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I have spoken with many in Frances huge expatriate Lebanese community and from all groups and not a single person has ever claimed that Iran was the power behind the scenes in Lebanon. Without fail, I was told that this title belongs to France.

It shouldnt be surprising: France completely devised modern Lebanon.

Many Lebanese dont like to be reminded of this, but Lebanon is an artificial nation which France constructed entirely on the basis of racism: just as Zionists to the south wanted a Jewish nation, Lebanon was hacked off of Syria in 1920 to create a new Christian-majority nation.

Thats a no longer relevant tale of divide and conquer to some, even though a few centenarians may still remember the actual event.

France also devised Lebanons sectarianism-enshrining, woefully unmodern constitution, which has ensured divisive identity politics ever since.

Thus, just as Israel is a little part of the USA in the Middle East, Lebanon is the older, French version. The saying, Beirut is the Paris of the Middle East could not be more correct.

And yet, were an alien to visit and read Western mainstream media coverage of the recent protests in Lebanon it would not imagine that France ever had any role in Lebanon, much less a prominent role there today.

Instead, Western headlines and reports all push the totally absurd claim that Iran has somehow become the neo-colonial master in Lebanon. Somehow and via the poorest, most marginalised sectors of Lebanese society, no less Iran has been able to usurp a century of French power.

Astute observers already realise that when it comes to the Middle East every problem big or small is blamed on Iran in the West.

Furthermore, despite the century of French involvement it is not France but Iran which is responsible for the corruption that has pushed so many Lebanese into the streets.

Apparently Iran took power and also became corrupt so very quickly that the Lebanese themselves didnt even realise it! The idea is laughable.

Or perhaps: the Lebanese themselves dont know what is actually going on in their own country the West knows better.

These are the kind of ideas only a Westerner could believe.

The reason is simple: advertising works. Astute observers already realise that when it comes to the Middle East every problem big or small is blamed on Iran in the West.

However, whats rarely examined is how this very real Iranophobia allows the West to obscure places where their neo-colonial machinations could not be more obvious, such as in Lebanon.

If its not Iran then it must be Hezbollah, but it can never be France

If the West cannot destroy Iran in 2019 they will happily settle for destroying Hezbollah.

There are two types of political parties: those which citizens fight to destroy (like the Yellow Vests and the three mainstream political parties in France), and those which citizens fight to preserve. There is no doubt which camp Hezbollah belongs to.

Hezbollah is the Party of God and the party of Lebanons poor, but many insist they are not a political party but a larger resistance movement. Amal is a political party allied with Hezbollah, and Western media coverage is doing their best to lump both in with the older, Western-aping, billionaire-backed parties which are the true cause of the recent corruption protests.

Hezbollah has always said they would never turn their guns on Lebanese, and even if the West doesnt want anyone to know that the Lebanese certainly do. They know that without Hezbollah southern Lebanon would be called Northern Israel today. Or, nearly as badly, it would still be theState of Free Lebanon, that stillborn Israeli client from the early 1980s which no country besides Israel recognised. (Thats just more no longer relevant history to Western mainstream journalists of course.)

The West hates Hezbollah for the same reason Lebanon supports it Hezbollah is what ensures Lebanons security from repeated, deadly, infrastructure-ruining Israeli invasions. After the 2006 war with Israel most Sunnis and an estimated 50% of Christians supported Hezbollah thats hardly sectarian hatred.

After saving the Lebanese from Israel on multiple occasions, the undeniable and enduring popular support of Hezbollah and Amal comes from their education, health and other social welfare organisations. Southern Lebanon is most notable not for being mostly Shia but for its extreme poverty, which was the result of decades of neglect from Paris-allied Beirut. Hezbollah and Amal helped reverse that, to the extreme embarrassment and consternation of France, Israel and their many sectarian militias, mafias and political puppets in Lebanon.

And yet despite being so late arriving to power, despite being anchored in the poorest regions, despite decades of neglect from Beirut, and despite illegal and inhuman US-led sanctions on Hezbollah the West wants us to believe that Hezbollah and Amal are the ones responsible for the corruption at the heart of the current protests!

One has to wonder: if these two groups are so corrupt then where is the money, because it is certainly not in southern Lebanon?

The idea that Hassan Nasrallah, who can make a fair claim to be the most popular Muslim leader and hero in the world currently, is about to fall due to decades of corruption in Beirut is an absolute fantasy which can only be taken seriously in the West.

Again, what we have here is another situation where Western propaganda is aiming to manipulate legitimate unhappiness created by long-tenured Western client politicians in order to deny the Wests neo-colonial culpability. The legitimate demands in Yemen, Palestine and Iraq are all being portrayed as being caused by an Iranian neo-colonialism which does not exist, when the real culprit is the very real and very accurately-named Western neo-colonialism.

The West, of course, may speak of neoliberalism but never neo-colonialism.

The long-running source of corruption in Lebanon: Western-allied, neoliberal & neocolonial puppets

I would imagine that up to this point a Lebanese reader has been quite bored I have only relayed things which he or she already knows quite well. But perhaps a Lebanese expatriate in Brazil or the United States who cannot visit Lebanon so easily and who foolishly relies on the Western mainstream media may not know some of these things.

What most Lebanese know quite intimately is that they no longer have a real economy. Their export capabilities are so woeful that scrap iron was theirthird top exportin 2017, at just $179 million.

This is unsurprising, because Lebanons longtime function was to serve as Frances Middle East banking haven, with Switzerland-level secrecy laws dating to 1956. However, they have increasingly been replaced by Qatar and other Persian Gulf nations.

Banking is still a strong sector of their economy, but now mainly due to the huge number of remittances (only 4 million Lebanese live in Lebanon but there are an astonishing 8-12 million living as expatriates).

All this wouldnt be a problem if Lebanon had a strong government to centrally plan and direct their limited economy, and also a government which cared for their 99% instead of their 1%, but Lebanon has neither of these things. The reason for this has nothing to do with Hezbollah, but everything to do with the real root of the current protests.

After the Taif Accords in 1989 and the fall of the USSR in 1991, Rafic Hariri, who became Lebanons richest man/prime minister thanks to earning billions via construction with the House of Saud, embarked on the massive Horizon 2000 privatisation plan, which sold off the major industries and real estate of the Lebanese people. Hariri, in classic Western fashion, privatised the peoples wealth mainly to himself, but also to French companies.

Hariris There Is No Alternative (to neoliberalism) plan also included massive efforts to attract foreign investment, which ballooned the national debt the funds were not spent on the poor, of course, but lined the pockets of the rich. France is always the one who organises the regular international debt conferences to restructure Lebanons debt, reaping compound interest payments all the while. Rafic Hariri was yet another Arab aristocrat who yoked his people to Western debtors for generations.

Hariri also banned protests and encouraged bribes and kickbacks to the army in order to continue his neoliberalisation drive totally unfettered.

For these reasons (i.e., he made them rich via ruthless self-interest) the assassinated Hariri is worshiped in the West as a true martyr to the neoliberal faith, whereas his corruption in Lebanon was infamous and resented. The most common phrase about him is, He treated the state as if it was his home.

His son Saad could have hardly done worse, but he certainly has tried:$16 millionto a bikini model mistress, getting abducted by the Saudisand then resigningon their TV, etc. Saad Hariri has held so very many closed-door meetings with Frances president over the past decade that I truly just got tired of covering it for PressTV I think he must have a private room at lyse Palace?

What I have described is three decades of oligarchic economic corruption, mismanagement and economic far-right neglect, and here is the bill: At 158% Lebanons debt to GDP ratio is the 5thhighest in the world, just behind Greece.

Few commentators go further, however: Lebanons external debt to GDP ratio is only around 45%, implying that there is a lot of money in Lebanon but held in an inherently corrupt manner by extremely few hands. And this is certainly the case: Lebanons richest 0.1% own the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50 percent, making Lebanon one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Lebanon is thus an economically rudderless, economically unequal and economically corrupt nation, and it is quite obvious that none of this happened because of late-arriving, poor-loving Hezbollah or Iran.

It is absolutely preposterous to believe that Iran or Hezbollah is the source of Lebanons inequality and corruption, and thus that they could be the true target of protesters. The Western Mainstream Media mostly privately owned, incredibly chauvinistic is trying to sell an anti-Iran/anti-Hezbollah conspiracy even though the Lebanese themselves will not be fooled by it for one second.

The West, especially France, created, applauded and profited Lebanons economic corruption via their unstinting support for the corrupt and despised Hariris, and also Israels expatriate-inducing, infrastructure destroying invasions. Frances role in saddling Lebanons economy with two million of Syrian and Palestinian refugees is also glossed over by the Western mainstream media, of course.

I hope the true profiteers of Lebanons misery will finally be called to account. The Lebanese know who has robbed them, and it is not Hezbollah, Nasrallah or Iran.

Part 2 in this series will give more details on the corrupt Lebanese politicians of today, most of who are associated with violent militias armed and funded by France and/or Israel.

Via The Saker

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Hiding The Wests Ongoing Neo-Colonialism In Lebanon Via ...

TEHRAN, Iran Iran announced on Monday its latest violations of the nuclear deal with world powers, saying that it now operates twice as many advanced centrifuges banned by the 2015 accord and is working on a prototype thats 50 times faster than those allowed by the deal.

The announcement came as the country marks the 40th anniversary of the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover that started a 444-day hostage crisis.

By starting up these advanced centrifuges, Iran further cuts into the one year that experts estimate Tehran would need to have enough material for building a nuclear weapon if it chose to pursue one.

The comments by Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, came ahead of an expected announcement by Tehran of the new ways it would break the accord.

Already, Iran has broken through its stockpile and enrichment limitations, trying to pressure Europe to offer it a new deal, more than a year since President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord.

Speaking to state TV, Salehi said Tehran is now operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges twice as many as before. Such a centrifuge, an IR-6, can produce enriched uranium 10 times as fast as the first-generation IR-1s allowed under the accord.

The nuclear deal limited Iran to using only 5,060 first-generation IR-1 centrifuges to enrich uranium by rapidly spinning uranium hexafluoride gas.

Salehi also announced that scientists were working on a prototype he called the IR-9, which worked 50-times faster than the IR-1.

Meanwhile, demonstrators gathered in front of the former U.S. Embassy in downtown Tehran on Monday as state television aired footage from other cities across the country making the anniversary.

Thanks to God, today the revolutions seedlings have evolved into a fruitful and huge tree that its shadow has covered the entire Middle East, said Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, the commander of the Iranian army.

However, this years commemoration of the embassy seizure comes as Irans regional allies in Iraq and Lebanon face widespread protests. The Iranian Consulate in Karbala, Iraq, a holy city for Shiites, saw a mob attack it overnight. Three protesters were killed during the attack and 19 were wounded, along with seven policemen, Iraqi officials said.

Trump retweeted posts by Saudi-linked media showing the chaos outside the consulate. The violence comes after the hard-line Keyhan newspaper in Iran reiterated a call for demonstrators to seize U.S. and Saudi diplomatic posts in Iraq in response to the unrest.

The collapse of the nuclear deal coincided with a tense summer of mysterious attacks on oil tankers and Saudi oil facilities that the U.S. blamed on Iran. Tehran denied the allegation, though it did seize oil tankers and shoot down a U.S. military surveillance drone.

The U.S. has increased its military presence across the Mideast, including basing troops in Saudi Arabia for the first time since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. Both Saudi Arabia and the neighboring United Arab Emirates are believed to be talking to Tehran through back channels to ease tensions.

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Iran boasts about nuclear capabilities on anniversary of ...

Exactly 40 years ago today, a group of Iranian militants seized 98 people at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran marking the start of what is known as the Iran hostage crisis.

While the hostages were released from captivity 444 days later, an unsuccessful, covert mission known as Eagle Claw to try to rescue the hostages months afterwards is what served as a catalyst for changing special operations forces.

Just ask retired Command Sgt. Maj. Richard Lamb, who was a corporal with the Hard Rock Charlie Company that was responsible for conducting the airfield seizure mission inside Iran for Eagle Claw.

Eagle Claw was the mission that gave birth to the United States Special Operations Command, Lamb told Military Times in an email.

The foundation established in the aftermath of Eagle Claw enabled the development of the modern day Special Operations Forces that are the envy of the free world and a threat to any adversary, Lamb said.

The Iran hostage crisis began on Nov. 4, 1979 after Iranian protesters, outraged that the U.S. had allowed the deposed and pro-American Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to receive medical treatment in the U.S., stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking a total of 98 people hostage.

Iran intermittently released some of the hostages in the following weeks, all women and minorities. Nearly five months after the embassy was stormed, then-President Jimmy Carter signed off on a clandestine Eagle Claw mission to try and rescue the remaining 52 hostages.

The April 24, 1980 mission, which required aspects of the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marines, called for eight Navy RH-53D helicopters from the USS Nimitz and several C-130 aircraft to meet at Desert One, a salt flat roughly 200 miles from Tehran.

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But the mission was plagued with a series of blows, and was ultimately aborted.

First, two of the eight helicopters were forced to turn back and never made it to Desert One, due to a dust storm. Another helicopter suffered complications upon arrival at the salt flat, leaving only five functioning helicopters available for the mission.

The mission was then aborted because six helicopters were necessary for Eagle Claw.

Even still, calamity ensued. While aircraft were exiting Desert One, a helicopter crashed into a C-130 aircraft and resulted in the deaths of eight U.S. service members.

"That crushing failure at Desert One and its consequences told everyone, despite the enormous talent we had, we hadn't put it together right and something had to be done," retired Lt. Gen. Sam Wilson, a former Special Forces group commander, said in a SOCOM news release in 2017.

Days later on April 26, Iran announced that the hostages would be dispersed throughout Tehran and other areas of Iran to prevent the U.S. from conducting another mission to extract the hostages.

Additionally, Iran found the remains of the eight deceased service members and propped them up at the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran.

Although the mission was unsuccessful, retired Army Capt. Wade Ishimoto, who served as Delta Forces intelligence officer for Eagle Claw, said it played a pivotal role shaping the future of special operations in the latter portion of the 20th and now 21st century.

We didnt have the capabilities, and the world was changing, the threats were changing, Ishimoto said, citing smaller conflicts and terrorism as new threats emerging to the forefront.

According to Ishimoto, a substantial increase in air capability like the U.S. has today would have dramatically helped those involved in Eagle Claw. While there were only 20 Air Force special operations aircraft in 1980, there are now over 30 AC-130 gunships alone, Ishimoto said.

The second major increase has been in our intelligence capabilities, Ishimoto said. And that is something from a preparatory standpoint that absolutely is crucial.

Although Ishimoto said that there was fairly adequate intelligence on Iran in 1980, signals intelligence capabilities, human intelligence capabilities and technical intelligence capabilities have all evolved considerably since then.

Today we have robust intelligence that can be brought to bear against any given area in the world or any given potential problem, Ishimoto said.

Months after Eagle Claw, the first proactive step taken was establishing the Joint Special Operations Command in 1980, which is designed to study special Operations techniques, interoperability, and plan and conduct special operations exercises and training.

Lamb also noted that the mission was a key factor in establishing U.S. Special Operations Command, which is now based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.

He cited Adm. J.L. Holloways investigation on the mission, which called for a special operations headquarters and to develop joint doctrine and standardized training.

There was also a pressing need to establish a special operations budget and an acquisition and logistics entity for procurement of Special Operations unique equipment, Lamb added.

Thanks to an amendment included in the 1987 National Defense Authorization Bill, SOCOM was formed nearly seven years after Eagle Claw on April 16, 1987. The command was specifically designed to organize and train U.S. special operations forces across the various services.

Now, SOCOM boasts an organization of approximately 70,000 people, according to the command.

That might not always be the case though. Lamb predicted that there will be a push to slash resources for special operations forces in the future as the U.S. starts to disengage in areas like Syria and Afghanistan, in order to free up resources for tanks and other equipment for conventional warfare against China or Russia.

But just as Eagle Claw shed light on areas where the U.S. was unprepared to tackle threats, Lamb cautioned against only beefing up conventional warfare resources. Rather, he said it is critical the military is poised to identify what the future holds when we face peer and near peer adversaries with comparable technologies outside the boundaries of conventional warfare.

The enemy will not fight us conventionally, theyve told us as much, Lamb said.

We must always maintain a professional military, trained and equipped for future threats; and recognize the requirement for continued vigilance, Lamb said.

Although lives were lost during Eagle Claw, Ishimoto says that the mission paved the way for a major reformation and now service members are better trained, better equipped, and better prepared to conduct those kinds of missions.

We paid the price, Ishimoto said. We lost eight on that mission, but the loss of their lives were not in vain because of where were at today.

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40 years later: How the Iran hostage crisis shaped the future ...

Rohollah Faghihis recent article in Foreign PolicyIs Irans Information Minister the Islamic Republics Emmanuel Macron?depicts Irans information and communications technology (ICT) minister, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, as an advocate of internet freedom, especially when it comes to accessing social media networks.

The article suggests that when Azari Jahromi is not able to counter hard-liners demands for censorshipfor example, when the popular Telegram messaging app was bannedit was only because he faced powers greater than himself. This characterization overlooks Azari Jahromis record in office and contains significant omissions (all of which are in the public record) regarding his role advancing repressive internet censorship and surveillance in Iran.

The author states, From 2002 to 2009, Azari Jahromi served in the Intelligence Ministrys technical department, where he focused on cybersecurity and protecting digital infrastructure. This is misleading; the author fails to mention the fact that during this period, cybersecurity in Iran consisted largely of the monitoring and tracking journalists, activists, and other citizens in order to identify and suppress dissentand that this technical department developed domestic surveillance infrastructure in order to aid the Intelligence Ministry in this pursuit.

This period in Iran was characterized by violent state repression, which was facilitated by the states surveillance capabilities. In 2009, masssurveillance operations during the crackdown against Iranians who protested the disputed results of that years presidential election significantly aided the authorities ability to identify, track, arrest, and imprison peaceful protesters. Azari Jahromis own characterization of his activities during this period are in fact more accurate than the authors. The semi-official Fars News Agency reported in August 2017 that during a session of the parliamentary Social Affairs Committee just prior to his confirmation, Azari Jahromi stated, During my activities, I was not in charge of wiretapping but in charge of building the technical infrastructure industry for this purpose, and Im proud of it.

Moreover, Azari Jahromis role as an interrogator of arrested protesters during that 2009 crackdown, many of whom were sent to prison, is well documented. The Center for Human Rights in Iran interviewed some of the ex-prisoners who were personally interrogated by Azari Jahromi, and these interrogations have been confirmed by other journalists. In light of this history, during Azari Jahromis 2017 confirmation in parliament as ICT minister, the lawmaker Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtarwarned, My concern is we will turn the ICT Ministry into the Intelligence Ministry.

The profile depicts Azari Jahromi as a champion of internet freedom, yet under the ICT minister, Iran has accelerated development of its now fully operational national internet (or National Information Network), which gives the government an expanded ability to block content, spread false information, access Iranian users online communications for covert surveillance, block access in Iran to the international internet, and facilitate state cyberattacks through the states information technology infrastructure. In particular, the scope and sophistication of state-sponsored cyberattacks against Iranian journalists, activists, and other members of civil society have significantly increased during Azari Jahromis time in office.

Internet censorship has also intensified under Azari Jahromi. It now targets not only content but also access to circumvention tools and encrypted apps, and Irans Telecommunication Infrastructure Company, which is under the control of Azari Jahromis ICT Ministry, is developing anew method of internetcensorshipthat prevents access to blocked websites even withcircumvention tools.

Azari Jahromis promotion of national tools and services such as messaging apps to replace foreign ones has increased Iranians vulnerability to covert state surveillance. For example, Azari Jahromi has promotedTelegram Talaeii, an Iranian version of the messaging app developed after the official Telegram app was banned in Iran. This app is hostedon the ICT Ministrys infrastructure and is under the control of the ministry; as such, it is accessible to the authorities and easy to place under surveillance. This poses a great risk: The Iranian states online surveillance activities are well documented and proudly defended by the authorities, and they have sent Iranians to prison for posting online content critical of state policy. In2018, Telegramissueda warning to users that the app was unsafe.

Intentional disruptions to the global internet for the purpose of repression have also taken place on Azari Jahromis watch. The widespread street protests in Iran between December 2017 and January 2018 were met with state-engineered internet disruptions, even as domestic services remained untouched.

During these events, the United Nations issued a statement by four U.N. special rapporteurs: We are also very concerned at reports that the Government has blocked the internet on mobile networks, and that social media services like Instagram and messaging services like Telegram have been shut down in an attempt to quell the protests. In some regions, internet access has been blocked altogether.

In June 2019, 90 percent of Irans internet service providers were again disrupted for unknown reasons. Azari Jahromi claimed these disruptions were caused by events outside Iran, but technical analysis by multiple experts and organizations suggested otherwise. The advocacy group Article 19 reported on the mass outages, noting that the disruptions were also documented by NetBlocks,ArvanCloud,Oracle Internet Intelligence, RIPE andOpenDNS data even as reports indicated access to local platforms were generally easily available.

Overall, internet freedom has not fared well under Azari Jahromi. The respected Freedom on the Net 2018 report labeled Irans internet not free due to obstacles to access, limitations on content, and violations of users rights and ranked it 85, second only to China in online repression (with 100 being the worst score)the same ranking the country received in 2017, when Azari Jahromi first assumed his position in August of that year.

While Irans ranking reflects many factors, a number of which Azari Jahromi does not control (for example, the arrest of Iranians for online content disapproved of by the government), Azari Jahromis record does not support the articles depiction of him as an official who has expanded internet freedom in Iran. Under his watch, the countrys repressive online censorship and surveillance capabilities have increased.

Azari Jahromi has not been a passive bystander to these developments; he has contributed to them through the active promotion and implementation of measures and products that compromise internet access and security. Indeed, as the profile correctly notes the [ICT] ministry has transformed into a serious economic, political, and technological force. As such, Azari Jahromi and his ICT Ministry must share in responsibility for the significant and growing threat to internet freedom in Iran.

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Irans Information Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi Is ...

An Iranian flag flutters in front the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 4, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Leonhard Foeger / File.

Iran said on Monday it would take another step away from the 2015 nuclear deal by developing centrifuges to speed up its uranium enrichment, its nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said.

Today, we are witnessing the launch of the array of 30 IR-6 centrifuges, Salehi, who heads Irans Atomic Energy Organization, told state television. Iran now is operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges. It shows our capacity and determination.

Under the agreement between Iran and world powers, Tehran is only allowed to enrich uranium with just over 5,000 of its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges. An IR-6 centrifuge can enrich uranium 10 times faster than the IR-1s.

Our scientists are working on a prototype called the IR-9, that works 50 times faster than the IR-1s, Salehi said.

November 4, 2019 4:18 pm

The deal was aimed at extending the time Iran would need to obtain enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if it sought one something sometimes referred to as breakout time to about a year from 2-3 months. Iran denies ever having sought to build a nuclear bomb.

The UN nuclear watchdog said in September that Iran had informed the agency about making modifications to accommodate cascades or interconnected clusters of 164 of the IR-2m and IR-4 centrifuge. Cascades of the same size and type were scrapped under the deal.

Tensions have risen between Tehran and Washington since last year when US President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord under which Iran had agreed to rein in its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

The United States has since renewed and intensified its sanctions, slashing Irans crude oil sales by more than 80 percent.

Responding to Washingtons maximum pressure, Iran has breached the restrictions of the deal step-by-step and has rejected the United States demand that a far-reaching deal should be negotiated.

Tehran, however, has left room for diplomacy by saying that talks are possible if Washington lifts all the sanctions and returns to the nuclear deal.

Iran has said it might take further steps in November if European parties to the pact fail to shield its economy from US penalties.

While steps taken by Iran so far do not make a big difference to that breakout time for now, it further complicates the prospects of saving the accord by the European parties to the deal, who have criticized Trump for exiting it.

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Iran Develops Advanced Machines to Speed Up Enrichment ...