De ex-president van Rusland, of beter gezegd de Sovjet-Unie, Gorbatsjov, liet afgelopen januari weten, dat de wereld zich opmaakt voor oorlog. De redactie van Anti-Media zocht daar aanwijzingen voor en vond er 5, die op 1 maart jl. werden gepubliceerd:

5
Signs We’re Headed Toward a Major War

5 Signs We’re Headed Toward a Major War

(ANTIMEDIA) In
January of this year, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail
Gorbachev warned that
the whole world is preparing for war. There are many indicators that
back up Gorbachev’s assertion, but to discuss them in their
entirety would take a dissertation or two. Instead, we have put
together a list of the five most obvious signs of impending war
currently being overlooked by the media. As a result of these
oversights, the public is also missing them.

1.
Travel Ban

The
Trump administration’s travel ban, which targeted seven
majority-Muslim nations, makes little sense in the context of
fighting international terrorism. A Department of Homeland
Security report already
found no evidence of any extra threat posed by the nations on the
travel ban. 

Conversely, a Saudi official has admitted Saudi
Arabia’s longstanding practice of supporting terrorism as a
political tool, yet Saudi Arabia managed to escape the list. So did
Turkey, a country that has extensively
aided ISIS fighters;
Qatar, which has spent immense
amounts of
money arming fanatical jihadists; the United
Arab Emirates (where
the majority of the funding for the 9/11 attacks passed through), and
the list goes on.

Instead,
the travel ban was purely
political.
With help
from the anti-Trump media establishment,
the ban worked wonders separating the American public between those
who oppose Trump’s every move and those who support him
wholeheartedly in his quest to “make America great again.” But
little attention was paid to the reality of the ban.

Six
of the seven countries on Trump’s travel ban were featured in a
memo that was adopted shortly after 9/11 that detailed how the U.S.
was going to topple the governments of seven countries, as exposed by
four-star General Wesley Clark. The countries featured on Clark’s
list were Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Iran.

Any
accusations that Clark’s list is a conspiracy theory are completely
debunked by the events of the last two decades. Iraq was invaded in
2003, and the U.S. has been backing
warlords in
Somalia and bombing
the country for some time now.
The Pentagon is reportedly considering
expanding U.S.
involvement in the African nation. Israel was eager to take out
Lebanon in 2006 but failed to do so, though Israel warned just
last year that the next encounter with Lebanon will be “ferocious”
and “terrible.” U.S. troops are on the ground in Sudan.
Libya was destroyed in
2011, which paved
the way for the transfer of weapons and fighters into Syria,
a country bound to Iran by a mutual
defense agreement.

In
the context of Trump’s travel ban, Lebanon is replaced by Yemen,
the latest addition to the playbook amid fears that an insurgency
within Yemen could
place an Iranian-aligned government on Saudi Arabia’s border.

Including
Iran in the travel ban — despite the fact Iran is not currently
embroiled in a major civil conflict of its own, is not currently
bombing any other countries, and is one of the major
partners in the fight against ISIS —
demonstrates something more sinister at play than mere concerns
regarding international terrorism.

2.
Trump’s anti-Iran rhetoric

The
Obama administration, having successfully taken out Libya in 2011,
was tasked with finishing the job in Syria and toppling the Assad
regime. Overwhelming
support for
Syrian rebels battling the Syrian government was replaced
by urgent calls to intervene directly in 2013,
but Obama failed to gain international and public support for
airstrikes on the Syrian government. Russia diplomatically put its
hand up to offer a different proposal altogether, also warning that
“[they]
have [their] plans”
should the American military decide to strike Syria as Obama
intended. Any speculation that the real focus of the Syrian war was
aimed at Iran was proven to be not just mere conjecture; Obama
immediately thereafter warned Iran
that just because the U.S. did not attack Syria did not mean the U.S.
wouldn’t still strike Iran over its alleged nuclear program.

The
Russian military intervened overtly in Syria in 2015, which only
further foiled Washington’s plans for regime change in the country,
as admitted by former Secretary of State John Kerry in a leaked
audio recording.

As
such, the Trump administration has appeared to move the focus away
from Syria and directly back to Iran, in line George
W. Bush’s approach
when he was in office.

Trump
has assembled a
team that is “obsessed with Iran” and has accused Iran
of being the biggest state sponsor of terrorism. Theresa May, the
prime minister of the United Kingdom, also stated that
pushing back on “Iran’s
aggressive efforts” to
increase its “arc
of influence from Tehran through to the Mediterranean” was
a “priority.” Trump
was likely thrilled by these statements, as May
successfully secured 100
percent support for NATO from Trump the next day.

Following
an Iranian missile launch, the Trump administration officially
put “Iran
on notice.” The U.S. government wanted to make sure the
Iranians “understood
we are not going to sit by and not act on their actions.”

Just
this past month, Trump warned in a tweet that
Iran was “playing with fire,” and he vowed he would not be
anywhere near as “kind” as his predecessor was to Iran. This is
important because Trump has accused Iran of breaching its obligations
under the nuclear agreement, though the nuclear agreement does
not prohibit non-nuclear tests.

The
nuclear deal reached in 2015 was viewed as one of Obama’s greatest
diplomatic achievements, but in reality, it was doomed to fail right
from the start. In the same way Libya was coaxed out of rapidly
advancing its weapons programs before
being bombed back
into the Middle Ages in 2011, it may be the case that this diplomatic
approach to Iran was always a smokescreen to give the United States
more ‘reasoned’ leverage when attempting to convince the
international arena that a strike on Iran was justified.

As
outlined in the book “Which
Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran”:

“For
those who favor regime change or a military attack on Iran (either by
the United States or Israel), there is a strong argument to be made
for trying this option first. Inciting regime change in Iran would be
greatly assisted by convincing the Iranian people that their
government is so ideologically blinkered that it refuses to do what
is best for the people and instead clings to a policy that could only
bring ruin on the country. The ideal scenario
in this case would be that the United States and the international
community present a package of positive inducements so enticing that
the Iranian citizenry would support the deal, only to have the regime
reject it. In a similar
vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very
unpopular around the world and require the proper international
context – both to ensure the logistical support the operation would
require and to minimize the blowback from it. The
best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support
(however grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a
widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected
a superb offer – one so good that only a regime determined to
acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would
turn it down.” [emphasis
added]

By
claiming that through its missile tests Iran is violating a deal
that Trump
never supported to
begin with, he can lay the groundwork for an all-out confrontation
with Iran that could garner support from the international community,
as well as the misinformed American public.

3.
Iran dumps dollar

Currency
is a major driving factor behind the wars of our generation. Iraq
reportedly gave up
the U.S. dollar in 2000 for the euro and netted a “handsome profit”
for doing so. The U.S. military invaded in 2003 and
immediately switched oil sales in
Iraq from the euro back to the dollar. Iraq was also under heavy U.S.
sanctions that spanned
the course of at least a decade prior
to the invasion.

Comparatively,
in response to Trump’s anti-Iran rhetoric and the travel ban, Iran
officially dumped the
U.S. dollar. Iran has also been on the receiving
end of sanctions since
the Bush administration, and Trump has slapped fresh
sanctions on Iran over the missile tests.

In
the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, our television sets
were rife with
an unprecedented amount of disinformation regarding Iraq’s nuclear
program and the threat it posed to the world. Conversely, Israel
has been crying wolf over Iran’s nuclear program for
at least two decades, yet no actual evidence of an Iranian nuclear
weapons program has been produced.

The
Trump administration also accused Iran
of attacking a U.S. navy vessel – an attack that never took place.

Make
no mistake. The Trump administration is laying the groundwork for a
war with Iran by sowing the anti-Iranian seeds necessary to take the
American public into another dangerous war in the Middle East.

4.
Syria

While
Trump appeared at first to have heralded
a new approach to the Syrian conflict,
namely that Assad should be left alone and the real focus of American
foreign policy should be on defeating ISIS, the Trump administration
is stepping up its Syria operation behind the curtains. Trump is
reportedly planning to
send troops to Syria, and he is not the only external power doing so.
Iran’s regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia, which has incessantly
accused Tehran of backing rebels in neighboring Yemen without
producing any real evidence,
is also reportedly sending
troops into Syria.

Iranian-backed
regime troops will not look favorably on any foreign invading force,
particularly Saudi troops. Saudi Arabia has already made it clear
that it intends to liberate areas of Syria from ISIS and will be on
the ground to ensure that “liberated areas [do] not fall
under the control of Hizballah, Iran or the regime.”

How
far will they go to ensure this? Not to mention, how can one country
go into another and say that they want to ensure that the land does
not fall back into the hands of the people governing that country?

5.
Military drills and military alliances

The
United States and the United
Kingdom have
already begun military drills that simulate a potential conflict with
Iran. As reported by Russian-state owned news site RT,
Iran has staged a
“massive” military drill of its own, spanning 2 million square
kilometers.

This
preparation for war can be seen across the globe. Russia is
also holding
military drills as NATO
troops and tanks encroach upon
its border. Iran is seeking even closer military relations with
Russia and North
Korea.
The Baltic states that border Russia are running
drills,
too, supposedly out of fear that the Kremlin will invade. Russia’s
longstanding ally, China,
is also currently running drills for its own geostrategic
purposes.

Germany
is reportedly seeking to increase
its troop numbers to
200,000 troops even though such a move may put its neighbors on edge.
The Philippines, having decided to give the political middle finger
to the United States and instead forge closer relations with Russia
and China, welcomed
Russian warships to
its shores in January of this year.

Looking
at these military drills and alliances in the context of the above
developments paints a very grim picture for where humanity is headed.

***

War
with Iran: too unthinkable?

The
only rational criticism pundits have given
regarding Anti-Media’s previous
warnings of war is that because a war with Iran would be so
unthinkable, the Trump administration would never be so reckless as
to pursue it. Critics who hold such a view always neglect two very
important points: firstly, the United States under the Obama
administration was vehemently
opposed to the Assad regime in Syria.
The previous U.S. administration resorted
to directly targeting Syrian troops in
the middle of what was supposed to be a peace process, all with full
knowledge that the Assad regime is bound to Iran by a mutual defense
agreement. Secondly, America’s Middle Eastern power, Israel, has
also attacked Syria multiple
times since 2011,
targeting Iranian military personnel and their proxies.

Those
who think a war with Iran is unthinkable cannot answer the question:
what if Iran were to respond directly?

Think
of it like the current
to and fro between
Floyd Mayweather and UFC champion Conor McGregor. The two sides talk
tough and
attempt to provoke each other to set the mood for the current
conflict. Plenty of speculation occurs about whether one side is
bluffing and whether
or not the fight could possibly occur in the near future.
There is even the idea that such a fight would be so disastrous for
one of the sides (or both) that there is nothing to gain from
pursuing it.

But
all it takes is one wrong move; one reckless, cowardly, ill-advised
decision from either side and the entire Middle Eastern powder
keg could explode.

Trump
ordered a raid on Yemen that even war hawk Barack Obama disapproved
of because it was deemed too risky, and the raid
was an instant failure that
killed multiple civilians. This is the same president who turns down
dinners because he cannot face the torment of the liberal media and
instead forms
his opinions from Fox
News before
taking to Twitter.

It
is not unreasonable to expect the worst.

Creative
Commons / Anti-Media / Report
a typo

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