Tag: middle east

US Arranging Charter, Military Flights for Americans in the Middle East

The U.S. State Department is looking to help Americans in the Middle East find a way home.

The State Department said on March 3 it is working to charter aircraft to fly Americans home following the start of the U.S.–Israel military strikes on Iran.

“The State Department is actively securing military aircraft and charter flights for American citizens who wish to leave the Middle East,” said Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for global public affairs.

The Middle East war has caused major disruption in commercial air travel in the region.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the State Department “is actively working on plans to help Americans in the Middle East return home.”

She said U.S. citizens in the region should register at step.state.gov.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a March 3 presser that to date, 9,000 Americans have been able to leave the Middle East since the start of the war with Iran.

According to the diplomat, more U.S. citizens are still attempting to leave the area, and in addition to military and charter flights, the government is working to secure expanded commercial flight options to facilitate the repatriation.

“Here’s the message I want to deliver [to] Americans who are in the Middle East and in need of assistance,” Rubio said. “We need to know where you are. We need to have contact information for Americans that need assistance. They have to register with us, because as these options begin to open up, and as they open up, we have to be able to call you.”

Johnson said the department has been in touch with almost 3,000 Americans seeking information on how to leave the area.

Nearly 500 of those inquiries came from Americans in Israel alone. Thus far, the Department of State has helped about 130 of those citizens leave the country, and 100 more are expected to leave on March 3.

Additional resources and departure options for Americans abroad can be found by calling 1-202-501-4444.

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US Embassies Say They Can’t Help Evacuate Americans From the Middle East Despite Advisory to Leave

Multiple US embassies in the Middle East have told Americans they cannot facilitate evacuations, despite a State Department advisory for US citizens to leave more than a dozen countries in the region, Business Insider reported on Tuesday.

“The US Embassy is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel,” the US Embassy in Jerusalem said in a post on X.

Israel’s airspace has been closed since the US and Israel launched the war against Iran on Saturday, provoking Iranian missile and drone attacks across the region. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Americans who wanted to leave Israel could take shuttles set up by the Israeli government that are taking people to Taba, Egypt, but his embassy said that it couldn’t guarantee the safety of Americans who choose to take the shuttles.

“The US Embassy cannot make any recommendation (for or against) the [Israeli] Ministry of Tourism’s shuttle,” the embassy said. “If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the US government cannot guarantee your safety. The information is provided as a courtesy to those wishing to leave Israel.”

The US Embassy in Doha said that Americans who wish to leave Qatar should “take advantage of commercial transportation options” and that those who choose to stay “should prepare contingency plans should the situation deteriorate,” but added that “these alternative plans should not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuation.”

The State Department said on Tuesday that it would charter planes from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan and try to facilitate additional ground options for Americans in Israel.

President Trump was asked why there wasn’t an evacuation plan already in place, and he said it was because “it all happened very quickly,” though he oversaw a major US military deployment to the region and had been threatening to bomb Iran for nearly two months.

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Huckabee Defends Pollard Meeting, Says God Promised Israel the Entire Middle East

During a nearly two-and-a-half-hour interview with Tucker Carlson, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee defended meeting with American traitor Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel while a Navy intelligence officer and landed in prison for 30 years.

The New York Times revealed the meeting in November and called it “secret,” which Huckabee denied to Carlson, claiming that he meets with people all the time.

Huckabee also defended the historical and theological claim that present day Israel is the Israel of the Bible, as have GOP U.S. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Huckabee said the Bible would justify Israel’s seizing territory in the Middle East from the Euphrates River in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt.

The genesis of the Pollard discussion was the revelation in the Times.

The meeting was secret, the Times reported, and for good reason. No other American envoy thought meeting with Pollard was a good idea.

“The highly unusual meeting caught some U.S. officials by surprise, and appeared to be a sharp break with years of precedent for American diplomats,” the newspaper disclosed:

The New York Times learned of the meeting from three U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. When The Times asked Mr. Pollard about the meeting, he confirmed it.

The meeting was not on Huckabee’s schedule, which “alarmed” the CIA station chief.

And the top U.S. spy in Israel isn’t the only American official that Huckabee kept in the dark, the Times continued:

The White House was not aware of the meeting in advance, according to a White House official and two people briefed on the matter. The White House official also said that senior officials there were alarmed when they learned it had taken place.

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Amb. Huckabee Claims Israel Has ‘Biblical Right’ To Conquer Whole Middle East

In a jaw-dropping exchange with Tucker Carlson, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee openly framed Israel’s territorial claims in biblical terms – suggesting the Jewish state has a divine mandate over virtually the entire region.

Asked whether a passage from the Book of Genesis could be read as granting Israel the right to claim all the land between Egypt’s Nile River and Syria’s Euphrates, Huckabee didn’t hedge. He bluntly and without apology said it would be “fine” if Israel and its military took over the whole Middle East.

“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist Minister and previously the governor of Arkansas made clear. This led to a wide ranging conversation and back and forth over whether the modern nation-state of Israel, officially founded as a sovereign government on May 14, 1948, is synonymous with the Israel written about in the Old Testament, stretching back thousands of years.

Here’s how that contentious segment of the interview unfolded, according to a transcript and commentary: 

Huckabee was asked in an interview with US conservative commentator Tucker Carlson about his understanding of a biblical verse suggesting that land including parts of Egypt, Syria and Iraq had been divinely promised to the Jewish people.

Carlson said that according to the Old Testament, the boundaries would be “basically the entire Middle East.”

He continued: “Does Israel have the right to that land?”

“Not sure we’d go that far,” Huckabee said in reply. “It would be a big piece of land.”

Carlson then pressed him: “Does Israel have the right to that land?”

“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee responded, before adding, “I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today.”

Carlson asked: “You think it would be fine if the state of Israel took over all of Jordan?”

That’s when Amb. Huckabee must have realized he was entering some hot diplomatic water, which would be sure to outrage Washington’s Arab allies in the region.

“They’re not trying to take over Jordan. They’re not trying to take over Syria. They’re not trying to take over Iraq or anywhere else, but they do want to protect their people,” Huckabee responded. We should note here that the Israeli army has indeed invaded southern Syria and is occupying swathes of territory which lie a mere dozen or so miles from Damascus.

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Leaked US Air Force drone footage shows UFOs in airspace over Middle East

Two leaked videos recorded by the US military purportedly show UFOs operating in the Middle East.

The radar footage, generated by Reaper drones flown by the Air Force more than 13 years ago, was released recently by reporters and prominent UFO researchers George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell.

The US Department of War and the intelligence community officially designated the flying objects to be Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), the government’s new term for UFOs.

Three lights or orbs in a triangle formation were seen moving in over the Persian Gulf on Aug. 23, 2012, one video released on Jan. 30 showed.

The objects demonstrate abrupt changes of direction and the thermographic Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) detected no heat or other signatures that mark traditional propulsion systems, according to the Knapp and Corbell report in Weaponized.

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Prince Andrew ‘is offered Arabian palace getaway’ amid mounting pressure to quit his 30-bed Royal Lodge mansion

Abu Dhabi’s royal family have generously offered Prince Andrew an Arabian palace bolthole amid mounting pressure on him to leave his Royal Lodge mansion, it has been claimed.

The disgraced royal, 65, is in negotiations with King Charles, 76, to vacate the luxury 30-bed property, it was claimed today after days of public outcry over his rent-free lease agreement and increasingly evidenced links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew and his ex wife Sarah Ferguson are said to have a grand mansion available on demand in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

It was a gift to them from the UAE’s ruling royal family – the house of Nahyan, according to esteemed biographer and historian Andrew Lownie and other sources.

Further supporting claims of ruler Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s lavish offer have now been made by sources to The Sun who said it is a gesture of gratitude for Andrew’s ‘kindness’ to them when he was the UK’s international business envoy.

The UAE’s royal family have apparently ‘made it clear’ to him that the palace is ‘his if he wants it’, giving him a getaway option ‘should his position in the UK become untenable’, the source said.

They added that Andrew and his equally problematic ex wife, who also lives in Royal Lodge, would be ‘afforded every luxury’ if they decide to accept the offer.

Escalating scandals and scrutiny from MPs and the public have seen the pariah Prince become somewhat of a hermit at Royal Lodge, only occasionally surfacing from the mansion to ride a horse around its grounds.

Freedom to live openly in the UAE may be tempting for the recluse royal with the deluxe features of the Arabian palace only making the offer all the more alluring.

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Trump’s plan, Blair’s hand

Those who don’t die will meet again

There is an old saying that goes, “Those who don’t die will meet again,” which somehow fits politicians perfectly, because sooner or later, they all reappear on the political scene.

In fact, shortly after the announcement of the formal recognition of Palestine as a state, the United Kingdom sent former Prime Minister Tony Blair with the task of hindering the Palestinian self-determination process, in accordance with the so-called “Peace Agreement” of then-US President Donald Trump. A truly masterful move.

This decision once again highlighted the usual hypocrisy and colonial mentality of Washington, London, and, more generally, the West.

Who remembers Tony Blair?

It is worth giving a brief summary, because his presence is by no means a random choice.

The Middle East knows Blair well, especially for his infamous conduct during the 2003 Iraq War, alongside then-US President George W. Bush, leader of the so-called “war on terror.” On the strength of false accusations about weapons of mass destruction, Blair dragged Britain into a conflict that caused hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties, earning himself a well-deserved reputation as a war criminal. Nothing new, you might say, since the United Kingdom has been an imperialist entity for a long time.

This confirms that Blair is the last person who should appear in an organization called the “Peace Council.”

While Bush retired to a quiet life painting dogs and portraits of Vladimir Putin, Blair continued to make himself indispensable in the Middle East—and to reap considerable profits from it. After resigning as prime minister in 2007, he was appointed special envoy of the international “Quartet” – composed of the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations – officially committed to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian issue. A coincidence? No, not at all: the choice of an emissary with close ties to Israel made any progress towards genuine peace impossible, which shows us how much it was in the interests of the Western powers to maintain a certain tension in the region. At the same time, Blair’s diplomatic activities were intertwined with a network of extremely lucrative business deals in the region: consulting for Arab governments and private assignments, such as the one he took on in 2008 as senior advisor to the American investment bank JP Morgan, which paid him over $1 million a year.

No philanthropy, no spirit of humanitarian aid. When Blair attended meetings in the Middle East, no one knew which Tony Blair they were dealing with: the Quartet envoy, the founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, or the head of the consulting firm Tony Blair Associates.

On the other hand, the beauty of conflicts of interest is that they always pay off well.

For example, in 2009, he obtained radio frequencies from Israel to create a mobile phone network in the West Bank, in exchange for a commitment from the Palestinian leadership not to bring accusations of Israeli war crimes to the UN for Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008, during which approximately 1,400 Palestinians were killed in 22 days. Blair had private economic interests linked to that agreement: both Wataniya and JP Morgan had a lot to gain from the opening of the telecommunications market in the West Bank.

It is therefore easy to imagine that Blair will also have a certain interest in Trump’s plan for Palestine, perhaps with his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, committed to “changing the world,” perhaps by helping Israel and the United States build the infamous 5-star resort that businessman Donald Trump has long dreamed of, as if capitalism and the tyranny of foreign investors could suffice for the Palestinians in place of freedom and security.

It therefore seems that the West’s “brilliant idea” (sic!) is once again to entrust the fate of Gaza to international war criminals. Not bad, right?

Today, Blair appears not simply as an “advisor,” but as an official charged with protecting the joint interests of Israel and the West in Gaza and managing the post-war transition phase.

Tony Blair’s experience in Iraq is a clear sign of his unreliability on the Palestinian question.

During the US invasion in 2003, thousands of civilians were killed and entire cities were destroyed. Blair, who convinced President Bush to wage that war, admitted years later that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that the military campaign had been based on falsified intelligence reports.

Despite these admissions, no international court has ever tried him for the serious violations of international law he committed.

Today, paradoxically, the same person is being proposed as a key figure in the “reconstruction” of Gaza, based on a supposed peace plan that in fact only protects Israeli interests.

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The Greater Israel Cult & the US Alliance

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recently asked on Israeli i24 TV whether he supported the idea of a Greater Israel — the biblical land that God purportedly promised to the Jewish people encompassing a major portion of the Middle East — he replied “very much.” 

While the interview went virtually unnoticed in the Western media it attracted wide condemnation throughout the Arab world. Jordan called it “a dangerous and provocative escalation,” Qatar said it was “arrogant and destabilising” and the Arab League declared it was “blatant violation of Arab sovereignty.” 

The Zionist vision of a Greater Israel has remained mostly unspoken by Israel’s leaders because they want to maintain the fiction that Israel’s control over the occupied territories is strictly for security purposes.

But Netanyahu let the cat out of the bag. His comment is a bold assertion that Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank are just the first stages of an expansionist Greater Israel vision.

Far from sitting on the sidelines, the U.S. is a full partner in this project that aligns with their objectives in the region. The idea that Netanyahu has a pliant U.S. President Trump (and Biden before him) wound around his little finger is strictly political theatre and a convenient cover for American ambitions.

The U.S. has always called the shots and, if anything, Israel is a useful proxy to further American economic and strategic interests in the region which includes tacit support for Greater Israel.

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Israel is the main source of instability in the Middle East

Is conflict in the Middle East at an inflection point? It might seem so, given how international outrage over Israel’s lethal conduct in the Gaza Strip has become increasingly intense and widespread in recent weeks.

Several major Western countries that previously had declined to join most other members of the United Nations in formally recognizing a Palestinian state used the opening of the current session of the General Assembly as the occasion to take that step. Popular demonstrations in the West in support of the Palestinians have been as large and conspicuous as ever, and recent polls show a sharp decline in the American public’s support for Israel.

Such responses are the least that can be expected in the face of new lows in barbarous Israeli actions against the residents of the Gaza Strip. An Israeli military assault on Gaza City has added to the rubble to which most of the city had already been reduced. The assault has given remaining inhabitants the choice of suffering and perhaps dying in place or fleeing once again to someplace else in the Strip with still no assurance of safety. The armed attacks and imposed starvation have seen the death toll of Gazans increase to what is now probably several times the officially reported figure of about 65,000.

The international responses, including diplomatic recognition of Palestine by Western governments, fall short of eliciting a constructive Israeli response. The recognition of a Palestinian state has been the target of criticism from some Palestinians who rightly point out that it does nothing to alleviate the immediate misery on the ground. Diplomatic moves and street demonstrations do not speak the only language that Israel appears to understand, which is one of force and compulsion.

The Israeli response to the latest diplomatic moves has been one of defiance and threats to inflict still more depredations on the Palestinians. The Israeli national security minister, right-wing extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, is pushing to make annexation of the West Bank the main Israeli response to Western recognition of Palestine.

Most Israelis, and not just their government or the extremists within it, see international pressure as just more evidence of bias against Israel and of the need for Israel to use force to protect itself, regardless of worldwide outrage. Survey research shows that most Israelis believe there are “no innocents” in Gaza and favor expulsion of residents from the Gaza Strip. An appeal to morality will not get a positive response from a government that has this population as its political base. Only the imposition on Israel of significant costs and consequences would lead it to change its policies.

Although we may not be at an inflection point regarding the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy, the thinking of Arab regimes in the region has reached an inflection point of sorts in recent weeks. The Israeli attack in early September on the territory of Qatar, in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Hamas leaders engaged in Gaza-related negotiations, shocked that thinking.

The attack in Qatar comes amid a fusillade of Israeli armed attacks against other regional states, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, in addition to the carnage in Palestine. These and other regional states (such as Iraq and Egypt) have been the targets of Israeli attacks — both overt military and clandestine — for many years, but it is the near-simultaneity of some of the attacks over the past month that has added to the shock.

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Illness and Endless Wars

Hey, you remember that guy, right? You know, the candidate who, in his third campaign for president in 2024 insisted that he was the one who would remove this country’s “warmongers and America-last globalists” and that returning him to the White House would “turn the page forever on those foolish, stupid days of never-ending war. They never ended.”

Yes, indeed, America’s wars haven’t ended, not by a long shot, not with Donald Trump back in the White House a second time. And yes (again), he did indeed swear that he was done with such wars. But then he wasn’t thinking about Bibi Netanyahu, was he? He wasn’t thinking about Israel bombing Iran. In typical fashion, he wasn’t thinking three (two? one?) steps ahead. And now, of course, we have Iran. I know, I know, after his bombing runs against that country’s nuclear sites, there is at least what passes for a truce in place (until, of course, there isn’t). With Netanyahu once again focused on killing Palestinians in Gaza and Trump focused on… well, himself, it’s easy enough to forget that he did indeed bring American-style warfare back to a Middle East that already had an estimated 40,000-50,000 American soldiers stationed at perhaps 19 sites across the region. And mind you, he hasn’t stopped implying that there might be worse to come. (“Can it start again? I guess someday, it can. It could maybe start soon.”)

And with all of that looming, and the unpredictable Donald Trump in the White House, let TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino, one of the founders of the invaluable Costs of War Project, take you on a grim voyage into what war — in fact, the wars this country has so regularly fought in this century across the Greater Middle East and Africa (where, by the way, the Trump administration is still sending American planes on remarkably regular bombing runs in Somalia at a pace that could set a Trumpian record this year) — does to our health. It isn’t pretty, believe me.

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