By Joachim Hagopian
On April 1st when as Israeli airstrike took out half the Iran embassy compound in Damascus, Syria along with Iran’s top ranking generals and 5 other officers, Israel clearly violated international law (both UN Charter Article 51 and 1961’s Vienna Convention) that protects foreign nations’ embassies, consulates and staff around the world. The targeted slain victims were all invited military advisors stationed in Syria, unlike the illegal US military occupiers refusing to leave both Syria and Iraq.
Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei responded by informing Israel and the world that it will deliver a payback “slap in the face” to Israel for its escalated aggression that is clearly a Netanyahu provocation, deliberately attempting to ignite the larger war in the Middle East in order to drag the US into World War III. Though Biden made the usual claim that US support for Israel is “ironclad,” sending US aircraft and destroyers into the area with missile ballistic defense systems to protect Israel, he also made an agreement with Iran not to intervene against Iran’s response after Iran warned the US to stay out of Tehran’s retribution in answer to Israel’s latest aggression.
The stage was already set when on April 13th last Saturday around noon local time Iranian special forces seized an Israeli operated container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, forcing it into Iran port. Then late Saturday night began Iran’s intense barrage reportedly launching over 300 Kamikaze drones, rockets and cruise and ballistic missiles, simultaneously fired directly into Israel from not only directly from Iran, but Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran proxy groups in both Iraq and Syria. With Iran launching the world’s largest drone strike in history and Iran’s biggest missile launch in its history, the world stands at the abyss of global disaster.
The next day on Sunday April 14th Israel and Netanyahu were boasting that 99% of the incoming drones and missiles were effectively intercepted. IDF spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said that most of the drones and missiles were destroyed even prior to entering Israeli airspace, neutralized by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, with assistance from the US and allied coalition members UK, France and even Muslim monarchies Jordan and Saudi Arabia apparently shot down Iran drones. Apparently historical oil-rich Gulf States are still siding with the US/West and Islamic world isn’t so unified as recent appearances indicated. An anonymous source for the Saud family just told the Israeli public broadcaster Kan that the Saudi government blames Iran for financing terrorism responsible for the Hamas October 7th assault on Israel, sabotaging the burgeoning normalized relations between Riyadh and West Jerusalem.
The tally of Iran weapons launched against Israel included about 170 drones, over 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles. Israel’s estimated cost was over $1 billion defending itself from the Iran missile and drone attack. Iran stated that its limited objective was to hit an Israeli intelligence base apparently located in the occupied Golan Heights, according to former intelligence operative Hal Turner. That secret base played a key role in the IDF airstrike attack that killed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers in Damascus on April 1st. Also, two IDF airbases were targeted by Iran in Israel’s Negev Desert. Iran announced its limited campaign hitting only military targets as an appropriate, proportionally measured response was successful exercising Iran’s right to self-defense and that it will suffice for now. Israel admitted only minor damage sustained at one airbase and that a 10-year old Bedouin Israeli girl was slightly injured from falling shrapnel with no deaths or other injuries reported in Israel.
According to an unnamed US defense official, Biden told Netanyahu late Saturday night that the US will not support Israel if it retaliates further against Iran, reportedly telling Bibi:
You got a win. Take the win.
According to a Sunday April 14th Axios exclusive:
The official said that when Biden told Netanyahu that the U.S. will not participate in any offensive operations against Iran and will not support such operations, Netanyahu said he understood.
According to a White House statement, Biden revealed:
I told Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks — sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.
This drone and missile attack was Iran’s first military intervention launched from Iran soil against Israel ever. Its limited strategic objective purposely spared the Israeli population and primarily was intended to send a message of deterrence to Israel, warning that if Israel retaliates, Iran’s response will be much “more extensive” and devastating. Days in advance of Iran’s weekend drone/missile launch, many Islamic nations in the Middle East warned the US of their refusal to allow US to use their land, sea and airspace to help Israel. An early Sunday April 14th CNN article claimed:
American forces intercepted 70 drones and at least three ballistic missiles.
The Biden team held a conference call on Sunday with its G7 counterparts “to coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack,” collectively condemning Iran and demanding restraint.
My impression is that last weekend’s events were all pure theater, carefully plotted and choreographed to make Biden appear more presidential as commander-in-chief during his election year, showing he isn’t so weak and feeble after all, stepping up to save humanity from end of the world Armageddon with his decisive intervention warning Bibi the Butcher no help from US if he retaliates. It’s a staged shitshow to project the optics that Biden is capable of finally putting his foot down and setting limits with the defiant Israeli dictator who previously has gone out of his way to humiliate Biden by flagrantly refusing all his requests and pressure. It seems to be a high profile image enhancement exercise, an impression management charade spectacle serving as humanity’s projected temporary reprieve from World War III gone kinetic, for the time being at least until the November election.
Meanwhile, predictably Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz went on the warpath against Iran, on Sunday April 14th accusing:
Iran launched a large-scale and unprecedented attack against the state of Israel, which included hundreds of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. This attack once again proves what Israel has been saying for years: Iran is behind terrorist attacks in the region and is also the greatest threat to regional stability and world order, which is why Iran should never acquire nuclear weapons. Iran must pay the price for its aggression, and the first step in this direction must be immediate recognition of the Iranian IRGC – which carried out this large-scale terrorist attack against Israel – as a terrorist organization. The entire free world must stand with Israel against the axis of Iranian evil.
This is all too obvious that if Braindead Biden actually did convince Bibi the Butcher to forego his military retaliation against Iran, which still remains very questionable, FM Katz is attempting to rally the world currying favor for Israel, especially from the West and UN, into collectively delivering painful economic sanctions against Iran, seeking worldwide Israeli support intent on both distracting global attention away from its genocide against the Palestinians and absolving the Jewish Rogue State pariah of its over-the-top international crime on April Fool’s Day, bombing the Iran consulate in Syria, which is the real terrorist act here and of course Israel is actually the real “greatest threat to regional stability and world order.” And clearly all along, the real terrorist pariahs inflicting by far the most death and destruction on the planet are the US/Israel following orders from their kingpin City of London controllers.
Of course, perennial neocon blowhard John Bolton, former US national security adviser and ambassador to the UN had to rally for more warmongering rhetoric with the following statements to CNN:
Passivity at this point for Israel would be a big mistake. This is not time to play academic games and message and signal. This is a question of power. If they came from a different location containing nuclear warheads, Israel might not be so lucky.
Members of both the Senate and House are hardline AIPAC controlled Israeli firsters that demand Biden slam Iran with a new round of economic sanctions against Iran, totally ignoring Israel’s flagrant international breach of law taking out the Iran Consulate in Damascus. Again, it’s okay if you violate international law as long as you line up on the US/West’s side. Total double standard arbitrarily applied with US rules-based exceptionalism, still trying to impose on nations deemed a threat to Washington’s waning unipolar order. On Monday Congress will vote to impose sanctions barring Iranian imports, Iran’s oil sales to China and financial transactions between Iran and the US. Following Israel FM’s lead, the Israel controlled Congress will come up with more sanctions against Iran, and place pressure on the EU to declare Iran’s military the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. Right on cue French warmonger Macron on Monday is calling for strengthening sanctions against Iran. Another US House resolution also seeks to defy Biden’s edict and backs Israel’s military retaliation against Iran. Stand with Israel or be unseeded from your lofty position atop the US government is the kind of bribery/blackmail control Israel wields over Washington DC, of course per the marching orders of the City of London planetary controllers pushing the world toward the West vs. East Armageddon scenario.
Again, all of this appears more bread and circus theater and bluster to placate the worried world that WWIII is trying to avoid. The real terrorists – the planetary controllers well over a century ago planned their scripted Armageddon Zio vs. Islamic war currently bent on executing their drastic depopulation agenda that’s also been in the works for some time, in due time unleashing their WWIII as the globalists’ biggest WMD kill weapon of them all. It seems the big one is coming sooner than later, i.e., possibly prior to the election with yet another US false flag terrorist attack at home as the excuse to declare national emergency martial law to cancel the November election.
As a sidelight to this big theatrical sideshow, Israel propaganda painting Iran as the big bad eternal enemy showing its evil “true colors” displays some of Saturday’s missiles fired at Israel. But the last several seconds of footage is from nearly a decade ago of a Russian Grad missile launch in what’s being purported as a compilation of this weekend’s Iranian strikes against Israel. This is just one among countless examples of how the Jewish State constantly uses deception to always over play its persecuted victim role to justify continually getting away with murderous genocide nonstop for the last three-quarters of a century during its entire existence as a nation.
Meanwhile, Putin stated this week:
If the United States wants to come to the field to support Israel, we will not sit idle here, the smallest attack by the United States on Iranian soil will force us to support Iran.
Iran’s account of Saturday’s “slap in the [Israeli] face” completely disputes the Israel claim that 99% of all the Iranian drones and missiles were successfully intercepted and failed to hit their targets. On Sunday April 14th Iran Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian stated:
In this operation, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with accurate calculations and using drones and guided missiles, targeted the military base where the Zionist regime’s F-35 aircraft carried out aggression on the building of Iran’s Embassy in Damascus.
The following day on Monday Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani stated:
Iran’s action was necessary and proportionate and targeted military sites. Iran acted to defend its national security and interests given the lack of action by the UN Security Council and the ensuing irresponsible behavior of the US, Britain and France.
Again, Iran’s response was precise, measured and on estimate parity with the Israeli April 1st attack, although minus any IDF top brass generals assassinated, unlike the IRGC officers in Syria.
Also on Sunday, Chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Mohammad Baqeri stated that Iran’s hypersonic missiles “reached their goals,” hitting Israel’s Nevatim Airbase where the US made F-35s were used to carry out the terrorist attack on the Iran Consulate. These claims refute the probable lies from Netanyahu and his war cabinet that little to no damage in Israel occurred. Israel’s war cabinet is discussing how it will respond to the Iran attack as Bibi could once again defy Biden and retaliate and escalate the wider conflict further. IDF spokesman Peter Lerner told the press on Monday April 15th:
Just because we were successful in intercepting, we should not underestimate what Iran did. We are currently reviewing the options after IDF presented what it believes could be done. [Countermeasures could involve] a strike or no strike.
Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged his government to send the strong signal to its enemies, with this dangerously volatile, provocative, if not maniacal rhetoric:
Ideas of containment and moderation are the perceptions that ended on October 7. To create a deterrent in the Middle East, Israel has got to show that it is prepared to go berserk.
Meanwhile on Sunday, Iran Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) warned Israel with the statement:
Should the Israeli regime plan to continue its wicked actions against Iran, by any means or methods or at any levels, it will get a response ten times harsher.
According to Iran’s Press TV in an article on Monday April 15th:
The Iranian Army Chief Commander Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi says the country will not hesitate to give a ‘stormy and unified’ response to any act of aggression against it.
Brutally massacring close to 34,000 Palestinians in just over six months, mostly women and children, Israel lost this war months ago before the world court of public opinion. Both Israel and the US are genocidal war criminal nations that will eventually be prosecuted and punished. Last Friday April 12th Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled “Israel Wins Gaza Battles but Risks Losing the War” and then the day prior last Thursday, Israel’s Haaretz went even further “Saying What Can’t Be Said: Israel Has Been Defeated – a Total Defeat.” Writer Ron Unz makes the astute observation in his latest April 15th Unz Review article about all previous Israel wars:
Most of these previous half-dozen campaigns were fought against heavily-equipped conventional armies but their combined length totaled considerably less than the time Israel has now spent trying to defeat Gaza’s lightly-armed Hamas militants.
If Biden keeps his word, refusing to join or assist Israel if it continues this deadly tit-for-tat game of chicken, and Israel follows through to strike back at Iran, the Jewish State will then allegedly be on its own to fight off Iran’s reactive wrath that will ignite the full-fledge Middle East war that would almost certainly bring catastrophic consequences to not only Israel and this war-ravaged region, but perhaps entire planet. Both Israel with its Sampson option and Iran possess nuclear weapons. It appears the dreaded World War III scenario that top US Freemason Albert Pike predicted back in 1871, describing the war between the Islamic World (Iran et al backed by Eastern powers Russia, China) versus political Zionists (Rothschild et al City of London controlled Western powers Israel, US, NATO, EU) has at least temporarily been averted. But Israel vows revenge. Meanwhile, the Israeli war cabinet meets again today to mull over how and when it will respond to Iran’s weekend attack, with the world teetering on the edge.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In Los Angeles he found himself battling the largest county child protective services in the nation within America’s thoroughly broken and corrupt child welfare system.
The experience in both the military and child welfare system prepared him well as a researcher and independent journalist, exposing the evils of Big Pharma and how the Rockefeller controlled medical and psychiatric system inflict more harm than good, case in point, the pandemic hoax and kill shot genocide. As an independent journalist for the last decade, Joachim has written hundreds of articles for many news sites, including Global Research, lewrockwell.com and currently https//jameshfetzer.org, Inteldrop.org and https://thegovernmentrag.com. As a published author of a 5-book volume series entitled Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State, Joachim’s books and chapters are Amazon bestsellers in child advocacy and human rights categories. His A-Z sourcebook series fully document and expose the global pedophilia scourge and remain available free at https://pedoempire.org/contents/. Joachim also hosts the weekly Revolution Radio broadcast “Cabal Empire Exposed” on Friday morning at 7AM EST (ID: revradio, password: rocks!).
Concise and timely little essay from Harold Kunstler
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-bad-faith-olympics/
The Bad Faith Olympics
“This is the weirdest era in human history. By far. Nothing else even comes close. Billionaires trying to kill everyone. Civil society unable to form a coherent thought. Institutions lie in smoldering ruins. Poisons handed out like candy. We are Neanderthals with iPhones.” — Dr. Toby Rogers
Clusterfuck Nation
Did it warm your heart to see all those blue and yellow Ukrainian flags waved by our elected officials in Congress Saturday night with the passage of the $60-plus-billion aid bill to the Palookaville of Europe? You realize, don’t you, that the tiny fraction of that hypothetical “money” — from our country’s empty treasury — that ever reaches Ukraine will rebound on the instant into Mr. Zelensky’s Cayman Islands bank account. The rest of the dough enters the recursive shell-game between US weapons-makers and the very hometown folks in Congress waving those blue and yellow flags, who will receive great greasy gobs of fresh “campaign donations” from the grateful bomb and missile producers. No wonder they’re cheering.
What the $60-plus-billion won’t do is provide any fresh arms and equipment to Ukraine’s sad-sack army soon enough to prevent Russia from bringing this cruel, stupid, and unnecessary war, which we started, to a close. Yes, we started it, not Russia, in 2014 with our Intel blob overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych in the so-called “Maidan Revolution of Dignity” (what Wikipedia calls it). And for what reason? To jam Ukraine into NATO as a prelude to “weakening” Russia sufficient to bust it up and gain control over Russian oil, ores, and grain.
Yes, that was actually the neocon’s game, equal parts megalomania and hubris, a fiasco as strategically ill-fated as Hitler’s push to gain control of Russia’s oil fields via Stalingrad in 1942-3. With failure and humiliation looming in Ukraine, the blob’s objective for now, in theory, is the vain hope of prolonging the hostilities just long enough to get its hologram president, “Joe Biden” re-elected, so that said blob can continue its amoebic digestion of what’s left uneaten by it in our sore-beset republic. You’ve got to wonder, of course, what this blob thinks will remain to rule over when it’s done gobbling up everything and jailing everyone from sea to shining sea who objects.
You tell me what conceivable way Ukraine can prevail in this proxy war now without just tripping off the civilization-ending nuke exchange? America does not have enough tactical missiles and artillery shells at hand to send over there. What we did have is gone. NATO never had much to begin with. Ukraine has run out of available cannon-fodder to conscript from its dwindling population. Despite Mr. Macron’s recent bluster, NATO can’t raise a credible army, or even agree on which country would send what. Nobody is riding to the rescue. Instead, Russia is fortifying its home-grown armaments industry and its military while systematically turning off the electricity all over Ukraine by blowing up the power stations. Very soon, Ukraine will be reduced to medieval living conditions — no lights, no phones, no Internet, no shopping, no ability to conduct modern warfare. End. . . of. . . story.
This is apt to play out much faster than America’s blob-controlled news media will be able to lie about. I’d guess it can be functionally over before mid-summer. The result will be yet another humiliation on the “Joe Biden” scorecard. When it’s over, you can be sure the Russians will abstain from an end-zone dance so as not to provoke America’s genius-losers into some final petty grand act of requital. Russia will just soberly declare what is self-evident: that for centuries Ukraine has been in its sphere-of-influence, as Mexico is in ours, and that they have reestablished the natural order of things in that corner of the world.
After that, America and the rest of Western Civ can get on with the collapse of their financial system and very likely a period of profound political and economic chaos in which governments fall, nations change boundaries and shapes, and their populations suffer dramatically from an imploded standard of living. That process may actually play out somewhat slower than the end of the Ukraine war over the coming years. It will look like a combined game of musical chairs and hot potato, with the opportunities to get a seat steadily fading, and the losers left holding things they can’t handle.
In the meantime, our country — remember it, the USA, when it had its once-enviable mojo working? — is busy being insane and finding sixty ways to Sunday to commit suicide. How do you suppose the Democratic Party will actually pretend to put up “Joe Biden” for re-election when the Ukraine failure is completed? Answer: they can’t. This dumbshow of the old gaffer hiding at his beach house and avoiding direct engagement with reality is also drawing to a close. Instead of calling “a lid” on “JB’s” activities, some humid morning in the swamp his handlers will call in “a medical alert” instead, and that will be the last we see of that dreadful apparition.
It’s also looking more and more as though the Republican Party faces its own civil war, especially after Speaker Mike Johnson’s perplexing flipperooski on the Ukraine aid vote. You recall, just weeks ago he said no dice to such a deal without a stop to the invasion coming across our Mexican border. Then, the intel blob boys lured him into a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) where they showed him . . . something. . . ! Everyone’s dying to know what. A secret signed agreement making Ukraine our 51st State? Photographs of Mike engaged in unwholesome recreations with Gawd knows who or what? Or did they just have a little talk with him about how stuff is supposed to work? Whatever it was has made Mike Johnson untenable in his position. And he has explained nothing. He’s got to go.
At the other end of all that stands — or, rather, sits at a defense table — Donald Trump, the seemingly inevitable leader of a party seeking to cough him up like a hairball stuck in its craw. And yet, every week that passes, the various lawfare traps set up to snare him to look more amateurish and gauche — while the Golden Golem of Greatness somehow manages to power through all that adversity. A big faction of the party he leads is in on that nefarious game. The wild card is the increasingly inflamed mood of the American people, in whose name the game is supposedly being played. With absolutely everyone lying to them about everything, it’s turned into some kind of bad faith olympics.
Yes, Mr Hagopian. It was staged theater, from all sides. And so transparent. It’s hard to imagine that anyone can believe this stupid story.
GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE.
Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls
The case for making journalism free—at least during the 2024 election
By Richard Stengel
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/paywall-problems-media-trust-democracy/678032/
“How many times has it happened? You’re on your computer, searching for a particular article, a hard-to-find fact, or a story you vaguely remember, and just when you seem to have discovered the exact right thing, a paywall descends. “$1 for Six Months.” “Save 40% on Year 1.” “Here’s Your Premium Digital Offer.” “Already a subscriber?” Hmm, no.”