Editor Of Kuwaiti Daily Calls To 'Rescue The World From The Persian Nazism'

In a September 17, 2019 article titled 'Rescue the World from the Persian Nazism,' Ahmed Al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti English-language daily Arab Times, wrote that the issue of confronting Iran is no longer just a matter of thwarting the Persian expansion project but a matter of countering a threat to global security. In this situation, he said, American and European notions of going back to the Barack Obama policy of rapprochement with Iran are no longer feasible; the world must act to ensure a steady supply of oil at reasonable prices, for a failure to do so will result in a global recession. Al-Jarallah added that a failure to respond to Iran's aggression will be a degrading surrender, even more humiliating than the 1938 Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany, which led to World War II.[1]  

The following is his September 17 article, as it appeared in Arab Times.[2]

Ahmed Al-Jarallah (source: Arab Times, Kuwait)

"The issue of confrontation with Iran has gone beyond self-defense and thwarting the Persian regional expansion project, over which the Arab coalition forces are clashing with Houthi gangsters in Yemen, to threat against global interests and stability.

"For this, the equivocal and softening doors policy behind political skirmishes and crossfire for possible US-Iranian summit on the sideline of the United Nations General Assembly meetings is no longer an election tool through which President Donald Trump can win military opposition votes for war in his country.

"There is no more room for European mediation on the issue of relationship with Iran. The world either defends its interests to ensure oil supply at moderate prices or succumb to the state of terrorism by allowing the Mullah regime, which stakes success in blackmail, to dictate the pace.

"The nature of attacks on Saudi oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khuris with pieces of evidence gathered by the United States and satellite images absolutely ruled out the possibility that the Houthis carried out the attacks. This is because they do not have such capabilities and the distance is far. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter: 'The proofs affirm that the attacks did not emanate from Yemen,' so he accused Iran of being behind the attacks on Saudi Arabia.

"This means Iraq or Iran is behind the attacks and the international community must take drastic action. Failure to do so will bring about recurrence of the 1973 scenario in a more volatile way. Shortage of oil supply from Saudi Arabia specifically, and the Arabian Gulf generally, may lead to global economic recession which will be unbearable for the West regardless of the rate of strategic reserve in America and others.

"In the era of satellite which surveys the world every hour; there is no secret, especially in the area of rockets, their bases and paths. Therefore, any global effort to thwart response to the attacks amounts to degrading surrender to the devilish Mullah regime. It will be more degrading than the Munich pact that gave German Nazism the opportunity to violate many countries and pushed for the World War in which 80 million people died. Every reasonable person understands these facts and knows where the lack of action may lead to, most especially if the price of a barrel of oil exceeds $100.

"It is possible to thwart the Iranian terrorism right now through serious international punishment, which will assist citizens repressed by the Mullah regime to topple the system. However, any compromise by going back to the Barack Obama type of policy, when he ignored the chemical bombing in Syria, will give birth to tens of terrorist groups similar to DAESH; in addition to making the world a victim of Iranian threat. Will the international community accept being controlled by the terrorist gang and new Nazism?

"This is an official question for the international community, part of which is trying to exploit the situation to remarket the Iranian Mullah internationally."

  

[1] It should be noted that, in an article he published one day earlier, on September 16, Jarallah argued  that the recent Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia should not lead to war with Iran but should be countered by maximizing the economic pressure on Iran (Arab Times, Kuwait,  September 16, 2019).

[2] Arab Times (Kuwait),  September 17, 2019.

North Korea’s Ultimatum to America

Interesting breakdown of Washington's dilemma with North Korea

Washington and Pyongyang exchange threats as the latter continues to evoke the wrath of world powers with its latest nuclear test.

Caroline Glick 

The nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb.

If the previous round of this confrontation earlier this summer revolved around Pyongyang’s threat to attack the US territory of Guam, Sunday’s test, together with North Korea’s recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental US, was a direct threat to US cities.

In other words, the current confrontation isn’t about US superpower status in Asia, and the credibility of US deterrence or the capabilities of US military forces in the Pacific. The confrontation is now about the US’s ability to protect the lives of its citizens.

The distinction tells us a number of important things. All of them are alarming.

First, because this is about the lives of Americans, rather than allied populations like Japan and South Korea, the US cannot be diffident in its response to North Korea’s provocation. While attenuated during the Obama administration, the US’s position has always been that US military forces alone are responsible for guaranteeing the collective security of the American people.

Pyongyang is now directly threatening that security with hydrogen bombs. So if the Trump administration punts North Korea’s direct threat to attack US population centers with nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council, it will communicate profound weakness to its allies and adversaries alike.

Obviously, this limits the options that the Trump administration has. But it also clarifies the challenge it faces.

The second implication of North Korea’s test of their plutonium-based bomb is that the US’s security guarantees, which form the basis of its global power and its alliance system are on the verge of becoming completely discredited.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Trish Regan, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton was asked about the possible repercussions of a US military assault against North Korea for the security of South Korea.

Regan asked, “What are we risking though if we say we’re going to go in with strategic military strength?... Are we going to end up with so many people’s lives gone in South Korea, in Seoul because we make that move?” Bolton responded with brutal honesty.

“Let me ask you this: how do you feel about dead Americans?” In other words, Bolton said that under prevailing conditions, the US faces the painful choice between imperiling its own citizens and imperiling the citizens of an allied nation. And things will only get worse. Bolton warned that if North Korea’s nuclear threat is left unaddressed, US options will only become more problematic and limited in the years to come.

This then brings us to the third lesson of the current round of confrontation between the US and North Korea.

If you appease an enemy on behalf of an ally then you aren’t an ally.

And eventually your alliance become empty of all meaning.

For 25 years, three successive US administrations opted to turn a blind eye to North Korea’s nuclear program in large part out of concern for South Korea.

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all sought to appease North Korea’s aggressive nuclear adventurism because they didn’t believe they had a credible military option to deal with it.

In the 1980s, North Korea developed and deployed a conventional arsenal of bombs and artillery along the demilitarized zone capable of vaporizing Seoul.

Any US military strike against North Korea’s nuclear installation it was and continues to be argued, would cause the destruction of Seoul and the murder of millions of South Koreans.

So US efforts to appease Pyongyang on behalf of Seoul emptied the US-South Korean alliance of meaning. The US can only serve as the protector of its allies, and so assert its great power status in the Pacific and worldwide, if it prevents its allies from being held hostage by its enemies.

And now, not only does the US lack a clear means of defending South Korea, and Japan, America itself is threatened by the criminal regime it demurred from effectively confronting.

Regardless of the means US President Donald Trump decides to use to respond to North Korea’s provocative actions and threats to America’s national security, given the nature of the situation, it is clear that the balance of forces on the ground cannot and will not remain as they have been.

If the US strikes North Korea in a credible manner and successfully diminishes its capacity to physically threaten the US, America will have taken the first step towards rebuilding its alliances in Asia.

On the other hand, if the current round of hostilities does not end with a significant reduction of North Korea’s offensive capabilities, either against the US or its allies, then the US will be hard pressed to maintain its posture as a Pacific power. So long as Pyongyang has the ability to directly threaten the US and its allies, US strategic credibility in East Asia will be shattered.

This then brings us to China.

China has been the main beneficiary of North Korea’s conventional and nuclear aggression and brinksmanship.

This state of affairs was laid bare in a critical way last month.

In mid-August, Trump’s then chief strategist Steve Bannon was preparing a speech Trump was set to deliver that would have effectively declared a trade war against China in retaliation for its predatory trade practices against US companies and technology. The speech was placed in the deep freeze – and Bannon was forced to resign his position – when North Korea threatened to attack the US territory of Guam with nuclear weapons. The US, Trump’s other senior advisers argued, couldn’t declare a trade war against China when it needed China’s help to restrain North Korea.

So by enabling North Korea’s aggression against the US and its allies, China has created a situation where the US has become neutralized as a strategic competitor.

Rather than advance its bilateral interests – like curbing China’s naval aggression in the South China Sea – in its contacts with China, the US is forced into the position of supplicant, begging China to restrain North Korea in order to avert war.

If the US does not act to significantly downgrade North Korea’s offensive capabilities now, when its own territory is being threatened, it is difficult to see how the US will be able to develop an effective strategy for coping with China’s rise as an economic and strategic rival in Asia and beyond. That is, the US’s actions now in response to North Korea’s threat to its national security will determine whether or not the US will be in a position to develop and implement a wider strategy for maintaining its capacity to project its economic and military power in the Pacific in the near and long term.

Finally, part of the considerations that need to inform US action now involve what North Korea’s success in developing a nuclear arsenal under the noses of successive US administrations means for the future of nuclear proliferation.

In all likelihood, unless the North Korean nuclear arsenal is obliterated, Pyongyang’s nuclear triumphalism will precipitate a spasm of nuclear proliferation in Asia and in the Middle East. The implications of this for the US and its allies will be far reaching.

Not only can Japan and South Korea be reasonably expected to develop nuclear arsenals. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other inherently unstable Arab states can be expected to develop or purchase nuclear arsenals in response to concerns over North Korea and its ally Iran with its nuclear weapons program linked to Pyongyang’s.

In other words, if the US does not respond in a strategically profound way to Pyongyang now, it will not only lose its alliance system in Asia, it will see the rapid collapse of its alliance system and superpower status in the Middle East.

Israel, for one, will be imperiled by the sudden diffusion of nuclear power.

Monday morning, North Korea followed up its thermonuclear bomb test with a spate of threats to destroy the United States. These threats are deadly even if North Korea doesn’t attack the US with its nuclear weapons. If the US does not directly defeat North Korea in a clear-cut way now, its position as a superpower in Asia and worldwide will be destroyed and its ability to defend its own citizens will be called into question with increasing frequency and lethality.

'Germany Should Send Back Foreigners to Save Lives, Stop Appeasing Islamists' – Bavarian MP

Finally, the conversation that should have

started last year begins

© Leonhard Foeger / Reuters

The fact that three of the terror attacks that shocked Germany last week took place in its largest state of Bavaria is a “nightmare” for locals, and shows a failure of the EU and Berlin to deal with migration, Thomas Jahn of the CSU party told RT.

Jahn, a vice chairman of Bavaria’s dominant Christian Social Union (CSU) conservative campaign, lambasted the migration policy pursued by Angela Merkel – the chair of his party’s traditional ally, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

“People in Bavaria and in [the] whole [of] Germany say that, of course, Mrs. Merkel has failed and, historically, the nation because she decided to ignore the German immigration law and she opened the borders of our country last year for two million immigrants from countries outside Europe,” Jahn said, adding that the government is to blame for the “nightmare” terror spate that has descended upon Germany.

“It’s really a nightmare [what] politicians brought to Germany and Bavaria, and people are very worried to be [the] next victims of terrorism in our country,” he said.

In order to prevent terror from spreading, Germany must secure its borders by introducing tougher border controls. In addition, Berlin must not hesitate to deport all new arrivals who could pose a threat to the country’s security, the MP argued.

“We need to control our borders, that is the most important thing at the moment, and we need to send...the dangerous people with Islamist ideology back to the countries outside Europe and [the] European Union,” the politician said.

While Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Hermann, has suggested that Germany’s internal army could be deployed to tackle major terror threats, Jahn believes such a move would be an “overreaction.” Instead, he says authorities should focus on expanding existing resources – particularly giving more powers to the police force.

“We have to give our police more rights,” Jahn stressed, before adding that “we have to send back foreigners very quickly, back to their countries, to save our lives and save security in our countries.”

Although the majority of Bavarian attackers were not German nationals, having fled war-torn regions of Afghanistan and Syria to resettle in Europe, the issue of home-grown terrorism inspired by violent Islam should not be ignored, Jahn said.

“The problem is that we have some kind of ideologies, we have some kind of Islamist ideologies that we never controlled in the last few years, we don’t have much attention on it,” Jahn said, adding that the advancement of extremist teachings within Europe should serve as “one of the greatest reasons we have to stop this kind of appeasement policy in Europe.”

In the wake of the attacks that rocked the Bavarian cities of Wurzburg, Munich, and Ansbach – at least two of which were linked to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) – Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer said that “Islamist terrorism has arrived in Germany,” adding that Germans are “full of fear” as they face “an entirely new dimension of terrorism – the Islamist-minded terrorism.”

Hermann echoed Seehofer’s statement, proposing that Berlin deny entry to all asylum seekers who cannot prove their identity with a valid ID.

“Deportation into a war zone should not be taboo as well,” he stressed in an interview to Suddeutsche Zeitung, referring to refugees who do not abide by German law.

“You have to seriously consider how such people should be treated if they violate laws or pose a threat,” he said.