Tag: middle east

Biden Is Sleepwalking Toward War in Ukraine and Middle East

Without US military support, neither Ukraine nor Israel could sustain the wars they are fighting at present. From the first day Russia invaded, Ukraine has relied heavily on US arms, intelligence, and even targeting to defend itself. Similarly, Israel has relied on billions of dollars of American weapons to wage its massive campaign in Gaza. An Israeli war with Hezbollah would rely on even more extensive US assistance in defending Israel from rockets and other ordnance, as well as trying to deter Iran.

The United States has interests in Ukraine and Israel, but that interest is not identical with either country’s interest in itself. Still, the Biden administration has seemed incapable of speaking up for American interests where they differ from those of its partners. Washington seems like a passive spectator of escalation in both conflicts, despite the implications for Americans.

In Ukraine, early on in the war National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pronounced, “[O]ur job is to support the Ukrainians. They will set the military objectives. They will set the objectives at the bargaining table.” He added that “we are not going to define the outcome of this for the Ukrainians. That is up for them to define and us to support them in.”

Initially, the administration did not follow this principle. They declined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s repeated requests for the United States to enter the war via a no-fly zone. Similarly, when Zelensky blamed Russia for an errant missile that killed Polish citizens, the Biden administration publicly made clear that it was a Ukrainian air-defense missile that killed the Poles, again declining the opportunity to escalate the conflict. And when Ukrainians planned a massive attack in Moscow on the first anniversary of the war, the Americans told them not to.

More recently, Kyiv has decided to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. When Zelensky decided to strike Russian early warning radars that detect incoming nuclear strikes last spring, there is no indication they let the Americans know in advance, leaving an anonymous US official to worry to the Washington Post that the strikes could lead Russia to “think it has a diminished ability to detect early nuclear activity against it.” Similarly with Ukraine’s ground invasion of Russia. Apparently afraid the Americans would either say no or leak the plan, Kyiv did not notify Washington it was about to invade Russian territory.

A similar dynamic has taken place during Israel’s war in Gaza. The invasion of Rafah was the one instance where the administration did something material to try to constrain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it didn’t work. The administration delayed a shipment of bombs to convey its opposition to the campaign. Israel invaded anyway, and the Biden administration ultimately released part of the delayed shipment.

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Ukrainian Lines Collapsing In East With World’s Attention On Middle East War

Moscow’s wide-reaching offensive in eastern Ukraine has continued making steady gains, as looming major war between Israel and Iran has largely taken over the news cycle and daily headlines.

Currently Russian forces have advanced to merely within a few a few kilometers of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistical hub in the region. As we’ve highlighted before, the collapse of Pokrovsk will likely portend a Russian takeover of the whole of Donetsk. 

On Wednesday the Ukrainian army announced that it has fully withdrawn from the eastern town of Vuhledar, describing that it abandoned the area after being almost fully encircled, and coming under heavy Russian artillery bombardment.

“The High Command gave permission for a maneuver to withdraw units from Vuhledar in order to save personnel and military equipment and take up a position for further operations,” a Ukrainian unit deployed there said in a Telegram post.

It cited specifically the “threat of encirclement” and heavy troop losses, and there are reports that Russian forces had already taken control of Vuhleda by the time the Ukrainian announcement was made.

Vuhleda is a significant achievement, and suggests Russia forces will continue to plow through Ukrainian defenses, given it was dubbed a “fortress” city given its long having heavily-fortified surroundings and being in an upland position.

Even The Daily Beast recently underscored that while President Zelensky was pitching his ‘victory plan’ in Washington, his forces were suffering loss after loss:

On a visit to the U.S. last week, Volodymyr Zelensky gave the hard sell to his “Victory Plan” for Ukraine. In meetings with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and an awkward encounter with former President Donald Trump, the Ukrainian leader insisted his country could still–with Western help–emerge victorious in its long-running war with Russia.

…After two and a half years of war, soldiers are tired. The same soldiers who gave Vladimir Putin’s forces a bloody nose after the February 2022 invasion, and pushed the invaders from Kyiv and Kharkiv, say they are under-equipped and complain that they are being ordered to carry out impossible missions as Kyiv struggles to supply the military with new recruits and acquire more Western weapons to ward off Russian advances.

The same report has said that in some instances entire battalions are refusing orders from command centers as they see them as “suicide missions”.

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Let’s talk about… “WWIII” trending again, as war in ME expands

The year-old Israeli-Hamas war is, we are told, spreading across the region. Following Israel’s bizarre “pager  attack” last month the IDF have “shifted focus” to Lebanon.

Two days ago an Israeli strike on Beirut is said to have levelled six buildings and “wiped out” the entirety of Hezbollah’s leadership.

Yesterday, Iran responded by firing “hypersonic” missiles at Tel Aviv that either breached the Iron Dome missile defense system or did NOT breach it depending on who you ask.

Today, Israeli troops are reportedly crossing into Lebanon to fight on the ground. Iran is expected to continue to respond.

Reports claim over a million Lebanese – around one fifth of the entire population – have fled their homes due to Israeli bombing. A very large number indeed.

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Disabled refueler exposes fragility of US mission in Middle East

A U.S. Navy oil tanker running aground off the coast of Oman isn’t a huge event. The fact that it is the only tanker to refuel American warships in a Middle East conflict zone, is.

In fact, this only underscores the fragility of the Navy’s logistic systems at a time when the U.S. has chosen to lean in on an aggressive military posture when it may not have the full capacity to do so, and it may or may not be in the national interest for the Navy to be conducting these operations in the first place.

The first is a question for Naval experts, many of whom may not feel comfortable second guessing the mission. So let’s tackle that one first.

The issue: according to a statement by the U.S. Navy, “USNS Big Horn sustained damage while operating at sea in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations overnight on Sept. 23. All crew members are currently safe and U.S. 5th Fleet is assessing the situation.”

The Big Horn is a 33-year-old Kaiser class refueler. This ship is owned by the Navy and is operated by civilian mariners under the U.S. Sealift Command. These ships are responsible for getting jet fuel out to the carrier’s fighter planes and replenishments to the other escort ships at sea — in this case, the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, which has been serving in the Arabian Sea area since August. It includes the flagship carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the air wing (including 5th generation F-35s) and three destroyers.

It is the only replenisher nearby, making refueling tricky for the strike group, which is busy in the throes of a fight with the Houthis. The Lincoln had been accompanied by the Theodore Roosevelt strike group which had departed the area in mid-September, according to reports.

Sal Mercogliano, in his “What’s Going on With Shipping?” podcast last week laid out where the other refuelers currently assisting other Navy assets are in the world right now: the Mediterranean, Singapore, the Western Pacific, two on the West Coast of the U.S., one on the Southern coast at Norfolk, and a number that are being fixed or ready for decommissioning at various shipyards across the globe. There aren’t many to spare.

“What this means is that the ability of the U.S. Navy to deploy and sustain its battle groups is very precarious,” Mercogliano points out. “So to support U.S. battle groups, whether it’s an amphibious group or a strike group, requires vessels that can go from forward bases, fuel up, and bring the fuel, ammunition, dry cargo out to them.”

“You don’t have a lot of back backup in this and that’s a big problem,” he added, “because if you don’t have backup, when you lose a ship like Big Horn, you’ve got to scramble to fix it.”

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Did the Abraham Accords Pave the Way for Total War?

The Abraham Accords, the U.S.-sponsored alliance between Israel and several Arab states, were supposed to get the United States out of the Middle East. At least, that’s what many conservative proponents argued.

In 2020, neoconservative writer Michael Doran argued in Tablet magazine that the accords were an agreement to “step up and bear more of the burden so that America can step back.” Two years later, the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Affairs claimed that the accords were allowing Washington “to gradually withdraw from the Middle East to focus its efforts and resources on the Pacific Ocean, the rise of China, and the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) has even made this strategy a large part of his foreign policy pitch. A few months before being nominated as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance told the antiwar Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft that “combining the Abraham Accords approach with the enduring defeat of Hamas” will ensure that “Israel, with the Sunni nations, can actually police their region of the world. That allows us to spend less time and less resources in the Middle East.”

That’s not how former Trump administration official Jared Kushner, a key architect of the accords, sees it. Over the weekend, he posted an essay to social media arguing that the United States should build on the “Abraham Accords breakthrough” by backing an Israeli war in Lebanon, and hinted that the time is ripe for a wider U.S. war. “Iran is now fully exposed,” he wrote, adding that “it’s not only Israel’s fight.”

Of course, the Trump administration has never pretended that the Abraham Accords were meant to allow U.S. disengagement; then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo bragged about unlocking more “defense cooperation.” The Biden administration itself promised a permanent U.S. military commitment to Abraham Accords member Bahrain in order to entice Saudi Arabia to join the alliance.

But Kushner’s essay moves the goalposts from a defensive commitment to an offensive one. It’s now hard to pretend that the vision is anything less than a regime change campaign on the scale that old-fashioned neoconservatives could only dream of.

Kushner wrote his essay in response to the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah commander Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, had been engaged in a low-grade border war with Israel for the past year. Israel decided to assassinate Nasrallah after he kept demanding an end to the Israeli war in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire in Lebanon, an Israeli official told NBC.

The Israeli army is now beginning a ground incursion into Lebanon, after the Biden administration reportedly talked Israel out of a full-on ground invasion. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at even larger plans, calling Nasrallah’s assassination “Operation New Order” and stating that the fall of the Iranian government “will come a lot sooner than people think.”

Nasrallah’s assassination “is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel,” Kushner wrote. “The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue. And it’s not only Israel’s fight,” he added.

Kushner added that Iran is the “main issue between Lebanon and Israel” and brought up Hezbollah’s role in killing U.S. Marines in 1983, during the last U.S. military intervention in Lebanon.

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US Bolsters Forces in Middle East, Issues Warning to Iran

The Pentagon on Sunday announced steps to bolster its forces in the Middle East amid Israel’s non-stop bombardment of Lebanon.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the US will reinforce its “air-support capabilities” in the coming days and said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “increased the readiness of additional US forces to deploy, elevating our preparedness to respond to various contingencies.”

Ryder said Austin also ordered the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group to stay in the region. The USS Wasp Amphibious Ready Group / Marine Expeditionary Unit will also continue to operate in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ryder also issued a warning to Iran in the statement. “Secretary Austin stressed that the United States is determined to prevent Iran and Iranian-backed partners and proxies from exploiting the situation or expanding the conflict,” he said.

“Secretary Austin made clear that should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every necessary measure to defend our people,” Ryder added.

The US has been vowing to defend Israel from any potential Iranian attack, and the Pentagon said last week that was one purpose of maintaining an increased force posture in the region.

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Netanyahu Can’t Win, So He’s Trying to Pull the U.S. Into a Wider War

Israel cannot defeat Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or Iran, so it is trying to pull the U.S. into an all-out war with Tehran out of desperation — similar to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s efforts in Ukraine, Jeffery Sachs, the Columbia economist, said in an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano on Tuesday.

He noted that the U.S. has been an unconditional supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throughout the war, and the AIPAC-bought Congress even embarrassed itself by giving the war criminal over 50 standing ovation during his recent address.

Sachs noted that Washington is so committed to Israel, that the first message posted by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin after the illegal assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran was that the U.S. has an “unwavering commitment” to Israel’s security.

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Condoleezza Rice Won’t Learn

Condoleezza Rice recently wrote an article entitled “The Perils of Isolationism” in Foreign Affairs giving her thoughts on the United States’ place in the modern world. As the title implies, the article’s main theme is her fear that the United States will abandon its role as the global hegemon and turn inward. She claims a return to isolationism will result in Russia, China, and other tyrannical governments overrunning the world and oppressing its inhabitants.

Theoretically, this article should present a convincing argument. Rice served as national security advisor and secretary of state under George W. Bush, so she should be a foreign policy expert. Unfortunately, the biggest takeaway from the article is that Rice learned nothing from the failures of the Bush administration. She presents her case for more interventionism without meaningfully addressing the undeniable devastation caused by U.S. interventionist policies. The result is an article that reads like a fairy tale meant to comfort readers who wish to remain blissfully removed from reality.

Few passages demonstrate this lack of self-awareness more than Rice’s appraisal of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. When describing the benefits of the post-World War II global order, Rice displays what can only be described as denialism by writing, “As the United Kingdom and France stepped back from the Middle East after the 1956 Suez crisis, the United States became the guarantor of freedom of navigation in the region and, in time, its major stabilizing force.”

It is disturbing that any member of the Bush administration could describe the U.S. as a “major stabilizing force” in the Middle East. Decades of the American “stabilizing” the Middle East led to 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history. The Bush administration’s answer to this attack was not to focus on bringing the attackers to justice but rather to topple the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States paid a hellish price in money and lives in a vain attempt to spread democracy, but the result was a less stable Middle East. The Barack Obama administration expanded the destabilization by bombing and blockading even more countries despite his campaign promise to end forever wars.

Rice seems to hope her readers are willing to forget or ignore these foreign policy disasters. I can think of no other reason she would expect anyone to believe the U.S. has been a “stabilizing force” in the Middle East. The U.S. has stabilized the Middle East about as well as ten shots of Tequila would stabilize the decision-making skills of a college freshman.

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Democrats Release Insanely Hawkish Middle East Policy Platform

Celebrity progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris “is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza” at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night. There is literally no evidentiary basis anywhere for this assertion. She made it up.

Kamala Harris is not “working tirelessly” to do anything at this time besides become the next president. Her own staff are saying she is opposed to an arms embargo on Israel and won’t consider cutting or conditioning military aid, which is the only way the Israeli government can be effectively forced to stop sabotaging a peace deal so that the US-backed genocide can finally end. Saying you’ll continue pouring military explosives into a regime that is using those military explosives to conduct regular massacres of civilians is the exact opposite of working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire.

“This is false, it’s propaganda, and it’s making people misunderstand the issue,” Current Affairs’ Nathan Robinson said of AOC’s statement. “The Biden administration could have imposed a ceasefire anytime it wanted to. The only reason there isn’t one is that Biden has made sure Israel has no incentive to agree to one.”

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U.S. is Sending America’s Children to Die in the Middle East Fighting a Religious War Defending Israeli Forces Who Proudly Rape Their Prisoners

World War III is now expanding in the Middle East, with a full blown battle all but certain in the days ahead, as the U.S. is deploying National Guard troops and rapidly deploying America’s young men and women to the Middle East, where many of them are sure to die fighting a religious war as they defend Israel.

States have been training and deploying National Guard troops to the Middle East since the beginning of this year (More than 300 Illinois National Guard soldiers prepare for deployment to Middle East – Hundreds of Army National Guard members deploy to middle east), with the latest deployments this past week occurring in Oregon and Pennsylvania.

Many of these National Guard members have never even been outside the U.S. before.

Pa. National Guard soldiers prepare to deploy to Middle East: ‘It’s a mixture of nerves and excitement’

Over the next few months, dozens of U.S. soldiers with the Pennsylvania National Guard’s 213th Personnel Company will be deployed to Kuwait and Jordan.

The soldiers, who range from teenagers to those in their early 40s, will be deployed in three different groups for nine to 12 months and will support U.S. Central Command and partner forces with security objectives in the region.

First, there will be a period of pre-mobilization training in the U.S. before soldiers deploy to the Middle East.

Soldier Alyssa Wenger, 23, of Chambersburg, a four-year member of the Pennsylvania National Guard, like Danner, will be deploying for the first time.

“It’s a mixture of nerves and excitement,” she said.

She said she will miss her family back home but considers those she is deploying with family as well.

For Wenger, a Wilson College graduate who commuted to school, this is the longest time she will be away from her family.

“That’s going to be my biggest challenge. I’ve never really been away from my parents and my siblings,” she said.
And this is also the first time that Watkins, a mother of three, will go through deployment as her husband is being deployed.

“So as a wife, I’m just trying to keep my family in line — emotions are OK. It’s OK to cry but at the same time, we have to keep moving forward. And we have to keep doing what we would normally do on a daily basis,” she said. (Source.)

In Oregon, the part-time soldiers are being told that deployment to the Middle East will enhance their careers.

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