya. A full-scale war against Iran would be many times more deadly, costly and destabilizing than those interventions; the UK’s Admiral Lord West told The Daily Star Online last year that winning such a war would require no less than a million troops, or nearly the total number of active duty US military personnel in the entire world. Even if a direct war with Iran didn’t lead to a confrontation with China, Russia and the other unabsorbed allies, it would still be worse than Vietnam and Iraq combined in terms of death, destruction, expense, and regional destabilization. 

Trump was able to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by running to her left on war and peace. He won't be able to do that again.

Trump has overstepped. China and Russia will assist Iran. The U.S. is a rabid, destructive hyper-power that needs to be hobbled before every inch of the globe is drenched in blood. Events will quickly unravel U.S. hegemony, and not just in the Middle East. What will Trump do when North Korea launches a long-range ballistic missile over Japan?

The neoliberal age began with the Iranian Revolution, and now it will end with a war on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

No Peace Dividend from Bolton's Firing

The Saudis major oil processing facility, the largest in the world, Abqaiq, was struck and damaged Saturday by a swarm of Houthi drones. Aramco has suspended production there and at another struck refinery, Khurais.

The debate now is over who is responsible. The Houthis have claimed responsibility, and the Iranians have denied it, but the U.S. is blaming Iran:

The government released satellite photographs showing what officials said were at least 17 points of impact at several Saudi energy facilities from strikes they said came from the north or northwest. That would be consistent with an attack coming from the direction of the northern Persian Gulf, Iran or Iraq, rather than from Yemen, where the Iranian-backed Houthi militia that claimed responsibility for the strikes operates.

The Saudis, however, have not, as of yet, publicly blamed Iran. And Trump appears to be deferring to al-Saud about what to do next.

The Saudis are obviously reticent to blame Iran and escalate military tension in an already hair-trigger environment because The Kingdom would be Iran's primary target, along with the myriad U.S. bases spread across the region. If Trump chooses to flex U.S. muscles and let fly a punitive one-off attack on Iran, something he opted out of in June after the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone, Armageddon will be the likely result. Iran will take the opportunity to break out of the box Trump has put it in.

Any direct military conflict with Iran will guarantee that Trump is a one-term president. War with Iran is hugely unpopular, and that's a bipartisan sentiment.

If it looked for a moment like firing Bolton meant Trump would parade as a peacemaker for the next 18 months, no such luck.

Clearly the trajectory here is for Trump to strike Iran. He'll try to limit it to a one-off, but Iran will respond. Then we're on the escalation elevator.

Another False Flag

Craig Murray thinks it ludicrous that Iran would have attacked the tankers -- one Japanese owned; the other, "50% Russian crewed" -- in the Gulf of Oman, and Caitlin Johnstone lists "Seven Reasons To Be Highly Skeptical Of The Gulf Of Oman Incident." One positive for the reigning neocons in the Trump administration is that arms sales to the Gulf sheikhdoms are now zipping through the U.S. Senate.

A problem for the Western and Gulf states blaming Iran is that part of the attack apparently came from the air:

“Our crew said that the ship was attacked by a flying object,” said Yutaka Katada, the president of the operator, Kokuka Sangyo.

The U.S. case against Iran is based on the use of limpet mines. Iran does have drones, but so do the Americans, Saudis, Israelis -- even the jihadists.

Skullduggery in the Gulf of Oman

Interestingly Moon of Alabama thinks that Iran might indeed be behind the mysterious attacks of two tankers in the Gulf of Oman this morning:

The keyword here is "petrochemical". The tankers hit today were loaded with naphta from the UAE and methanol from Saudi Arabia. Both are petrochemical products and not simply crude oil. Last Friday, June 7, the U.S. sanctioned all trade with Iran's biggest petrochemical producer. These sanction will seriously hurt Iran. 

When the Trump administration began to sanction Iran's oil export last year, Iran announced new rules of the game. It said that it would retaliate against other Persian Gulf producers should Iran be unable to export its goods.

But after reading The New York Times dispatch (see "Tankers Attacked Again in Gulf of Oman, Raising Fears of Wider Conflict" by Richard Pérez-Peña, Stanley Reed and David D. Kirkpatrick) my first thought is that it is an Israeli-led operation, possibly in alliance with the MEK:

It was not immediately clear how the most recent attacks were carried out or by whom, just as the circumstances of last month’s attacks remain murky. The two ships that were struck on Thursday appeared to have been more seriously damaged than those hit in May. 

On a visit to the U.A.E. about two weeks ago, John Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, said without disclosing any evidence that Iran was “almost certainly” responsible for the attacks in May, which Iranian officials denied. “Who else would you think is doing it?” Mr. Bolton asked. 

But other American officials and Iran’s regional adversaries have been more cautious about publicly assigning blame. Emirati officials described the attacks as state-sponsored, but did not specify a state.

The incident appears to be part of the expanding conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis of Yemen.

The Times story makes it sound as if the crew of one of the tankers attempted to fend off the attackers, which would lead one to believe that these attackers were glimpsed, and possibly recorded:

The other tanker, the Panamanian-flagged Kokuka Courageous, was carrying methanol, and the Iranian state news media reported that it, too, was on fire. It was reportedly headed from the Saudi port of Al Jubail to Singapore. Both the ship’s owner and its operator said that all 21 crew members had abandoned ship and were later rescued by a nearby vessel.

“We received a report that our ship was attacked,” Yutaka Katada, the president of the ship’s operator, Kokuka Sangyo, said at a news conference. The crew, all Filipinos, “kept trying to avoid the attacks, but again received an attack three hours later. So crew members left the ship by lifeboats.”

Aircraft Carrier Kabuki

The excuse provided by the Trump administration for the movement of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to the Persian Gulf apparently is based on intelligence that some of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces were preparing to attack U.S. troops (see David Sanger's "Iran Will Stop Complying With Some Parts of Nuclear Deal" and Alissa Rubin's "Iraq’s Militias, Accused of Threatening U.S., Pose a Quandary for Iraq").

Putting aside reports from the Navy that this is a regularly scheduled deployment, what is clear is that if the U.S. did attack Iran it would also have to go to war with Iraq again.

The Popular Mobilization Forces saved Iraq from ISIS. Some are aligned with Iran, some not. But the idea that the U.S. can dictate the terms of their composition is absurd. As Rubin says,

[S]oon after the United States Treasury Department announced in March it was listing one of the Popular Mobilization groups, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, as a foreign terrorist organization, the Iraqi government made clear it disagreed.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi did not defend the group by name — al-Nujaba has proved difficult for the Iraqi military to work with at times — but he did support the Popular Mobilization groups.

“The Americans can make the decisions they want, but the Americans see things differently from the way we do, and our attitude toward the Popular Mobilization is well known and clear,” he said in March. “We respect all of the groups of the Popular Mobilization that made sacrifices.” 

The sacrifices he was alluding to were largely made from 2014 through 2016, when the Islamic State swept across northern Iraq with little resistance and was moving fast toward the capital. Urged by a call in June 2014 from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s influential Shiite spiritual leader, for volunteers to defend their nation, young men and old formed a pickup army.

That pickup army truly liberated Iraq, even if U.S. troops are still stationed there. The days when the U.S. can exact compliance via aerial bombardment are over. This bit of aircraft carrier kabuki is going nowhere.

Khashoggi Back in the News

Now that the U.S. midterm elections are out of the way -- with the exception of high-profile races in Florida and Georgia -- a steady diet of Khashoggi news has resumed. On successive days over the holiday weekend the NYT's David Kirkpatrick, the Gray Lady's principal reporter during the Arab Spring revolution in Cairo's Tahrir Square, with various pen pals, published:

• "Turkey’s President Says Recording of Khashoggi’s Killing Was Given to U.S."
• "Saudis Close to Crown Prince Discussed Killing Other Enemies a Year Before Khashoggi’s Death"
• "‘Tell Your Boss’: Recording Is Seen to Link Saudi Crown Prince More Strongly to Khashoggi Killing"

Before Erdogan arrived in Paris for the centenary commemorating the end of World War One, he announced at a press conference in Ankara that Turkey had provided to the U.S., Germany, France, Britain and Saudi Arabia copies of the audio recording of Khashoggi's murder. The U.S. declined to comment. France denied it.

Sunday The New York Times tied in the Mueller probe with the Khashoggi killing by reporting that George Nader and Joel Zamel met with crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's right-hand an, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, to pitch a plan to sabotage Iran's economy. Al-Assiri was more interested in talking about Murder, Inc. He wanted to know if Nader and Zamel could assassinate Qassim Suleimani, the leader of the Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Nader demurred, but said that there was a company in the UK that he could refer al-Assiri to.

As Kirkpatrick and his co-authors put it:

Both Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel are witnesses in the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and prosecutors have asked them about their discussions with American and Saudi officials about the Iran proposal. It is unclear how this line of inquiry fits into Mr. Mueller’s broader inquiry. In 2016, a company owned by Mr. Zamel, Psy-Group, had pitched the Trump campaign on a social media manipulation plan.

Then, yesterday, something of a first. We are actually getting snippets of dialogue from the Khashoggi murder audio recording. One of the 15-man Saudi hit team, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, can be heard to say, Tell your boss the deed is done.

Of course Mutreb doesn't say, Tell MbS the deed is done. But at this point everyone knows that the crown prince is guilty of murder.

Trump has promised a big announcement this week of punitive measures directed at the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So far all the U.S. has managed are public statements promising to discontinue in-flight refueling of Saudi-UAE fighter-bombers and promising to level sanctions against the guilty Saudis under the Global Magnitsky Act.

Trump sinks or swims with the crown prince. The administration's launch of its total embargo on Iran got off to a shaky start last week. But all in all it's proceeding as planned. SWIFT has cut off Iran's central bank. The Iranian economy will be suffocated gradually.The U.S. needs Saudi regional clout. It can't sanction both al-Saud and the Islamic Republic of Iran simultaneously and expect anything other than failure. So expect Trump's "big announcement" about Saudi Arabia to be all smoke and mirrors.

A real difficulty for the U.S. position in Yemen is that control of the House now returns to the Democrats. There are plenty of indicators that Congress is not going to be satisfied with an administration proclamation ending mid-air refueling. All assistance to the Saudi-UAE coalition must stop.

Hodeidah is hanging by a thread. Peace talks have been pushed back to the end of the year, not the end of the month as originally promised. The Saudis no doubt demanded the delay in order to have time to capture Hodeidah and bring the Houthis to the bargaining table as supplicants. As is often reported, 80 percent of all food comes through Hodeidah. Once the Saudi-UAE-U.S. coalition takes control of Hodeidah, they control Sanaa.

One positive development to note: the reporting on the war in Yemen has definitely improved since the Khashoggi assassination. For instance, the latest dispatch from Al Jazeera goes beyond the usual "more than 10,000 killed," citing 56,000, and then concludes:

Concerned by the rise of the Houthis, a US-backed Saudi-UAE military coalition intervened in 2015 with a massive air campaign aimed at reinstalling Hadi's government.

Since then, data collected by Al Jazeera and the Yemen Data Project has found that more than 18,000 air attacks have been carried out in Yemen, with almost one-third of all bombing missions striking non-military sites.

Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity plants, have been targeted, killing and wounding thousands.

Europe Awaits U.S. Midterm Election Results

Besides igniting a conflagration in the Middle East that has the potential to dwarf all others of the last 40 years, Trump's war on Iran, which began phase two yesterday with punishing sanctions on the Iranian energy and banking sector, is a challenge to Europe. Can Europe act on its own or is it merely an appendage of the United States?

We'll find out shortly.

The European Union has vowed to stick with Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPoA, the deal that Trump is trying to scuttle. In order to keep Iran's economy from collapsing, Europe must find a way around U.S. control of the global banking system.

Steven Erlanger reports in "As U.S. Sanctions on Iran Kick In, Europe Looks for a Workaround" that

But the Europeans have found it difficult to set up an alternative payment mechanism to sidestep the American-dominated banking system and allow Iran to continue selling its oil and goods. The so-called special purpose vehicle would act as a clearing house: Iran’s proceeds from sales of oil and gas would be offset against Iranian purchases, a form of barter without explicit financial transactions.

So far, however, no European country has agreed to host the vehicle, for fear of American retaliation.

In a joint statement issued on Friday, the European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and the foreign and finance ministers of Britain, France and Germany said they “deeply regret” the reimposition of American sanctions and that work would continue to set up the special payment vehicle.

“We remain committed to implementing” the nuclear deal “as a matter of respecting international agreements and of our shared international security, and expect Iran to play a constructive role in this regard,” the statement said.

Realistically, European officials say, they may be able to preserve only 20 percent to 30 percent of existing trade with Iran, given that large European companies with ties to the United States have already pulled out of Iran or are in the process of doing so to avoid the sanctions. Stefano Stefanini, a consultant and former Italian diplomat based in Brussels, said that the European officials think 40 percent would be optimistic.

Of all the issues between Europe and the Trump administration, Iran has become the most divisive. The Europeans are actively working against United States policy, which effectively puts them in league with Russia, China and Iran.

“It is a huge strain in the trans-Atlantic relationship,” Mr. Stefanini said.

If the Europeans manage to create “a small breach in the hold that the U.S. has on international financial transactions, that could be replicated,” he said. And if they fail, he said, “it will be another big grievance with Washington, creating another minefield.”

So far, European unity is holding, but there are worries among some European officials that Britain may not remain so firm in the face of a Washington that wants to give little quarter to Iran.

There is plenty to be skeptical about in terms of Europe's chances of pulling this off: Germany is headed for elections sooner rather than later; the UK, for Brexit; Italy, for confrontation with Brussels. It's not a propitious time to strike a blow to dollar hegemony and erect the foundation of a future multi-polar world.

On the other hand, the existential nature of the breech between Europe and the United States is reason for hope. It is now -- after the about-face on the JCPoA, after Yemen, after Khashoggi -- undeniable in elite circles that the U.S. is an unhinged, predatory, destructive power. There is no pot of gold at the end of the U.S. rainbow. It's all death and destruction.

Capitals around the globe are watching to see what happens today. Does the population of the "indispensable nation" support this rainbow of death and destruction?

If Trump somehow manages to hold the House for the GOP, and thereby earns distinction as a super-historical figure of realignment in a class with FDR, then Europe will have to quickly get busy building bridges to Russia and China.

Then again if the Democratic vote is solid and Trump is rejected by a wide margin Europe will probably want to dawdle for another couple of years waiting for the next Obamaesque neoliberal savior to materialize in 2020 and knit the uni-polar world back together.

Trump's Iranian Oil Sanctions already a Bust

In "Despite Stigma of Khashoggi Killing, Crown Prince Is Seen as Retaining Power," by David Kirkpatrick and Ben Hubbard, the two reporters assess Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's standing a month into the Khashoggi affair. (The story today is that Khashoggi's body was dismembered and then dissolved.)

Elite opinion considers the U.S.-Saudi strategy of waiting out the public's outrage to be a winning one. The Trump administration appears confident that it can limit to the merely cosmetic any sanctions that congress might impose. Already military brass and banking "masters of the universe" are speaking up on behalf of the kingdom:

One person familiar with the White House deliberations said the administration expected that bipartisan pressure from Congress will force the imposition of some sanctions.

But the White House intends to keep the sanctions limited enough to avoid a rupture with Prince Mohammed. For one thing, he remains central to the plans of the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, Jared Kushner, including hopes to build an Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran and to pressure the Palestinians into a peace agreement.

Two people close to the Saudi royal court said Mr. Kushner and Prince Mohammed communicate often, including by text message, and multiple times since Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance. A White House spokesman declined to comment about those communications.

[snip]

The crown prince’s stature in Washington may be stabilizing, with at least a handful of American voices extolling the importance of the Saudi-American alliance.

“There is no change in any military relationship we have with Saudi Arabia,” Gen. Joseph Votel, the top United States commander in the Middle East, told the military publication Defense One.

Major figures in finance signaled that they, too, intended to look past the killing. “I understand the emotion around the story,” John Flint, the chief executive of HSBC, told Reuters, “but it is very difficult to think about disengaging from Saudi Arabia given its importance to global energy markets.”

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said that he had accomplished “nothing” by dropping out of the prince’s investment conference and that his bank expected to continue to pursue business with the kingdom. “Being engaged is not a bad thing; it does not mean you condone everything,” Mr. Dimon said at a conference organized by the publication Axios.

Ms. Yahya, of the Carnegie Middle East Center, said such responses send an instructive message to other Arab strongmen.

“You can be even more brutal than you already are,” she said. “Just be smarter about it next time. Don’t kill a well-known journalist inside a consulate.”

The crown prince's public rehabilitation is a necessity because Monday Trump launches his oil sanctions on Iran.

Always a long shot, today's announcement of sanction waivers to some of Iran's biggest customers (India, Japan) is basically an acknowledgment of failure by the administration.

Gardiner Harris had a good write-up the other day ("As New Sanctions Loom, U.S. Push Against Iran Faces Steep Obstacles") about the delusional nature of Trump's Iranian oil sanctions:

The administration’s stated goal for its sanctions campaign is for Iran to make a dozen fundamental changes to its domestic and foreign policies, including ending its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Few analysts believe the present Iranian government could fulfill the demands and survive.

“There is no way the Trump administration will be able to achieve its 12 stated objectives because they’re utterly unrealistic,” said Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Unless significant changes are made, it’s a policy destined to fail.”

U.S. Sanctions on Iranian Oil Stillborn

Some good news this morning: India has signaled that it will continue to purchase Iranian crude oil after the U.S. imposes sanctions on November 4. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Monday that India was exploring an alternate payment system, one that would bypass dollars and use rupees instead.

Trump's outlaw push to reimpose sanctions that were in place prior to the JCPOA looks to be stillborn. The reason that Obama ending up signing the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran wasn't due to any pacific tendencies on the part of his administration; it's because the UN-endorsed sanctions were falling apart.

Trump's bullying can't magically reanimate sanctions that were sieve-like to begin with.

The bad news, having finished Going to Tehran yesterday, is that the U.S. has always been gunning for regime change. Sanctions were merely a means to that end. If Trump's crude oil sanctions are a flop, I have little doubt he'll move quickly to a military option.

Regardless of the results of the midterms, Trump's devil's workshop will be busy through the lame duck session.

Trump will use Lame Duck Session to Gin Up Persian Crisis

UPDATE: In a brilliant display of misdirection the GOP advanced out of the Judiciary Committee Kavanaugh's confirmation at the same time publicly proclaiming a delay to allow for an FBI investigation:

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders, bowing to a last-minute demand from Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, will delay by as much as one week a vote on whether to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, to allow time for an F.B.I. investigation into accusations of sexual assault against the nominee.

The decision, made in a hurried closed-door meeting between Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, came after a dramatic reversal by Mr. Flake, who announced he would not support final confirmation until the F.B.I. investigates the allegations. With that stipulation, the Judiciary Committee then voted along party lines to advance Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Senate.

The delay puts a cloud over what Republicans expected to be a triumphant day, but they still had reason to be optimistic: Despite adamant Democratic opposition, they were still able to muscle the nomination through committee with an 11-to-10 vote and send it to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation.

The White House needs to approve reopening the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh, and there is no indication that Trump will do so. My guess is that the wily McConnell felt Kavanaugh's confirmation out of Judiciary slipping away. So he punted the ball to Trump knowing that Trump is opposed to the FBI and will now take the lead on Kavanaugh's rushed confirmation.

Or I could be wrong. Prevailing GOP wisdom might have turned after yesterday's hearing. Placing Kavanaugh on the supreme court might now appear to be too costly, the specter of a Blue Wave turning into a Blue Tsunami. I'm sure all those committed #MeToo activists on Capitol Hill are having an impact.

We'll see. My bet is still on McConnell pushing the confirmation.

****

Kavanaugh will be confirmed today by the Senate Judiciary Committee, followed by a final vote as early as Tuesday.

After Christine Blasey Ford told the story of her assault by Kavanaugh in 1982, Kavanaugh played the victim aggressively. According to "Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford Duel With Tears and Fury" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos,

Playing out against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, only weeks before midterm elections that have already energized female voters and Democrats, the testimony occurred at the combustible intersection of politics and women’s rights. It evoked strong memories of one of Washington’s most memorable judicial confirmations: the 1991 hearings of Judge Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by the law professor Anita F. Hill.

At times, it appeared that Judge Kavanaugh was channeling Judge Thomas himself, who in 1991 denounced a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks” at the hands of Democrats.

“My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional allegations,” Judge Kavanaugh told the committee on Thursday. But he vowed never to withdraw.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican hermaphrodite from South Carolina, staged a temper tantrum for the committee, slobbering on about the crucifixion of the Kavanaugh family by power-mad Democrats.

There were 57 arrests yesterday near the Supreme Court. Maybe there will be more today for the Judiciary Committee vote.

National politics are irredeemable. There is little or no connection between the rulers and the ruled. Any critical assessment of the decline and fall of a civilization will usually list this -- a governing class hermetically sealed from the genpop -- as a prime cause of collapse.

Regardless of the Blue Wave bearing down on him, Trump is moving full speed ahead with a war on Iran. Netanyahu made his annual appearance before the United Nations General Assembly to promote that war, accusing Iran of maintaining a “secret atomic warehouse” in downtown Tehran.

The problem with a war on Iran is that it cannot be won, a broadly accepted fact in the vast Western intelligence bureaucracy. It is the whole reason years were spent negotiating the JCPOA.

Trump isn't kowtowing to the Kremlin. Trump is kowtowing to Riyadh and Tel Aviv. So an Iranian war there will be. The Blue Wave will crash down on the White House this November (Trump's NAFTA reboot is headed for defeat) and Trump will use the lame duck period to gin up a Persian crisis.

Trump will enjoy a high probability of success in pushing the United States into a war with Iran because in order to block Trump Democrats will have to rediscover their atrophied inner dove. Democrats have too long suckled at the tit of neo-McCarthyite hysteria. The Democrats are a war-addled party.

Another mark in Trump's favor is the slavish nature of the European Union. The EU appears to be ontologically incapable of action absent U.S. backing.

The War on Iran

Russia says the S-300 missile system will be delivered to Syria in two-week's time. There is some debate as to whether this is a "game changer" for Israel. It seems to me that now Israel will have to clear all of its attacks on Syria with Russia, something Israel says it already does through the use of a deconfliction line, or risk having its planes shot down by the Russian operated S-300.

The terror attack on Ahvaz appears to be the official announcement of the coming war on Iran. The U.S. position on Syria has changed right before our eyes. It is now explicitly linked to Iran, with Bolton declaring that U.S. troops will stay in Syria as long as Iranian forces are there.

War is coming to Iran, and when that happens I don't have much confidence that Europe will be of much help.

The silver lining here is that the coming conflict will reanimate the antiwar movement in the West. Right now there is no antiwar movement to speak of. Without an antiwar movement within a warfare state like the U.S. you can't say there is a functioning democracy.

November is key. Trump will lose big in the midterms and the U.S. oil embargo on Iran will be launched.

Peace Talks on Afghanistan

The Taliban have agreed to attend peace talks in Moscow on September 4. The United States and its Afghan client government have declined an invitation to attend. The U.S. is attempting to negotiate its own peace deal with the Taliban. Pompeo, commenting the other day on the Trump administration's support for Ghani's call for an Eid al-Adha ceasefire, sounded like Mahatma Gandhi.

The U.S. wants peace with the Taliban now because the U.S. wants to use Islamic State proxies along the border with Iran. A U.S. war on Iran is coming.

Like so much else the U.S. does these days its position is nonsense designed to engineer the next war. Moscow is offering the Taliban a seat at the table with India, Pakistan and other regional players. The U.S.? It's unclear what the U.S. is offering beyond "fight with us against the Shia in Iran instead of against us in your own home."

“What Happens if We Get into a War?”

There is a quote that caught my eye. It was in a Mark Landler story, "Trump Crows as a Steel Plant Fires Up, but Tariffs Singe Soybean Farmers," about Trump's celebratory visit to a United State Steel Corporation mill in Granite City, Illinois. The plant had recently fired up a second blast furnace, presumably because Trump's tariffs on Chinese and European producers are increasing demand for U.S. steel.

Landler walked the floor of the plant interviewing rank-'n'-file steelworkers:

Nathan Kessler, 52, a millwright who just returned to his job after 10 months out of work, said the United States needed to have its own steel production for national security reasons — citing one of the White House’s criteria for imposing 25 percent tariffs on European and Asian steel.

“What happens if we get into a war?” Mr. Kessler asked. “What are we going to do? Melt down Kias?”

Wow. Isn't the U.S. at war already? The U.S. is presently deployed in over 150 countries; and in terms of ongoing military conflicts, the U.S. is fighting a (losing) war in Afghanistan, controls about one-third of Syria's geography, is actively engaged in the Saudi-led war against Yemen, once again maintains an active presence in Iraq, is arming the Baltics and Eastern Europe, has trainers in Ukraine, and regularly sends Navy patrols near China's installations in the South China Sea. Then there's Africa (Libya and Somalia). One could go on and on.

I know what the millwright is thinking though. He's thinking of total war, or at least a huge mobilization a la Desert Storm. With talk of a forthcoming U.S. strike on Iran, the U.S. might indeed "get into a war."