After U.S. Attack In Syrian Iran Demonstrates Its Escalation Dominance

February 26, 2021

Last night the U.S. escalated the situation in Iraq by bombing Iraqi government security forces at the Iraqi-Syrian border station near Abu-Kamal/Al-Qaim. One Iraqi soldier, a Sunni, was killed. Other sources claim that as many as 22 were killed.

The Pentagon spinmasters and their stenographers in the media use Orwellian language to justify the crime. The official press release says:

U.S. Conducts Defensive Precision Strike

Feb. 25, 2021

(Attributable to Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby)

“At President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria. These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel. Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kait’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kait’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS).

This proportionate military response was conducted together with diplomatic measures, including consultation with Coalition partners. The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”

The last attack on U.S. units in Iraq happened on February 15 against a U.S. position in Erbil, Iraq. Some three small rockets were fired by an unknown group of provocateurs.

To call an attack with seven 500 pound bombs on a border station guarded by official Iraqi security forces against ISIS attacks hundreds of miles away from Erbil "defensive" and "in response" is of course ridiculous.

Kataeb Hizbullah al-Iraq (not related to Hizbullah in Lebanon) and KSS are under command of the Iraqi prime minister. They were founded with help from Iran in 2014 to fight against ISIS. Since 2018 they are regular Iraqi forces paid and equipped by the Iraqi government, not by Iran. This attack will escalate the situation in Iraq. More attacks against U.S. and other foreign units there are now assured.

Together with the deliberate steps to make a return to the nuclear deal with Iran more complicate this attack can be seen as a deliberate escalation against the 'resistance axis' of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon and their supporters.

The Biden administration has yet to learn the lesson the Trump learned when he tired to provoke Iran and its allies. It is the resistance that has escalation dominance in the Middle East. It can control the pace of further steps up the escalation ladder. It is willing to step up higher than the U.S. It knows how to use that ability.

Here is proof for that:

Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian @manniefabian – 14:34 UTC · 26 Feb 2021

An explosion struck an Israeli-owned cargo ship sailing in the Gulf of Oman Friday. The crew and vessel were safe. The explosion forced the vessel, reported to be the Helios Ray, to head to the nearest port.

AP has details:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An explosion struck an Israeli-owned cargo ship sailing out of the Middle East on Friday, an unexplained blast renewing concerns about ship security amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

The crew and vessel were safe, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which is run by the British navy. The explosion forced the vessel to head to the nearest port.

The site of the blast, the Gulf of Oman, saw a series of explosions in 2019 that the U.S. Navy blamed on Iran against the backdrop of steeply rising threats between former President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders. Tehran denied the accusations, which came after Trump abandoned Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed harsh sanctions on the country.
…
Satellite-tracking data from website MarineTraffic.com showed the Helios Ray had been nearly entering the Arabian Sea around 0600 GMT Friday before it suddenly turned around and began heading back toward the Strait of Hormuz. It still listed Singapore as its destination on its tracker.

A United Nations ship database identified the vessel’s owners as a Tel Aviv-based firm called Ray Shipping Ltd. Calls to Ray Shipping rang unanswered Friday.

Abraham Ungar, 74, who goes by “Rami,” is the founder of Ray Shipping Ltd., and is known as one of the richest men in Israel.

The dimwits in Biden's National Security Council seem to think that they can push Iran around and press it for "concessions". It is exactly the other way around. Iran and its allied forces can hit well selected targets like the Israeli ship, Saudi oil installation or U.S. bases in the Middle East with precision and at a time that fits their schedule. The U.S. has no ability to prevent such strikes nor can it respond in kind without risking a wider war that it has no chance to win.

Biden can return to the nuclear deal by lifting the sanctions on Iran. Or he can attempt to escalate further to get his additional "concessions". Those efforts will not only be costly for the U.S. and its allies as Iran can and will response in kind but also futile.

It's his choice to make.

Posted by b on February 26, 2021 at 15:57 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I gotta say that I too am quite disappointed with Robert Lindsay. I thought he brought interesting things to the blog but that nonsense about a tactical nuke at Beirut pulled the plug on any further reading.
darn shame. but once bitten twice shy and once I am lied to I tend to discount any further info from that source.

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 28 2021 15:20 utc | 201

Sun Tzu @Feb28 12:58 #217

Your speculations are not based on objectivity.

No, they are consistent. I’ll address your each of your observations.
=
The photographs show evidence of blast occurring outside bending metal towards inside which is inconsistent with sabotage via bomb on board.
You are not considering the possibility that a bomb on board might be placed on a outside surface while in transit?
=
There was no mysterious explosion in Beirut in August 2020. There was a predictable “waiting to happen” detonation of an Ammonium Nitrate …
What’s mysterious is how the explosion actually occurred. You may recall the initial speculations regarding welders/blacksmiths having accidentally set off the fires that led to the explosion. Why is the possibility of sabotage studiously avoided? The sabotage theory is consistent with sabotage of the shipping in the Gulf of Oman and other secretive attacks by Israel.
You also fail to notice Robert Lindsay belief in the Israeli Nuke theory @Feb28 6:14 #212. That bit of misdirection was proven false soon after the incident.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Feb 28 2021 15:27 utc | 202

MS. joey_n
I do not know.
I speculate, based on inadequate sampling of individual opinions, that they are for Israel and against Iran.
The funny thing about them is that they are very very uncomfortable with the idea of Iran having a religious based government but are oblivious to a similar religious based government in Israel.

Posted by: Fyi | Feb 28 2021 16:26 utc | 203

@215 Since the Vikings, Danes, Angles and Saxons came originally from Scandinavia and Germany I imagine they feel a certain connection.

Posted by: dh | Feb 28 2021 17:30 utc | 204

In a matter of two days, the Bahama flagged cargo vessel has been named as an Israeli ship in the media. The war rhetoric has reached new heights … ship owner Rami Ungar has, as do so many business leaders, a history with the Mossad, namely Yossi Cohen. Furthermore, Rami Ungar was participant in the joint American Israeli anti-Iran organization UANI of 2015.
Images of the damage … via Chris Farrell twitter account.
Casus Belli – Arab-Israeli Alliance Stirring the Pot

Posted by: Oui | Feb 28 2021 20:00 utc | 205

@Haassaan,@ak74 and ab.
why don’t they Fired S300?
S300 are expensive and sensitive system, only use to protect very important target.
As SunTsu wrote 2000 years ago:

you can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.

S300 are not positioned where it’s not necessary nor possible to protect and use them.
I would added as retired airplane mechanics but not à Sam tech, I think the answer is dynamic too.
Sam systems are design to deter approach, and destroy approaching balistics or flying engine
But this “Fakebombing” as I wrote yesterday, is suppose to be 7 guided bomb or missile, 500 lbs. Fired from F15 (2 planes). Such a bomb could be Fired from a range of 50 km,from Irak airspace
F15 Eagle speed can be 2.5 mach (~700m/s),a S300 missile ~1900 m/s even when position at the best place in Syria and firing to Irak airspace need ~50s/80km.
Out of efficiency/range.
And Syria can’t fire unidentified plane in Irak airspace. Could be Iraki or civilian airplane as so many time Sionist air force done from Lebanon
I would like B. to write something technical about this. And this “Fakebombing”, for me just a “service minimum” in order to make Biden look like and
But “Leiche in der Keller”, a sign of weakness

Posted by: Bernard F. | Feb 28 2021 21:28 utc | 206

uncle tungsten @ 210
Yes. It looks like torn/ripped metal, not blast damage. Little pockmarks as if there were some shrapnel thrown around, not too much of it. It does look clean in there.
Had thought to keep comment short as had doubt any here would pick up on it at all.

Posted by: oldhippie | Mar 1 2021 15:08 utc | 207

I do not know if the following is true,but a website hoarded on french website reseauinternational.net (where frequently you can find ‘b’s articles in french) and going by the name of aviapro.fr claims that five of the seven 500lbs bombs on the syrian-iraqi borderpost missed their goal and the two others did not much damage neither,with images to prove it.This would be due to russian jamming.Would be nice if it was true,so no S-300 needed.
https://reseauinternational.net/5-bombes-aeriennes-sur-7-larguees-par-les-etats-unis-manquent-une-base-militaire-iranienne-en-syrie/#comment-809052
https://avia-pro.fr/news/novym-aviaudaram-ssha-po-sirii-chto-seryozno-pomeshalo-est-predpolozhenie-chto-rossiyskoe

Posted by: willie | Mar 1 2021 19:00 utc | 208

a minor point about the title:
“After U.S. Attack In Syrian Iran Demonstrates Its Escalation Dominance” should be reworded as
“Iran Demonstrates Its Escalation Dominance After U.S. Attack In Syria”

Posted by: Taz | Mar 3 2021 5:13 utc | 209

Grieved | Feb 27 2021 5:36 utc | 123
“Amazing that the obsessed thievery of the relatively few can distort the entire culture of the human race into thinking that things are inherently wicked.”
Thanks. But I do belive it’s important to keep in mind that that distortion comes at the price of constant, planetary-wide intervention in every sphere – education, the press, popular entertainment, etc. etc. – because the “relatively few” know that if there were silence, we would listen to the birds and the bees and realize that what you say – the universe is not hostile – is true. They know that we need to live in fear of some catastrophe or some enemy that only the power their control of capital gives them can protect us from.
I call it the Coca-Cola© syndrome. Coca-Cola, convinced that their product had conquered the world and would basically sell itself, at one point stopped advertising, thinking that they simply didn’t need to; everyone in the world knows Coca-Cola©. No one needs to advertise oxygen. But sales began to fall. Since then they have never stopped advertising.
Except that now the advertising is done at our expense, through tax write-offs. We citizens pay the cost of the Mighty Wurlitzer that keeps us in fear of that “hostile universe.”

Posted by: Gene Poole | Mar 4 2021 12:15 utc | 210

Posted by: tucenz | Feb 27 2021 12:38 utc | 156
Sudenly the “Assad gassed his own people” story is back in the news. But is there really anything new? In France and Germany ARTE TV has been doing stories – long ones with lots of dramatic footage – about the “chemical attacks probably launched by the Syrian régime.” The only “news” – the justification for once again showing the public these disturbing images – is not that any new evidence has been revealed, but that a lawsuit against Assad for crimes against humanity has been filed. We are told that this is a historic first in France, but that a similar suit was filed in Germany in October 2020.

Posted by: Gene Poole | Mar 4 2021 16:22 utc | 211

US Intelligence Reveals Israel Has Bombed “Dozens” Of Iranian Oil Tankers

… a new bombshell report in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reveals Israeli intelligence has been waging its own tanker sabotage campaign against the Iranians over the past two years …
It also appears part of the Israeli and US campaign to essentially starve the Assad government and bring it to its knees, further amidst near weekly Israeli airstrikes inside the war-torn country. The new report clearly suggests US intelligence officials knew about the covert tanker sabotage campaign in real time, and may have even assisted in some level of the planning or operations …

<> <> <> <> <> <>
Why didn’t they tell us about the continuing tanker war when they announced that the Israeli ship was “struck” by an explosion?
One must wonder if they are revealing this now because Israel’s story about the tanker being attacked lacks credibility. They desperately want us to believe that the damage to the ship was NOT a false flag (Israeli sabotage of their own vessel).
But it gets even better. They also implicitly excuse Israel’s attacks on Iranian tankers … because the oppose Assad and Biden’s Iran initiative. Where is the condemnation for such behavior?
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 12 2021 3:49 utc | 212

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