I’m curious to see how Iran will respond to England seizing their ships as this behaviour is traditionally considered an act of war and the UK is in an even weaker position than the US in the Middle East. As I recall, the UK just returned their ambassador to Iran a couple years ago after boycotting them for several years. At the very least I imagine Iran will expel a couple of the UK spies at the embassy. For bonus points the EU looks even more toothless and pathetic as the US is ordering a EU member around like a hired thug to undermine the official EU policy on Iran.

Posted by: Kadath | Jul 4 2019 16:26 utc | 3

As I expected, Pepe Escobar reviews the situation in a calm fashion with his usual whimsical flair by tying the ill-fated Russian submersible into the dialog. He links through Politico (an excellent use of tongue-in-cheek) to last May’s scurrilous Pentagon Report regarding Russia’s intentions some of us waded through. Appropriately, Pepe focused on the EU-3 as they’re the key players to preserving peace in this contrived crisis. As for TrumpCo, it’s Outlaw US Empire SOP of sowing chaos from a playbook well known by the intended targets, which is why nothing happened with yesterday’s provocation. Now we have the UK doing the provoking when they ought to be buying enriched uranium! And the beat goes on…..

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 4 2019 16:53 utc | 5

karlof1 @6: This does seem inconsistent with the JCPOA, seizing the tanker, which Britain claims to want to support. I’m on tenterhooks waiting for the reactions in foreign capitals to start coming in. Thnx for Pepe link.

Posted by: Bemildred | Jul 4 2019 17:06 utc | 7

Hawkish media scribes in Canada have spent the past week lambasting China and decrying what they describe as weakness and timidity on the part of the federal government over China’s “attacks” on Canadian interests. Arm Taiwan! Send more naval ships to South China Sea! Free Hong Kong! The sneaky detention of one of China’s top business executives and extradition hearings to hand her over to the Americans on sketchy “bank fraud” charges based on unilateral sanction programs eight years ago? Just a procedural matter, just the rule of law at work… Ugly chauvinism at work, but an isolated, angry, and futile dominion appears to be what the country’s elite establishment really want.

Posted by: jayc | Jul 4 2019 17:09 utc | 9

@1 Allegedly(?), this oil tanker sailed from Basra in Iraq (not Iran) and remarkably went around Africa rather than sail through the Suez, and further it allegedly also turned it’s transponder off(?)… as usual, we’ll have to wait for real facts to emerge. It’s still quite unusual to intercept an oil tanker so blatantly when much more nefarious shipments are going on.
Seems to me certain western governments do whatever they want, and no longer care about international legalities.

Posted by: Ant. | Jul 4 2019 17:13 utc | 11

Nearly half of global wages received by top 10%, survey finds: ILO says bottom half of all workers paid just 6% of total pay with wage inequality rising in developed world
Data is from 2004 to 2017.
Excerpt (first three paragraphs):

Nearly half of all global pay is scooped up by just 10% of workers, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), while the lowest-paid 50% receive just 6.4%.
The lowest 20% – around 650 million workers – get less than 1% of total pay, a figure that has barely moved in 13 years, the ILO analysis found. It used labour income figures from 2004 to 2017, the latest available data.
A worker in the top 10% receives $7,445 a month (£5,866), while a worker in the bottom 10% gets just $22.

Posted by: vk | Jul 4 2019 17:14 utc | 13

As Tulsi Gabbard outlines the steps Trump has taken to manufacture consent to war with Iran.
How come Stuxnet, Zero days malicious computer worm/virus is not mentioned? We and our ‘chosen people’ ally and Harem Keeper (read slave owner) the (chop chop square) Oil Sheiks, has long ago declared war on Iran by cyberwarfare. Conveniently forgotten or highly likely NOT mentioned on purpose.
Closerto home, Wonder how much money our town is spending on celebrating this bullshit trigger theater of aMERICA? While traumatizing kids and families for life, at the border. While we (the working caste) shoot guns, cry and sing and drink the lee greenwood songs… this country needs an enama. Remember to vote, Coke and or Pepsi! P.S. phuq your fusion center.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 4 2019 17:21 utc | 15

Grace1 tanker was being tracked for a long time
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-sanctions-oil-exclusive/exclusive-how-iran-fuel-oil-exports-beat-u-s-sanctions-in-tanker-odyssey-to-asia-idUSKCN1R10G9
is from three months ago.
She is now Panama flagged (presumably) Russian owned
IMO number 9116412
Name of the ship GRACE 1
Type of ship CRUDE OIL TANKER
MMSI 355271000
Gross tonnage 156880 tons
DWT 273769 tons
Year of build 1997
Builder HYUNDAI HEAVY INDUSTRIES – ULSAN, SOUTH KOREA
Flag PANAMA
Class society LLOYD’S SHIPPING REGISTER
Manager & owner RUSSIAN TITAN SHIPPING LINES – DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Former names MERIDIAN LION until 2013 Mar
OVERSEAS MERIDIAN until 2011 Jun
MERIDIAN LION until 2006 Feb
The reason for holding the ship is given as breaking EU sanctions on Syria. Not JCPOA related (in principle).
Here is a short but incomplete primer on Gibraltar territorial waters. The even more extreme Spanish view is that only the port is Gibraltarian, or simply that Gibraltar is Spanish.
https://www.quora.com/As-Gibraltar-is-surrounded-by-Spanish-waters-can-Spain-block-any-ship-coming-from-or-to-Gibraltar

Posted by: gzon | Jul 4 2019 17:28 utc | 17

Trump recently insulted the Spain Prime Minister, that may help Iran

Spanish media outlets have reacted angrily to an apparent snub of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez by President Donald Trump as the pair met at the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan.
The incident occurred as Trump entered a meeting of G20 leaders and walked past Sanchez, who was preparing to take his seat.
The left-wing prime minister turned to greet the president, but Trump barely broke his stride before pointing Sanchez back to his seat and walking on. The president said something to the prime minister as he did so, but it was not clear what.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jul 4 2019 17:37 utc | 19

A curiosity (for the people who want to hear the other side of the story):
I became the face of the angry left at the Trump protest. It ruined my life. This is my open letter. – by Siobhan Prigent (the infamous “mad woman” who called a Trump supporter a “Nazi scum”)

Posted by: vk | Jul 4 2019 17:45 utc | 21

current news – TOLONews
>The Hour Has Come For Peace In Afghanistan: Pompeo . .here
old news, seven years ago – BBC
>Obama in Afghanistan: ‘We must replace war with peace’ . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jul 4 2019 17:50 utc | 23

Global Times looks into Trump’s overlooked rant during the post-G20 presser about the Treaty between Japan and Outlaw US Empire, which I found enlightening since that relationship isn’t written about often. An important point to remember is the role of that treaty in blocking the ability of Russia and Japan to reach their treaty formally ending WW2–the potential for Outlaw US Empire forces to be placed on Kuril islands since Japan doesn’t have full sovereignty.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 4 2019 18:00 utc | 25

The significant hawkish wing of Canada’s establishment rejects the policy of diversified economy based on international trade, and prefers to become a belligerent junior partner in the Anglo 5 Eyes hegemony project. M.K. Bhadrakumar posted a fascinating article yesterday on one facet of this project – detailing how the U.S. meddles in Sri Lankan affairs with the goal of establishing unwanted military facilities:
https://indianpunchline.com/us-eyes-sri-lanka-as-its-military-logistics-hub/

Posted by: jayc | Jul 4 2019 18:13 utc | 27

@20 the right don’t like Sanchez, old story of Spain. At the moment there is no proper government, has been like this for a few years, lots of elections and changes and stalemates. Even now after elections Sanchez is minority in parliament and not sure if he can form a stable government. People keep voting till they get it right I suppose, it’s the EU way. I don’t think the Spanish are very concerned for Iran at all, the antiwar movement is a feature of the country, but only more vocal when own country participating, as in Iraq.

Posted by: gzon | Jul 4 2019 18:24 utc | 29

Cause of fire in Russian sub – Sputnik

Posted by: Featherless | Jul 4 2019 18:26 utc | 31

The other night at the dead end of the MoA Week in Review open thread was posted a comment which read in part:
Imagine posting comments like the ones above on Unz Review.
Imagine actually believing these comments
Even worse: Imagine having to comment on a blog where the moderator posts child-like comments like the ones above
If b. were the moderator at Unz Reviewer, 95 percent of the comments would have to be deleted for “anti-semitism”
Imagine if Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s “Bagatelles pour un massacre” or Martin Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe had been submitted to b. for publication
I think it’s safe to assume that those two works of genius (and many others) would never have seen the light of day
Compared to Unz Review, this blog is like kindergarten for special needs children
Posted by: Ferdinand Bardamu | Jul 3 2019 2:20 utc | 182
Interesting that b (and bravo to him) deleted parts of the comment he believed to be anti-semitic but left the criticism of him to stand.
This also got me to thinking about “Journey to the End of the Night” which is one of my absolute favourite books of all time.
My other most favourite “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” of course shares many similarities with “Journey”: both are picaresque, misanthropic black comic adventures told in first person argot, both completely captivated my imagination when I first read them as a young adult (Finn I first read as a child but of course only grokked the grand escape adventure part and never understood the blistering critique of slavery and “polite” (white) Amerikkkan society).
And most curiously, except for the first time through, I have never been able to finish either book upon re-reading, something which I attempt around every 10-15 years or so.
That these books are so damnably, cynically entertaining and yet so dead-on regarding the most important historical and social aspects of their peculiar times/places for me makes me treasure them as timeless representations of the essential rottenness of western civilisation.
I can only speculate that my inability to complete either stems from the fact that the comic horrors described still remain unfinished in society and like my personal picaresque life itself, the energy and fascination with the action that I experienced so vividly in my youth and the resulting expectations I grew in my mind of some gloriously grand finale to come, I now realise the best parts have already happened and in the very end I will simply put the book of life down without ever completely finishing it.

Posted by: donkeytale | Jul 4 2019 18:45 utc | 33

There’s a good interview with Michael Hudson regarding the World Bank and the IMF at Naked Capitalism today. An excerpt:
Bonnie Faulkner: What is the difference between the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the IMF? Is there a difference?
Michael Hudson: Yes, there is. The World Bank was supposed to make loans for what they call international development. “Development” was their euphemism for dependency on U.S. exports and finance. This dependency entailed agricultural backwardness – opposing land reform, family farming to produce domestic food crops, and also monetary backwardness in basing their monetary system on the dollar.
The World Bank was supposed to provide infrastructure loans that other countries would go into debt to pay American engineering firms, to build up their export sectors and their plantation sectors by public investment roads and port development for imports and exports. Essentially, the Bank financed long- investments in the foreign trade sector, in a way that was a natural continuation of European colonialism. …

Posted by: spudski | Jul 4 2019 19:07 utc | 35

@34 Thank you Harry Law for the details.
I understand the vessel is registered in Panama.
So maybe if the seizure is endorsed by Panama this makes it legal in regard of international law?

Posted by: theosch | Jul 4 2019 19:08 utc | 37

re: Freedom of Navigation and “threats”
WaPo, June 27
BRUSSELS — NATO allies gave the U.S. no firm commitments that they will participate in a global effort to secure international waterways against threats from Iran, acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday, wrapping up his first alliance meeting.
“At the end of the day what our ask is here, near term, is to publicly condemn Iran’s bad behavior,” Esper said as he prepared to leave Brussels. “And in the meantime, in order to avoid a military escalation, help us maintain the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf and wherever.” . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jul 4 2019 19:21 utc | 39

orders — international and rules-based
from Rand
Understanding the Current International Order

Since 1945, the United States has pursued its global interests by building and maintaining various alliances, economic institutions, security organizations, political and liberal norms, and other tools — often collectively referred to as the international order. . .The primary reason that we and others are focusing attention on the international order today is because it is perceived to be at risk — and, by extension, U.S. interests served by the order might also be at risk. . .here

recent news
China chafes at lectures on ‘rules-based order’, as US breaks all the rules

Over the past few years, the Chinese military officers attending the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security forum, have always had a tough job on their hands. They have had to find ways to skillfully and firmly ward off volleys of attacks from the defence ministers of the United States, Japan, and their European allies who openly or implicitly accuse China of disregarding international law and norms, particularly since Beijing started to flex its military muscles over the disputed territories in the South and East China seas. “Rules-based order” has become one of the most cited buzzwords in speeches that mention China. . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jul 4 2019 19:34 utc | 41

“Goodbye Dollar, It Was Nice Knowing You!”
Philip Giraldi discusses the likely impact on the dollar of an improved “special purpose vehicle” to facilitate European trading with Iran, here:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/07/04/goodbye-dollar-it-was-nice-knowing-you/
A complementary article by Tom Luongo outlines how the Chinese are also using their excess US currency to help Iran and other countries counter the effects of sanctions:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/05/12/trumps-trade-war-is-already-over/
While obituaries may be premature at this stage, the patient does seem to be growing more feeble…

Posted by: farm ecologist | Jul 4 2019 19:38 utc | 43

The seizure of the vessel prob. has more to do with the race for Tory-leadership between Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson. Nevertheless it is an outrage. Iran needs to order an extra fleet of drones for stationing somewhere near Gibraltar…

Posted by: bjd | Jul 4 2019 20:15 utc | 45

Another criticism of the UK act of piracy:
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2019/07/the-winds-are-shifting/

Posted by: Krollchem | Jul 4 2019 20:32 utc | 47

So while accusing Iran of threatening traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, the US via its UK whore stops an Iranian tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar… that is a head-slapping moment.

Posted by: fx | Jul 4 2019 20:49 utc | 49

EU unilateral sanctions against Iran or Syria, just as US unilateral sanctions against both are against international law since they do not have all five veto wielding powers on board, but even if they had, a separate UNSC Resolution would be needed to mount a blockade, which is a real act of war and which the Iranians cannot let go unanswered, otherwise all Iranian oil shipments could be blockaded or subjected to acts of piracy on the high seas.

Posted by: Harry Law | Jul 4 2019 21:07 utc | 51

@paul 12
.”….the S300 and S400 that don’t/won’t work”.
I guess that is why many countries like India, China, Syria, Iran, Turkey, South Korea, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt and Iraq are falling over each other to purchase them. Because they don’t work. And that is why US and Israel trying so hard to stop their sales in the ME theatre. Because they don’t work.
Be nice to see some technical data to back up your statement.

Posted by: Uncle Jon | Jul 4 2019 21:17 utc | 53

uncle jon, please don’t contradict paul.
there is b, seven empty levels, paul, then the rest of us.

Posted by: albagen | Jul 4 2019 21:25 utc | 55

Background on why the UK committed an act of piracy in taking the oil tanker:
“Spain does not recognize the UK’s sovereignty over the entire Crown Colony Gibraltar (CCG) and especially British jurisdiction over part of the isthmus joining it to Spain with the airport constructed on it, and consequently does not accept that the CCG has a right to any territorial waters according to the wording of the legal title, the art. X of the Utrecht Treaty from 1713:
“The Catholic King (Philippe V) does hereby, for himself, his heirs and successors, yield to the Crown of Great Britain the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar, together with the port, fortifications, and forts thereunto belonging; and he gives up the said propriety to be held and enjoyed absolutely with all manner of right for ever, without any exception or impediment whatsoever”.
http://theislander.net/gibraltar-territorial-sea-dispute/

Posted by: Krollchem | Jul 4 2019 21:54 utc | 57

No one needs to be a legal scholar to recognize what the Anglo-Zionist did in seizing the Iranian oil tanker, it simple gangsterism. The Anglo-Zionist gangster stole over 8 billions in assets from Venezuela earlier this year even before their clownish coup attempt. The Anglo-Zionist empire is just a gangster empire. The same international criminal cabal controls Trump, Netanyahu and Putin.

Posted by: O | Jul 4 2019 22:05 utc | 59

Could Iranian oil be shipped across the Caspian to Russia and then in Russian tankers to Syria?

Posted by: lysias | Jul 4 2019 22:16 utc | 61

And you don’t need a PhD in economics to understand that the engine of capitalism is cheap labor. The cheapest labor possible is straight up slavery. Thus multinationals scour the planet searching for the cheapest labor possible. Once automation is fully implemented of course the great overlords will need to kill off the unnecessary excess humans best way to do this is through contrived wars.

Posted by: O | Jul 4 2019 22:18 utc | 63

@bemildred #1
Thanks for the link.
What is really amusing is that the seizure is talked about as an EU action when it is clearly just a UK action via its territory in Gibraltar.
I wonder if Spain, Germany and France were in the loop.

Posted by: c1ue | Jul 4 2019 22:21 utc | 65

The soldiers who fight in contrived wars can always point their weapons in the opposite direction if they realize that the purpose of the wars is to kill them off.

Posted by: lysias | Jul 4 2019 22:23 utc | 67

65
It would be logical that France, as an active Syria destabilizer and in need of regaining
its yesteryears hold on the country, be involved in the choking of fuel supplies to
Syria.

Posted by: CarlD | Jul 4 2019 22:29 utc | 69

>>>>: lysias | Jul 4 2019 22:16 utc | 61

Could Iranian oil be shipped across the Caspian to Russia and then in Russian tankers to Syria?

Provided the Iranians had access to Russian-flagged 5,000 ton tankers which could pass through the Volga-Don Canal, the Iranians could ship the oil directly. According to Wikipedia the dimensions of the ships should be as follows:

Maximum allowed vessel size is 140 m (460 ft) long, 16.6 m (54 ft) wide and 3.5 m (11 ft) deep (the Volgo–Don Max Class).

Posted by: Ghost Ship | Jul 4 2019 22:38 utc | 71

This is interesting
“In March, President Hassan Rowhani paid an official visit to Iraq, during which he signed numerous trade, industrial and financial agreements, the most important being what was finally revealed through a railway project linking the Iranian city of Shalamche to Syrian Lattakia through Iraqi Basra.
The link will be through a railway line between the Iranian cities of Shalamche with a length of 32 km with Iraqi Basra and the line will continue after that towards Syria, where the port of Imam Khomeini on the Iranian side of the Gulf waters will link with the Syrian port of Latakia in the Mediterranean.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-reach-mediterranean-through-iraq-syria-railway/5682699

Posted by: Pft | Jul 4 2019 22:40 utc | 73

C1ue@68
I did read the interview. Before writing his books he was a paid consultant for some interesting members of the Deep State elite in the 60’s. Like I said, unwitting. Whatever his intent may have been surely he knows based on his book sale figures that 99% of the 99% do not read his books. Heck most don’ t read a single book each year.

Posted by: Pft | Jul 4 2019 22:47 utc | 75

Lysias @ 61:
Your idea has probably been mooted in the past but there are various considerable physical and geopolitical obstacles in the way.
Oil and gas would need to be piped from the Persian Gulf over the Zagros Mountain range in southwest Iran and other very hilly country in western Iran.
Tankers could take the oil through the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan and then up the Volga River to Volgograd, go through a canal and then down the Don River into the Sea of Azov.
The Sea of Azov is very shallow and would have to be dredged to accommodate large oil tankers. The tankers also have to go through the Kerch Strait which is narrow (it’s 15 km at its widest point) and not deep (deepest point is 18 metres) so that would also have to be dredged. Plus the Russians have just built a new bridge there and dredging could weaken its supports. There have been enough problems recently with Ukraine attempting to provoke Russia by sending ships into the Sea of Azov without requesting proper authorisation, without adding more to them.
Suppose oil tankers carrying Iranian oil did manage to enter the Black Sea, they now have to go through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles and travel through the Aegean Sea towards Syria. At any point during this part of the trip, they can be seized by EU forces if the ships have to travel through Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek maritime territory.
The logistics involved in creating a route are considerable but I think investors would quail more at the potential for conflict.
Building a pipeline from the Persian Gulf through Iraq would cost less and avoid unnecessary encounters with hostile EU nations and their neo-Nazi crazy ally.

Posted by: Jen | Jul 4 2019 22:55 utc | 77

@Pft #75
Hudson has always been 100% forthright on who he worked for and where he gets money from.
If anything, that builds the credibility of what he is saying.
As for climate change – Hudson has talked in the past about how junk economics discounts the impact of pollution. However, he isn’t a fanatic and likely the CAGW fanatics wouldn’t like it if he turned his attention to what CAGW economists say. Which is to say, the CAGW economists are even worse than mainstream economists, if such is possible.
Climate change is certainly real, but the actual impact vs. the cost to mitigate is far from clearly an “act now at all costs” issue, even assuming it is possible to stop – which the IPCC says it is not anymore already.

Posted by: c1ue | Jul 4 2019 23:19 utc | 79

@ Ghost Ship 62
I get that feeling also, that there’s something more going – you don’t sail a shipload of banned fuel, on route to a banned destination, through the waters of a country that has recently bombed the destination country and is known to have the intelligence network to track, and the international support needed to openly detain, the ship. The owners knew already that it was being tracked.
You know different people live in different worlds, so the ship owner or captain might have just though follow old route, or even this is all a stage up for certain political purposes. The Russian owners must know Gib. is active both militarily and in legal affairs concerning shipping… not long ago a Russian superyacht was embargoed if I remember. It could be to put EU position on JCPOA in the spotlight as you say, but sanctions on Syria aren’t part and parcel of that – I suppose that EU allows a cargo of known Iran origin to be redirected for sale elsewhere would indicate if/if not it backed the wider US sanctions at policy level . At the same time I would no way want that tanker sat off shore for the next few months, not while it was known tensions would be increasing. I guess we’ll find out more in time.

Posted by: gzon | Jul 4 2019 23:26 utc | 81

O @ 63
“And you don’t need a PhD in economics to understand that the engine of capitalism is cheap labor.”
As someone who was educated at a so-called “left wing” university I can assure you that from undergrad to the PhD level, you are unlikely to become aware of this insight. You also won’t hear much about unearned income or economic rent. You will “learn” that whatever the incomes the owners of capital and land are getting is completely justified by marginal productivity theory – Panglossian in the extreme.

Posted by: spudski | Jul 4 2019 23:36 utc | 83

Posted by: spudski | Jul 4 2019 23:36 utc | 83
Personally I have come to believe that the field of “economics” is a religion and a pseudoscience at best. When the reading things by John Locke and Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith not only does religion come into their thinking but also faux justification for their racist classist attitudes. The so-called ‘Enlightenment period’ was so full of hypocrisy that the words of Samuel Johnson are most apropos when he spoke of the founding fathers of the USA
“Why do we hear the loudest yelps of liberty from the drivers of Negroes?”
Again these so-called Democracies of the west calling other nations authoritarian is laughable.

Posted by: O | Jul 4 2019 23:55 utc | 85

What the West has is not democracy. The ancient Greeks recognized that the democratic way to choose officials and representatives is the way the Athenians did it, by lot from the whole citizen body, whereas electing them is an aristocratic/oligarchic way.

Posted by: lysias | Jul 5 2019 0:19 utc | 87

Interesting that in today’s geopolitics the democracies are the unruly, spoiled brats and the authoritarian “regimes” are the well behaved swots.
Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 4 2019 22:43 utc | 74
If you look at history, the last 500 years, western countries have always been a bunch of pirates and highway robbers. Nothing has changed, the decline of the unipolar moment and western living standards will allow for this same greedy face to be seen again.

Posted by: Passer by | Jul 5 2019 0:35 utc | 89

Passer By @ 88:
Whether the ships are Iranian or Russian-owned / operated, the logistics involved and the potential geopolitical conflicts will still apply, and I think shipping the oil will be too expensive.
If Lysias had suggested sending the oil via pipeline, then that would be more feasible, cheaper and less uncertain. The pipeline supply from Russia to Syria needs to cut across Turkey from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean to avoid going through the Bosporus, because that’s a busy area and it’s tectonically complex too with fault-lines, smack bang in the middle of Turkey’s largest urban area (Istanbul).
Iran could sell its oil to Russia in similar programs as you suggest. Then Iranian oil becomes Russian oil and Russia is free to do what it wants with it. Russia is a sanctioned nation anyway and Turkey might be headed for the sanctions’ naughty corner as well if it buys the S400 defence systems so the three nations may as well work together.
I do not buy Korybko’s view that Russia is using blackmailing tactics to force Iran to leave Syria.

Posted by: Jen | Jul 5 2019 0:49 utc | 91

This is a deliberate provocation by the UK government at the behest of the US, previous provocations having failed. The US, who had been tracking the tanker, got its UK vassal to do its dirty work. The Iranians are now in a deep bind, respond to the provocation [which was an act of war] and possibly set off a catastrophic war which the US/UK would blame on Iran, or do nothing which will invite another provocation.

Posted by: Harry Law | Jul 5 2019 0:58 utc | 93

Are those Iran’s only two choices? Is there no international court in which Iran can sue for compensation?

Posted by: lysias | Jul 5 2019 1:02 utc | 95

This just published today, relating to Jun 22 and could not find other reference:
The Stark I sailed into position to offload its crude through the pipelines to the Baniyas refinery by June 27, the website said.
A pipeline below the tanker appeared to be still damaged at the time.
The pro-Syrian government Al Watan newspaper reported that a tanker that arrived at Baniyas was unable to discharge its cargo because of the pipeline damage, leading the Baniyas refinery to cease operations on June 25 as repairs were under way.
https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/mysterious-blasts-off-syria-s-coast-disrupt-iran-oil-delivery-1.882582
Figure that Syria used to be an oil exporter.

Posted by: gzon | Jul 5 2019 1:10 utc | 97

@Pft #60 <=You should read the full interview. Among other things, Hudson notes that his writing of "Super Imperialism" and other books was to help the 99% understand what that 1% are doing, and why. And that sadly, rather than educating the 99% - the 1% wannabes are adopting it as an instruction manual. by: c1ue | Jul 4 2019 22:26 utc | 68 There is though something much bigger than a world war.. the war may or may not happen.. that bigger is happening right now as we speak. Its the global implementation of high density, pulsed frequency electromagnet systems (cell towers in every home) ; of greater concern than the known 8.4-5 X neuro impediments in moms, the genetic losses to children when mothers of unborn are exposed before giving birth and children up to 17 years of age.. Cancers, Alzheimer and Autism and not very pleasant but ignoring all of that, what we are talking about is putting 10s of millions of 5g antennas
without a single biological test for health effects….
wifi is 2.4 GHz.. some range as a microwave oven its radar.. with many known health hazards
5g is 60 GHz, the frequency of molecular oxygen O:O with no studies on health hazards..
but it not just 5g its also Chem Trails, where the micro dust absorbs into your lungs and becomes a mechanical analog to biological components its about personally positive ID tracing you anywhere, all of the time 24/7.. personally identified..tracked and watched like a rat in a cage.. not one person, not one nation but the whole world.
You should consult with people like Barrie Trower a Royal Navy Microwave Weapons Expert.., and Dr. Paul Martin Prof. emeritus of Biochemistry and Medical Sciences at the U. of Washington.
Take a look at sec. 704 of the 1996 Telecommunications act, it represents the work of the FCC and their inbed privately owned partner corporations seeking monopoly power over communications. Sec. 704 effectively silences all potential threats to 5g infrastructure rollout, no cities, no counties, no states can interfere. . a similar situation exist in Canada. These acts and the activities behind them are generally termed the EMF Blackout.
EMF not only negatively impacts just about biological cell and signals between cell and their parts, that occur inside of the cells (control, stabilize and support your life in some way) but EMF also impacts the microbiota [bacteria, mold, fungi, etc) that exist in the brain and other organs in the body: such biotia influence the function of and are essential to the proper survival of all our organ systems.
One researcher put it “2000 papers in 600 pages of research, make it clear that if I were a rat, a mouse, a cell, or a molecule, I should definitely not allow myself to be exposed to this pulsing 5g radiation ..
5g is not about increasing download speeds or making movies faster, its about use the power of government to enable for the economic zionist a monopoly on tracking every single thing you do.. 24/7 in real time.
Another researcher says that after 1000’s of studies since 1932, before 5g, humanity in the world has arrived at a global heath catastrophe orders of magnitude higher than tobacco and cigarettes.
Many say this one thing, getting 5g installed is why DJT was made president?
you might look at http://www.5gspaceappeal.org. for more..

Posted by: snake | Jul 5 2019 1:16 utc | 99