The Prophecy is much more than seeing into the future. For the Prophecy sees without the element of time. For the Prophecy sees what is, what was, and what always shall be. 11:11 LLC
“The citizens of Israel deserve a functioning government at all times,” he added. “That is the expectation from us.”
“We must act on all fronts at any given time, and that is exactly what we’ll do. This government will continue to act for the good of the citizens exactly as it did over the past year.”
Lapid stated that the teachers’ strike, hospital budgets, defence against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah cannot wait.
He also pointed to the Israel Air Force’s attack on alleged Hezbollah drones which Israel said were on their way to carry out attacks on the Karish gas field in the disputed waters.
Lapid claimed that Karish is located in the Israeli Exclusive Economic Zone, considering the alleged attempted attacks by the drones a violation of Israeli sovereignty.
In this combination image, John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) addresses a press conference, in the1960s and Joe Biden (left inset) and Vladimir Putin (Right inset). A Russian MP referred to the Cuban missile crisis as he called for moving Russia’s hypersonic weapons within striking distance of U.S. territory. Getty
A video of a Russian politician calling for a new Cuban missile crisis over the Ukraine conflict has gone viral on social media.
Russian Duma member Andrei Gurulyov was speaking on Russian state TV and discussing the need for a resolution to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Gurulyov said moving Russia’s hypersonic weapons within striking distance of U.S. territory would force President Joe Biden to come to the negotiating table with Russia and stop supplying Ukraine with weapons for the conflict.
Propagandists on Russian state TV advocate creating another Cuban Missile Crisis (this time, with hypersonic missiles) in order to extract concessions out of the U.S. They also propose total destruction of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and warn other countries: “You’re next.” pic.twitter.com/6j6D0zKIwV— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) July 3, 2022
“Propagandists on Russian state TV advocate creating another Cuban Missile Crisis (this time, with hypersonic missiles) in order to extract concessions out of the U.S.”
“They also propose total destruction of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and warn other countries: ‘You’re next.'”
In the clip, Gurulyov speaks in Russian but an English translation runs along the bottom of the screen. It is unclear when the footage was recorded.
“Right now, they’re delivering MLRS [Multiple Launch Rocket System], howitzers, they’ll deliver anything there[in Ukraine], up to a nuclear bomb just not to let us win,” he said, referencing Western countries’ commitment to supplying Ukraine with weapons.
“Next, they’ll send planes, anti-aircraft systems, then anti-missile systems and so on and so forth, they will not calm down.”
Gurulyov went on to describe how Russia could succeed in the “denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.”
“Any détente happens after a good crisis, like détente that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he continued.
“Why? Because during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a direct threat to the territory of the U.S. to which they had no immediate response.
“We should create similar circumstances since the U.S. is behind all this and others are on their leash.
“We’re ahead of everyone with hypersonic weapons, our hypersonic weapons should be, not only aboard traditional carriers, but brought near to the vicinity of the United States.
“With a flight time of five minutes, maximum, Biden will keep sitting there and stuttering but the rest will think about how to negotiate.
“That is the only scenario for us to be able to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine.”
Gurulyov then hinted that Russia had a desire to come to the negotiating table in order to resolve the conflict.
He emphasized that in “any war, you can’t always keep winning,” and admitted that there must be defeats eventually.
However, journalist Nadana Fridriksson, who spoke after Gurulyov, hinted that Russia could invade other nations after the Ukraine conflict is concluded.
“Those countries in the post-Soviet space, that decided to play with Westernness, neutrality, they should understand that they’re next,” she said. “Sooner or later, the Ukrainian campaign will conclude, after Ukraine, another country’s turn will come.”
Newsweek has contacted the White House and Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.
During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the central issue was how short America’s available reaction-time to a Soviet blitz nuclear attack would be and whether it would be too short for America to respond before America’s leader, JFK, would be able to press the nuclear button and retaliate against such a Soviet nuclear first-strike (from so near a location as Cuba). That time-interval would have been about 30 minutes, and Kennedy told Khrushchev that that would be unacceptably short and so if Khrushchev would go through with his plan to place his missiles in Cuba, then America would preemptively launch our nuclear warheads against the Soviet Union. Khrushchev decided not to do it. WW III was thus averted. But now we’re potentially down to around 5 minutes, in the reverse direction, and almost nobody is even talking about it.
The present version of that threat (to the entire world) started in 2010, when U.S. President Barack Obama (who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his rhetoric) met privately in the White House with the then newly and democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who had just been elected by Ukrainians on a platform of continuing into the future the geostrategic neutrality of Russia’s next-door neighbor Ukraine regarding the continuing goal of the U.S. Government to conquer Russia. Yanukovych refused to assist America in that regard, but would also not oppose it; Ukraine would remain neutral. Later that same year, Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met privately with Yanukovych in Kiev, and the result was the same: Ukraine would remain neutral regarding Russia and the United States. Then, in 2011, two agents of the CIA-created Google Corporation, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who happened to be personal friends and associates of Ms. Clinton (plus some of those men’s close associates), met privately with Julian Assange for a ‘friendly’ visit allegedly in order to quote him in their upcoming book, The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives how to stir up and organize a grass-roots movement online so as to enhance democracy. Only later did Assange recognize that he had divulged to them tips that were subsequently used by the U.S. State Department and CIA to organize the coup that overthrew Yanukovych in February 2014. Assange then headlined in October 2014, “Google Is Not What It Seems”. That’s when Assange noted, “Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s ‘director of regime change.’”
In other words: what Obama did was generally successful, it grabbed Ukraine, or most of it, and it changed Ukrainians’ minds regarding America and Russia. But only after the subsequent passage of time did the American neoconservative heart become successfully grafted into the Ukrainian nation so as to make Ukraine a viable place to position U.S. nuclear missiles against Moscow. Furthermore: America’s rulers also needed to do some work upon U.S. public opinion. Not until February of 2014 — the time of Obama’s coup — did more than 15% of the American public have a “very unfavorable” view of Russia. (Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, that figure had already risen to 42%. America’s press — and academia or public-policy ‘experts’ — have been very effective at managing public opinion.)
Back in 2012, when Obama was running for re-election, against Mitt Romney, that figure was still remaining at 11%, where it had been approximately ever since Gallup had started polling on this question in 1989. So, Obama, and the U.S. Congress, and the newsmedia owners who had sold all of those poliiticians to the American public, had a lot of work yet to do after Obama’s re-election in 2012. During that political contest, Obama was aware of this fact, and used it to his own advantage against the overtly hyper-anti-Russian candidate, Romney.
Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They — they fight every cause for the world’s worst actors. … Russia is the — the geopolitical foe.
Not just “a” geopolitical foe, but “the” geopolitical foe.” (Wow! In a world with growing jihadist movements, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS?) The prior month, Gallup had polled, and reported that 11% figure; so, Romney was jumping the gun a lot on this, maybe because he was more concerned about fundraising than about appealing to voters. He knew he would need lots of money in order to have even a chance against Obama.
Obama responded to that comment mainly at the re-election campaign’s end, by springing this upon Romney during a debate, on 22 October 2012:
Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia. In the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.
Obama’s campaign had very successfully presented himself as NOT being like Romney (even though he secretly WAS). Lies like this had, in fact, won Obama his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. But now he won his re-election. He was an astoundingly gifted liar.
In March 2012, at a summit in South Korea, Obama was caught in a “hot mic” incident. Without realizing he could be overheard, Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more ability to negotiate with the Russians about missile defense after the November election.
“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [the incoming President Putin] to give me space,” Obama was heard telling Medvedev, apparently referring to incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“Yeah, I understand,” Medvedev replied.
Obama interjected, saying, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
So: Obama was telling Putin there, through Medvedev, that his next Administration would soften its stand on America’s installing in eastern Europe, near and even on Russia’s borders, missiles that are designed to disable Russia’s ability to retaliate against a U.S. nuclear first-strike — the U.S. ABM or anti-ballistic-missile system and the nuclear weapoons that America was designing.
Obama wasn’t lying only to America’s voters; he was shown there privately lying to Putin, by indicating to Medvedev that instead of becoming more aggressive (by his planned ABMs, and super-advanced nuclear fuses) against Russia in a second term, he’d become less aggressive (by negotiating with Putin about these matters — as you can see there, the nub of the issue was George Herbert Walker Bush’s lie to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990).
Whereas Cuba was around 30 minutes away from nuking Washington DC., Ukraine would be around 5 minutes away from nuking Moscow. No other country is that close to Moscow. This is probably the main reason why, on 24 February 2022, Putin finally decided to invade Ukraine. But even if he wins there, Finland is only 7 minutes away from Moscow. And Finland was one of the Axis powers in Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa invasion against the Soviet Union between 25 June 1941 and 19 September 1944; so, Finland’s rejoining the nazi alliance now would certainly pose an even greater danger to Russians than Cuba’s joining the Soviet alliance posed to Americans in 1962. But this time, the aggressor-nation in the matter is the U.S. and its allies, not Russia, and yet Russia is responding with far less urgency than America had done in 1962. We’re still on borrowed time, borrowed now from Russia.
To all this, a friend has replied to me:
Completely invalid analogy. Having Russian missiles in Cuba in the early days of ICBM technology was to the USA what having USA missiles in Turkey was to Russia. The crisis was resolved when both countries agreed to withdraw their missiles. Made sense in those days. Today, the technology is such that proximity of launch sites to targets is irrelevant.
However, some of America’s top nuclear scientists don’t share that view, at all, but its opposite. They concluded, on 1 March 2017:
The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing — boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.
Starting in 2006, the predominant American meta-strategy has been called “Nuclear Primacy” — meaning to attain the ability to win a nuclear war — not merely what it had previously been (M.A.D. or “Mutually Assured Destruction”): to prevent one.
Apparently, the latest fashion in U.S. Government and academic thinking, about this ‘competition’, is, first, to dismemberRussia. They even sell this goal as embodying America’s “commitment to anti-imperialism.”
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
Lukashenko says Russia ‘must be ready’ to use nuclear arsenal
The news comes as tension mounts over the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine as several key cities fall into Russian control in the east of the country. As global condemnation pours in over the invasion, Russian state media has hit back with continual warnings of nuclear strikes against targets in the West, including London and New York.
Releasing the news, Interfax said: “From July 1, 2022, in order to strengthen the defence capability of our state, shifts of the Main Centre for Geophysical Monitoring began to carry out round-the-clock duty.”
The centre, which opened on June 1, is tasked with identifying the sources of man-made “geophysical disturbances” as well as nuclear explosions, Interfax reported.
President Vladimir Putin said in February that he was putting the country’s nuclear forces on high alert, citing what he called aggressive statements by NATO leaders and economic sanctions against Moscow.
Russia’s official military deployment principles allow for the use of nuclear weapons if they – or other types of weapons of mass destruction – are used against it, or if the state faces an existential threat.
Speaking of whether NATO allies should be prepared for a Russian strike, former British Ambassador to Washington Sir Kim Darroch said: “There’s an analysis that I think has been done by somebody recently, a think tank, that they’re looking at about 35 mentions or perhaps it’s a little bit more now.”
It is assumed that if Russia were to use nuclear weapons, it would do so in an attack on Ukraine, and not on a NATO state which would trigger Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, hence launching a full-scale response.
In such an attack, short-range, lower yield ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons – of which there are thought to be more than 1,000 in reserve – would be the most likely used.
It is thought that any such weapons should they be launched, will be taken from storage and attached to missiles, bombers or as shell artillery.
The Russian President recently supervised an exercise focusing on the readiness of military command and control, combat crews, warships, and strategic missile carriers, as well as the reliability of strategic nuclear and non-nuclear weapons.
Furthermore, Putin has announced the so-called “Satan II”, a missile capable of carrying over 10 warheads would be ready to launch by the end of the year.
The hypersonic missile is capable of reaching key cities in Europe in just over three minutes, and just under fifteen if fired at New York from Russia.
Aside from Russia, North Korea has also been stepping up its nuclear programme in recent times.
The pariah state has essentially completed restoration work at its Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility and appears to be expanding construction activity into a second tunnel, according to a new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
After conducting a record number of missile tests this year, including an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the United States, South Korea and Japan believe Pyongyang is gearing up for its first nuclear test in five years.
The CSIS analysis said the images showed new construction materials near the entrance to the portal at Tunnel No 4, which was destroyed in 2018.
A report by Loughborough University has suggested Ukraine could begin building a nuclear arsenal or start buying nuclear weapons to increase its country’s defences against Putin.
Dr Paul Maddrell, a lecturer in international history and international relations, at Loughborough, said that these brutal assaults, being carried out to help Putin achieve his three main aims – to dismember Ukraine, weaken its military and reverse the expansion of NATO – could force President Zelenskyy to consider building a nuclear deterrent.
He said: “If I were the President of Ukraine, I’d strongly be considering developing nuclear weapons.
“Ukraine had nuclear weapons in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed.
The fake accounts that were identified as Hamas operators were seemingly innocent profiles that approached Israelis over the past month, attempting to implant spyware.
The IDF has uncovered and foiled yet anotherHamas network posing as young women on social networks in order to honeypot IDF soldiers in order to access as much information and intelligence on the military that they can.
The fake accounts that were identified as Hamas operators were Hodaya Shetrit, Racheli Benisti and Adina Goldberg.
The seemingly innocent profiles approached Israelis over the past month on Telegram and various social networks that dealt with soccer and dating and tried to implant spyware under the guise of a puzzle app.
“The profiles corresponded with soldiers in order to establish a connection that would allow them to take the next step and entice them to download a game, which would later turn out to be a malicious attack tool,” a senior officer in Military Intelligence was quoted by the IDF as saying.
“The profiles corresponded with soldiers in order to establish a connection that would allow them to take the next step and entice them to download a game, which would later turn out to be a malicious attack tool.”
none
Senior Israeli military officer
The app would allow the attacker, Hamas, to gain almost complete control over the soldier’s device. It would then be used to gather critical information and even track the soldier.
The network was identified after a soldier reported a suspicious conversation that he had with someone on Telegram.
Following the report, an operation dubbed “The end of the Game” was begun by a joint team made up of the Shin Bet internal security agency, the IDF’s Information Security Division and the Spectrum and Cyber Defense Division.
The operation by the various bodies was conducted in the General Staff monitoring center that was recently opened in the Information Security Division which is responsible for detecting, identifying and exposing various cyber threats against soldiers and military assets using advanced technological means.
“This is comprehensive cooperation of a number of security bodies inside and outside the military, through which many attempts to penetrate soldiers’ phones were thwarted, without them noticing,” the IDF said.
The Israeli military has thwarted several similar attempts by Hamas to honeypot troops in recent years.
Two years ago, the phones of hundreds of soldiers, including combat soldiers, were compromised. The IDF thwarted the attempt by the Gaza-based terror group in an operation they called “Rebound.”
The military identified six main characters used by Hamas, many of whom presented themselves as new immigrants to Israel with hearing or vision problems to explain their less-than-fluent Hebrew.
In addition to using the same characters on various platforms to boost its credibility, Hamas is said to have edited their pictures, making it more difficult to find the original source of the character’s picture.
Once on the phone, the virus would give Hamas operatives control over all aspects of the phone, including pictures, the soldier’s location, text messages and the soldier’s contact list.
The virus would also have access to the phone’s camera and microphone, taking pictures and recording conversations remotely without the soldier knowing. The group was also able to download and transfer files and have access to the phone’s GPS allowing them to know the infected device’s location.
The IDF believes that Hamas and other terror groups will continue with similar attempts.
“We are closely monitoring the enemy, and as soon as we see fit, we will thwart it and impair its capabilities,” the IDF said. “It should be understood that this is an ongoing mission, in which we will continue to act at all times to disrupt enemy capabilities.”
Following the latest attempt, the military has reiterated to soldiers to follow the IDF’s cautiousness guidelines for the use of social networks: only confirming friendship requests from people one knows personally, not uploading any classified information to any social network, and to only download applications from the original App Store (rather than downloading applications from links).
The military has also recommended that a soldier who is approached by a stranger online should be aware that it might be an attempt to honeypot them, especially if the suspicious individual is unable to meet in person.
The IDF has urged all soldiers, including those in the reserves, to report to their commander and security officials if the suspicious individual asks them to download applications and if they feel that their phone may have been compromised.
In the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy was more candid. Speaking at American University, he said: “A single nuclear weapon contains almost 10 times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.” Kennedy also noted, “The deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.” Finally, he added, “All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours.”
Kennedy was no dove. He affirmed willingness to use nuclear weapons. But his speech offered some essential honesty about nuclear war — and the need to seriously negotiate with the Kremlin in the interests of averting planetary incineration — an approach sorely lacking from the United States government today.
At the time of Kennedy’s presidency, nuclear war would have been indescribably catastrophic. Now — with large arsenals of hydrogen bombs and what scientists know about “nuclear winter” — experts have concluded that a nuclear war would virtually end agriculture and amount to omnicide (the destruction of human life on earth).
What I discovered — to my horror, I have to say — is that the Joint Chiefs of Staff contemplated causing with our own first strike 600 million deaths, including 100 million in our own allies. Now, that was an underestimate even then because they weren’t including fire, which they found was too incalculable in its effects. And of course, fire is the greatest casualty-producing effect of thermonuclear weapons. So the real effect would’ve been over a billion — not 600 million — about a third of the Earth’s population then at that time.
Ellsberg added:
What turned out to be the case 20 years later in 1983 and confirmed in the last 10 years very thoroughly by climate scientists and environmental scientists is that that high ceiling of a billion or so was wrong. Firing weapons over the cities, even if you call them military targets, would cause firestorms in those cities like the one in Tokyo in March of 1945, which would loft into the stratosphere many millions of tons of soot and black smoke from the burning cities. It wouldn’t be rained out in the stratosphere. It would go around the globe very quickly and reduce sunlight by as much as 70 percent, causing temperatures like that of the Little Ice Age, killing harvests worldwide and starving to death nearly everyone on Earth. It probably wouldn’t cause extinction. We’re so adaptable. Maybe 1 percent of our current population of 7.4 billion could survive, but 98 or 99 percent would not.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine four months ago, the risks of global nuclear annihilation were at a peak. In January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock at a mere 100 seconds from apocalyptic Midnight, compared to six minutes a decade ago. As Russia’s horrific war on Ukraine has persisted and the U.S. government has bypassed diplomacy in favor of massive arms shipments, the hazards of a nuclear war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers have increased.
But the Biden administration has not only remained mum about current nuclear war dangers; it’s actively exacerbating them. Those at the helm of U.S. foreign policy now are ignoring the profound lessons that President Kennedy drew from the October 1962 confrontation with Russia over its nuclear missiles in Cuba. “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,” Kennedy said. “To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
In sync with the overwhelmingly hawkish U.S. media, members of Congress and “national security” establishment, Biden has moved into new Cold War overdrive. The priority aim is to make shrewd moves on the geopolitical chessboard — not to engage in diplomacy that could end the slaughter in Ukraine and prevent the war from causing widespread starvation in many countries.
As scholar Alfred McCoy just wrote, “With the specter of mass starvation looming for some 270 million people and, as the [United Nations] recently warned, political instability growing in those volatile regions, the West will, sooner or later, have to reach some understanding with Russia.” Only diplomacy can halt the carnage in Ukraine and save the lives of millions now at risk of starvation. And the dangers of nuclear war can be reduced by rejecting the fantasy of a military solution to the Ukraine conflict.
In recent months, the Russian government has made thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been shipping huge quantities of weapons to Ukraine, while Washington has participated in escalating the dangerous rhetoric. President Biden doubled down on conveying that he seeks regime change in Moscow, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has declared that the U.S. wants the Russian military “weakened” — an approach that is opposite from Kennedy’s warning against “confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.”
We’d be gravely mistaken to wait for Washington’s officialdom to level with us about nuclear war dangers, much less take steps to mitigate them. The power corridors along Pennsylvania Avenue won’t initiate the needed changes. The initiatives and the necessary political pressure must come from grassroots organizing.
A new “Defuse Nuclear War” coalition of about 90 national and regional organizations (which I’m helping to coordinate) launched in mid-June with a livestream video featuring an array of activists and other eloquent speakers, drawn together by the imperative of preventing nuclear war. (They included antiwar activists, organizers, scholars and writers Daniel Ellsberg, Mandy Carter, David Swanson, Medea Benjamin, Leslie Cagan, Pastor Michael McBride, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Hanieh Jodat Barnes, Judith Ehrlich, Khury Petersen-Smith, India Walton, Emma Claire Foley, retired Army Col. Ann Wright and former California Gov. Jerry Brown.)
The U.S. government’s willingness to boost the odds of nuclear war is essentially a political problem. It pits the interests of the people of the world — in desperate need of devoting adequate resources to human needs and protection of the environment — against the rapacious greed of military contractors intertwined with the unhinged priorities of top elected officials.
TEHRAN, Jul. 02 (MNA) – Media sources reported on Saturday morning that the sound of explosions was heard in the US military base near Baghdad airport in Iraq.
Media sources reported on Saturday that several explosions occured at the US Victoria base near Baghdad International Airport which is considered one of the centers of deployment of American occupying forces in Iraq.
According to Iraqi sources, alarm systems sounded in Victoria base following these explosions.
No further details about the explosion have been released.
Veteran statesman Henry Kissinger says the trouble with the talks to revive Iran’s nuclear deal is that it is very dangerous to go back to a deal that was inadequate to begin with.
In an interview with British magazine The Spectator published on Saturday, Kissinger, who is a former US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, added that any modification in the 2015 accord “makes it apparently more tolerable to the adversary.”
He noted that if such a deal is reached, the situation of the region might become “much more explosive” because “particularly Israel – Iran’s chief enemy – but also Egypt and Saudi Arabia – whom they see as principal competitors – were going to be driven into reactions.”
Saying that there is really “no alternative to the elimination of an Iranian nuclear force,” Kissinger emphasized that there is “no way you can have peace in the Middle East with nuclear weapons in Iran, because before that happens, there is a high danger of pre-emption by Israel, because Israel cannot wait for deterrents. It can afford only one blow on itself. That is the inherent problem of the crisis.”
“I was extremely doubtful about the original nuclear agreement. I thought Iran’s promises would be very difficult to verify, and that the talks really created a pattern in which the nuclear build-up might have been slowed down a little but made more inevitable,” he said.
Leader of the Sadrist movement Muqtada al-Sadr has continued to challenge his opponents of the Shiite Coordination Framework and former allies in the Sovereignty Alliance and the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Sadr has condemned President Barham Salih following reports that he did not sign the law criminalizing normalization with Israel.
Sadr revealed other reasons for his withdrawal from the parliament, aside from what he announced earlier about not wanting to participate with the corrupt.
He blamed his opponents for disapproving the nomination of his cousin, Jaafar, for the position of prime minister, knowing that Jaafar is “the son of their religious reference and their martyr, and they rejected him.”
Sadr also attacked the politicians and their blocs who betrayed him without naming them.
Sadr denied his previous statement about withdrawing from the parliament for not wanting to join the corrupt, saying some parties are under the illusion that his decision meant handing Iraq to the corrupt.
He asserted that the decision must submit to the people’s will and determination.
Earlier, pictures and banners were hung on several streets and central and southern cities in Baghdad with the phrase “be fully prepared.”
Sadr justified his participation in the October 2021 elections, saying that “our return to the elections was for two important things: to confront normalization with Israel, which was criminalized, and against obscenity [homosexuality], so let’s see what they do.”
“Will they enact a new and detailed law, especially with the escalation of Western colonial pressures against those who oppose it?” wondered Sadr.
“Will they continue to form a government from fraudulent elections?”
Meanwhile, political observers fear that the delay in forming the cabinet may justify protests by Sadr supporters and may include an operation to storm the Green Zone, especially after several top Sadrist leaders supported Sadr’s steps.
The government formation did not witness any positive progress after Sadr withdrew, and the Coordination Framework became the biggest parliamentary bloc.
The Framework forces disagreed over the positions of prime minister and first deputy speaker, coupled with another disagreement between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union regarding nominating a President.
A parliament dissolution and early elections are possible if the Sadrist demonstrations erupt, which the Tishreen Movement is expected to join.