Legitimacy of US acts against Venezuela

The US has undertaken various steps for bringing regime change in Venezuela. As usual, it has been joined by some member countries of European Union. Though, the super power has failed in achieving its objective, people of Venezuela are bearing extreme distress. Does the civilized world have the slightest realization that the US actions to execute regime change in Venezuela are illegal?

In January, Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president, in a strategy orchestrated by the US to seize power from President Nicolás Maduro. In March, Guaidó announced that Operation Freedom, an organization established to overthrow the Maduro government, would take certain tactical actions beginning in April. The plan anticipated that the Venezuelan military will turn against Maduro.

This strategy was detailed in a regime change manual prepared by the US Global Development Lab, a branch of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The manual advocated the creation of rapid expeditionary development teams to partner with the CIA and US Special Forces to conduct a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations in extremis conditions.

Guaidó is funded by USAID’s sister organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is notorious for meddling in other countries and putting a good face on the CIA’s dirty business. The US generally opts for low-intensity conflict over full-scale wars. The low-intensity conflict involves four tools of regime change: sanctions or economic warfare; propaganda or information warfare; covert and proxy war; and aerial bombardment. In Venezuela, the US has used the first and second, with the third and fourth now on the table since the first two have created chaos but so far not toppled the government.

The sanctions imposed by the Trump administration in January had an immediate, very harsh impact on Venezuela’s economy, and on the general population, which depends on the export revenue from oil for essential imports including medicine, food, medical equipment, and other life-saving necessities. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting food and medicine shortages and sharp increases in disease throughout Venezuela. They characterize the situation as a humanitarian emergency and recommend a full-scale response by the United Nations Secretary General.

 The US misuse of humanitarian assistance as a cover for smuggling weapons and other non humanitarian items also has a long history in Latin American countries, Alfred De Zayas, former UN special rapporteur in Venezuela, said in an interview with AntiDiplomatico. De Zayas called out the United States for its hypocritical policy: “It is not possible to be a major cause of the economic crisis — having imposed … sanctions, financial blockades and economic war — and then mutating into a good Samaritan.”

The US is adamant at increasing the suffering of the Venezuelan people, in hopes they will rise up against Maduro. Similar approach was used by the Eisenhower administration after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. It was based on a State Department memo that proposed a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the Fidel Castro government. The US economic blockade against Cuba continues to hurt the people but they have not overthrown their government.

Venezuela has asked for and received assistance from the United Nations, Russia, China, Turkey, India and Cuba, De Zayas reported that was humanitarian and offered in good faith and without strings attached. US aid is the fruit of the poison tree.

On April 3, Sen. Marco Rubio, who has helped lead the charge for regime change in Venezuela, introduced a bill in the Senate aimed at getting approval of US$400 million assistance for Venezuela and take steps to facilitate regime change. It would assessed the declining cohesion inside the Venezuelan military and security forces and the Maduro regime, and described the factors that would accelerate the decision making of individuals to break with the Maduro regime and recognize Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela.

At the end of March, the Russian government sent 100 troops to Venezuela. Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “Russian specialists … arrived in accordance with the clauses of a bilateral agreement on technical-military cooperation.”

In early April, Russia announced plans to install a training facility for military helicopters in Venezuela. The Trump administration is rattling its sabers at Russia. US National Security Adviser John Bolton warned that the US considers the presence of military forces from outside the Western Hemisphere a direct threat to international peace and security in the region. Russia, however, denies that its military presence in Venezuela poses a military threat. “The Russian side did not violate anything: neither the international agreements nor Venezuelan laws,” according to Zakharova.

Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza cited the hypocrisy of U.S. policy. He said “Such cynicism that a country with more than 800 military bases around the world, much of them in Latin America, and a growing military budget of more than US$700 billion, intends to interfere with the military-technical cooperation program between Russia and Venezuela.”

In late March, the US House of Representatives approved a bill called the “Russian-Venezuelan Threat Mitigation Act” to gauge Russia’s influence in Venezuela. It aimed to devise a strategy to counter threats from Russian-Venezuelan cooperation. The bill also required assessment of national security risks posed by potential Russian acquisition of CITGO’s United States energy infrastructure holdings.

To conclude the UN Charter prohibits the use or threat of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another nation. The Charter of the Organization of American States forbids any country from intervening in the external affairs of another nation. And the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to self-determination.

US declares Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran "Terrorist Organization"

On 8^th April 2019, the US declared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran, a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The IRGC is Iran’s most powerful military and security organization as well as a key economic player. "This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft," said the US President Donald Trump.

The IRGC was created after the 1979 revolution to enforce Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s concept of an Islamic state. The Guards played a crucial role not only in crushing early opposition to Khomeini’s vision, but also in repelling Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980. Since then, the Guards have functioned as both the primary internal and external security force. 

This declaration represents the latest escalation of the US administration’s "maximum pressure" campaign targeting Iran’s malign activities. The IRGC was already designated under US Treasury counter-proliferation authorities (EO 13382) in 2007, and then again for human rights abuses ‑ along with the Basij Resistance Force and the Law Enforcement Forces ‑ under EO 13553 in 2011.  

Iran responded to this action by saying, “The major effect of this designation is to make it extraordinarily difficult for the US to bring Iran back into the global community of nations and global financial system at any point in the future if political circumstances merit such a climb down.” Iranian officials also do not view this latest development as a precursor to a military conflict between Iran and the US. 

Detaining additional US citizens, testing missiles, or renewing harassment of US vessels in the Gulf are low-risk options that Iran could pursue in response to the IRGC designation.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) responded to the State Department’s designation of the IRGC by designating the US government as a state sponsor of terrorism and US Central Command (CENTCOM) and all its forces as a terrorist organization. President Hassan Rouhani threatened to restart Iran’s nuclear program in a speech marking the National Day of Nuclear Technology. 

Iranian newspapers spanning the country’s political spectrum reacted to the US State Department’s designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization with a mix of outrage, bombast, and expressions of solidarity with the IRGC.  

International reaction to the IRGC designation has been mixed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked President Donald Trump for the move in a pair of tweets in English and Hebrew. Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said that his country tried to dissuade the US from proceeding with the designation. 

Eight Years of Corrosive Lies about Syria

The western media, under the clutches of Zionists, is never tired of promoting United States as the biggest democracy and peacekeeper on this planet. The bitter reality is opposite and only displayed in social media, which is often not liked by those at the top of helm of affairs even in the United States. The most recent evidences are ongoing turmoil being created in Venezuela and the failed efforts to topple the incumbent government in Syria of the United States.  

The hallmark of the US administration is telling lies and spreading disinformation with such a frequency that often a person with average wit is misled and start believing in lies. It may be said that the US spy agencies tell lies the way authoritarians do to demonstrate and expand their power. Three of the most glaring examples of blatant lies of spy agencies are presence of OBL in Afghanistan, manufacturing of WMD by Iraq and nuclear program of Iran. All this could be best understood if one just has a cursory look at eight years of corrosive lies of the US administration about Syrian war.

Let us begin with a story published in the Wall Street Journal about Syria telling that the United States may leave 1,000 troops in that country after all. If one can recall, the US president had announced a complete withdrawal of troops from Syria months ago. Then, weeks later the White House announced that a small force of 200 would stay behind. Now, the Journal was reporting that it would actually be 1,000. A few hours later the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the original plan remained unchanged.

Reviewing three assertions routinely made about Syria by pundits, politicians, and policymakers show complete hypocrisy: 1) Syria shows the perils of U.S. non-intervention; 2) We’re only in Syria to fight ISIS and 3) U.S. withdrawal from Syria would mean handing a victory to Vladimir Putin. All of the above statements have become conventional wisdom. The same people sometimes repeat more than one of them, but they are entirely irreconcilable with one another.

If withdrawing from Syria means handing a victory to Vladimir Putin, then the US is doing something other than fighting ISIS there, something that certainly can’t be described as non-intervention.

CIA began the US mission in the Syrian Civil War years before ISIS came into being, and a full year before President Barak Obama began talking up his red lines and proposing a congressional vote to authorize intervention in Syria.

The world was told that the US was arming moderate rebels, but these moderate rebels fought side by side Al Nusra fighters who were often known to be using weapons brought in by the CIA or the Department of Defense to fight this war in which the US was not intervening. The US also funded a group called Nour al-Din al-Zenki, until its members showed up on YouTube beheading a child, at which point the moderate label no longer quite fit.

Apparently the Congress refused to authorize US military intervention in Syria, which was already ongoing. Did the intervention stopped? No, it continued under the 2001 AUMF that authorized the president to make war on al-Qaeda. The US is now using the legal authority to hunt and destroy al-Qaeda to fund and arm al-Qaeda’s allies on the ground in Syria.

United States gets ready to open a new military base in Oman

According to a Reuters report, the United States secured a strategic port deal with Oman that will allow the US military better access to the Gulf region and reduce the need to send ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime choke point off Iran. The U.S. embassy in Oman said in a statement that the agreement governed U.S. access to facilities and ports in Duqm as well as in Salalah and reaffirms the commitment of both the countries to promoting mutual security goals.

The accord is viewed through an economic prism by Oman, which wants to develop Duqm while preserving its Switzerland-like neutral role in Middle Eastern politics and diplomacy. As the US concerns grow about Iran’s expanding missile programs that has improved in recent years, despite sanctions and diplomatic pressure by the US.

The deal was significant by improving access to ports that connect to a network of roads to the broader region, giving the US military great resiliency in a crisis. The US used to operate on the assumption that it could just steam into the Gulf. However the quality and quantity of Iranian weapons raises concerns.

According to the report, Tehran has in the past threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route at the mouth of the Gulf. These threats were in retaliation for any hostile US action, including attempts to halt Iranian oil exports through sanctions. Still, the agreement is expected to expand US military options in the region in case of any eventuality.

Duqm is ideal port for large ships. It is big enough to turn around an aircraft carrier. The port itself is very important and the geostrategic location is very attractive, being outside the Strait of Hormuz.

For Oman, the deal will further advance its efforts to transform Duqm, once just a fishing village 550 km south of Muscat capital, into a key Middle East industrial and port center, as its diversifies its economy beyond oil and gas exports. The deal will also strengthen US position in the region.

United States wants global oil industry to support its foreign policy agenda

According to a Reuters news, U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo has urged the global oil industry to work with President Trump administration to promote U.S. foreign policy interests, especially in Asia and in Europe and to punish the “bad actors” on the world stage. He was addressing the participants of a conference in Houston, where U.S. oil and gas executives, energy luminaries and officials of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) gather annually to discuss global energy development.

Pompeo said, “Washington would use all its economic tools to help deal with the situation in Venezuela, which is mired in a years-long economic crisis and where socialist President Nicolas Maduro is maintaining power despite being disavowed by the US and about 50 other countries”.

The US has imposed harsh sanctions in the past several months on two major world oil producers, Venezuela and Iran. Washington re-imposed oil sanctions on Iran to curb its nuclear, missile and regional activities. “We’re committed to bringing Iranian crude oil exports to zero as quickly as market conditions will permit,” said Pompeo.

He went on to the extent of saying, “We need to roll up our sleeves and compete – by facilitating investment, encouraging partners to buy from us, and by punishing bad actors.” He also declared, “U.S. oil and gas export boom had given the country the ability to meet energy demand.”

Referring to a natural gas pipeline expansion from Russia to Central Europe, Pompeo warned, “We don’t want our European allies hooked on Russian gas through the NordStream II project, any more than we ourselves want to be dependent on Venezuelan oil supplies.”

Pompeo also met with top oil executives for about an hour to try to persuade energy companies to help the administration’s efforts to boost crude exports to Asia and to support its policy of isolating Iran. The US seems adamant at making significant progress on a Middle East security alliance over the next few months. The alliance is an attempt to form a US-backed bloc of Sunni Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait as a bulwark against Shi’ite Iranian influence in the Middle East.

Pompeo criticized China for “blocking energy development in the South China Sea through coercive means,” which he said prevents Southeast Asian countries from accessing more than US$2.5 trillion in recoverable energy reserves.

Pompeo also termed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine an attempt to gain access to the country’s oil and gas reserves.

“UK should freeze arms sales to Israel”, demands Jeremy Corbyn

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn renewed his call for a British arms embargo against Israel after a United Nations Human Rights Council commission of inquiry said that IDF has likely committed war crimes on the Gaza border.

“The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel,” Corbyn tweeted on Friday. Last year, the Labour Party approved a motion that called for an arms ban to Israel.

The 22-page report investigated the death of 189 Palestinians by the IDF during the Hamas-led weekly Great March of Return protests which have taken place along the Gaza border.

The UNHRC report was authored by a three-person commission of inquiry, which plans to submit a full report prior to a March 18 debate on the matter at the UNHRC’s 40th session in Geneva.

The report focused primarily on Israeli and not Hamas violence, and concluded that the protests were peaceful. It warned that the International Criminal Court could prosecute Israeli leaders and soldiers.

Last year, the UNHRC passed a resolution which called on all UN member states to halt the sale of any arms to Israel that could be used to violate international human rights law. United States special envoy Jason Greenblatt attacked the UNHRC report on Gaza in a series of tweets.

“This [commission of inquiry] report is another manifestation of the UNHRC’s clear bias against Israel, which remains the only country that the Council dedicates an entire standing agenda item to targeting. When will the HRC speak the truth?” he wrote.

Hamas behaved with reckless irresponsibility [and] disregard for human life when it incited violent (not ‘civilian’) protests, breaches [and] attacks at the Gaza fence-line,” Greenblatt wrote. “Hamas is directly responsible for the miserable situation of the people of Gaza.”

Israel has rejected the report and holds that the protests are violent riots led by Hamas members.

During those riots, Palestinians in Gaza have thrown stones and Molotov cocktails at soldiers. The protesters have attempted to breach the border fence and have placed explosive devices by the fence. Palestinians in Gaza have also launched incendiary devices into Israel, burning thousands of dunams of fields and forests.

Republican lawmakers in the US also spoke out against the report and in support of Israel’s right to self-defense.

Congressman Lee Zeldin, a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, was among those who issued a statement on the matter.

“This one-sided, highly biased and woefully inaccurate report fails to take into account key facts; most evidently, Hamas’s provocation and orchestration of this violence, its purposeful destabilization of order along the border and its continued incursions into Israel’s sovereign soil, including the launching of over 10,000 rockets and mortars on Israeli towns and villages, and the dozens of tunnels, enabling their death squads, since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza,” Zeldin wrote.

“Warsaw meeting a failure for Arabs”, says Nuri al-Maliki

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the Warsaw conference an “open failure” for Arabs, saying the meeting was primarily intended to deflect attention from the Israeli aggressions in the region to a focus on Iran, according to an ISNA report.

Speaking on Alahad TV, Maliki warned about the aims of the conference and its danger for the entire region.

The Warsaw meeting, co-hosted by the U.S. and Poland was intended to isolate Iran but it ended in failure as major European countries sent low level officials to the meeting and criticized the U.S. for trying to demonize Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who initially announced that the conference was intended to highlight what he called Iran’s “destabilizing behavior” in the region, was forced to change the agenda of the conference when he faced pressure from Europe and others.

Noting that such moves threaten Iraq and all other regional states, Maliki said the Warsaw conference revealed the “secret relationship” between certain Arab states with the Zionist regime which has been existing since some years ago.

The former prime minister praised the Iraqi government’s position on the conference and its refusal to participate in it.

Citing a story, Maliki said when he was prime minister a foreign minister from an Arab country proposed establishment of “the Middle East economic system” in which Israel would be a member.

 “I told the Arab minister that Iraq will not be party to any organization which Israel would be a member,” explained Maliki.