Author: Steven Sahiounie

China’s annual quotas for corn, wheat and rice will remain unchanged, the country’s senior agriculture official has reportedly said. The news comes days before the first part of the US-China trade agreement is due to be signed. “They are quotas for the whole world. We will not change them just for one country,” Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Jun told Chinese news outlet Caixin. As part of the breakthrough trade deal reached between the two sides last year, China promised to significantly boost purchases of American goods, including farm products critical to the US, over the next two…

Saudi authorities captured the country’s “most wanted terrorist” in the city of Qatif in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, state-run broadcaster Al Ekhbariya reported on Tuesday. “The most wanted terrorist, Hussein Ali Aal Ammar, has been detained in Al-Qatif,” the broadcaster said. The Saudi Interior Ministry accuses Aal Ammar of a number of major crimes, including the abduction and murder of prosecutor Mohammed Al-Jirani, the shooting of a patrol car in Dammam and an attack on cash collectors.

Earlier, the alliance announced that it would be scaling down its activities in the Middle Eastern country following the spike in tensions caused by the US assassination of a senior Iranian military commander. The NATO alliance is moving ‘some personnel out of Iraq’ amid concerns for their security, an alliance official cited by Reuters has said. “We are taking all precautions necessary to protect our people. This includes the temporary repositioning of some personnel to different locations both inside and outside of Iraq,” the official said. The official added that the continued safety of NATO personnel was “paramount.” On Monday,…

The tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated after Iran’s top military commander was killed in a targeted US drone attack at the Baghdadi International airport on 3 January. In response to the Iranian threats of retaliation, Trump suggested striking 52 Iranian cultural sites if attacks against US assets were to take place. US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the US is prepared for any retaliation on the side of Iran and that Washington is ready to retaliate in return. He added that he wants to obey international law when it comes to striking cultural sites. “If that’s what the…

Utah’s Hill Air Force Base put on a powerful show of force, practicing a maneuver known as an “elephant walk,” in which they launched more than 50 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters in just minutes. However, the US Air Force swears it has nothing to do with simmering tensions with Iran. Two fighter wings at Hill Air Force Base practiced a rapid deployment method called an “elephant walk,” quickly launching 52 F-35 Lightning II stealth aircraft with just seconds between each takeoff. The whole exercise took just over 10 minutes, according to local paper The Standard-Examiner. ​“Today’s exercise marks the accomplishment of…

Steven Sahiounie, political commentator Iraq’s parliament met on Sunday and passed a resolution asking all 5,200 US troops to be expelled.  After hearing of the Iraqi decision, US President Trump refused the request, balking at the democratic process of an elected body of a sovereign nation, and insisted,  “We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” referring to a US air force base in Iraq, one of 12 US military facilities there.  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “We are confident the Iraqi people will want the U.S. to remain.” He also disregarded the democratic process in…

By: Craig Murray For the United States to abandon proxy warfare and directly kill one of Iran’s most senior political figures has changed international politics in a fundamental way. It is a massive error. Its ramifications are profound and complex. There is also a lesson to be learned here in that this morning there will be excitement and satisfaction in the palaces of Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Tehran. All of the political elites will see prospects for gain from the new fluidity. While for ordinary people in all those countries there is only the certainty of more conflict, death…

By: David Stockman By the twisted logic of Imperial Washington you could say the Iranians were asking for it. After all, they had the nerve to locate their country right in the middle of 35 U.S. military bases! Then again, your saner angels may ask: What in the hell is Washington doing with a massive military footprint in a region and in a string of backwater countries that have virtually no bearing on homeland security, safety and liberty? Djibouti? Oman? Kyrgyzstan? Uzbekistan? Afghanistan? Bahrain? Kuwait? And, yes, Iraq and Iran? In fact, Washington destroyed the former for no good reason…

US stock indices fell the day after Washington’s assassination of a top Iranian general, precipitating an international crisis that could lead to a shooting war. However, the stocks of US defense contractors soared. As the closing bell rang at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, the Dow Jones registered a 233.92-point drop, while the S&P 500 fell by 23 points and the Nasdaq by 71.42 points. Late Thursday night, the Pentagon confirmed it had assassinated Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in an airstrike at Baghdad airport. The same…

On Friday, a US drone attack killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) elite Quds Force in Baghdad, prompting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to state that Tehran will take revenge for what it views to be a terrorist action by Washington. An unnamed US official claimed that Iranian missile forces across the country were on a “heightened state of alert”, noting that the US military have been closely watching for further moves by Tehran, Reuters reported. According to the report, the official said that “it was unclear whether the higher readiness level was defensive in…