The prophecy is more than seeing into the future. For the prophecy sees without the element of time. For the prophecy sees things as they were, as they are, and as they always shall be.
ReutersJune 8, 20224:07 PM MDTLast Updated a day ago
ERBIL, June 8 (Reuters) – A drone exploded in Iraq’s northern city of Erbil on Wednesday injuring three people and damaging several cars, according to a statement by Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service.
The explosive drone detonated on Pirmam road in Erbil’s outskirts at 9:35 p.m. Iraq time, the statement said.
Two security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the drone was shot down.
A security source said earlier that a drone attack targeted the U.S. consulate but did not give further details.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi told Kurdish Prime Minister Masoud Barzani in a phone call that Baghdad will cooperate with Erbil to hold the perpetrators accountable, according to a statement.
“Bomb-laden drone hit Erbil-Pirmam road, causing civilian injuries and damage,” the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq said on Twitter. “Iraq does not need self-proclaimed armed arbiters. Asserting State authority is essential. If the perpetrators are known, call them out and hold them to account.”
Last month, Iran Revolutionary Guards artillery fire hit an area north of Erbil, targeting what Iranian state television described as terrorist bases.
Also, in March the Guards attacked the capital of the Kurdish region with a dozen ballistic missiles in an unprecedented assault on the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region that appeared to target the United States and its allies read more
At least three other attacks have targeted oil refineries in Erbil since the March attack, but no group has claimed responsibility for them.
Reporting by Ali Sultan; Writing by Amina Ismail; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Grant McCool
An Islamic State operative plotted to assassinate former president George W. Bush at his home in Dallas by smuggling assassins across the Mexican border, according to an FBI search warrant application obtained by Forbes.
The FBI said it uncovered the plan through the work of two confidential informants and surveillance of the alleged plotter’s account on the WhatsApp messaging platform. According to the warrant application, the suspect said he wanted to assassinate Bush in retaliation for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Shihab said he planned to bring four Iraqi ISIS operatives located in Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, and Denmark into the United States, one of whom he claimed was “the secretary of an ISIS financial minister,” according to the warrant application. His scheme allegedly involved acquiring Mexican visitor visas for the assassins in order to get them across the border.
Shihab claimed he belonged to a terrorist unit called Al-Raed, led by a former Iraqi pilot for Saddam Hussein, the warrant application said. According to a conversation detailed in the warrant, Shihab’s job was “to locate and conduct surveillance on former president Bush’s residences and/or offices and obtain firearms and vehicles to use in the assassination.”
Two law enforcement officials maintained that Bush’s safety was never threatened, and a representative for Bush told Forbes the former president has “all the confidence in the world in the United States Secret Service and our law enforcement and intelligence communities.”
Seamus Hughes, an expert on extremism and counterterrorism at George Washington University, told Forbes the United States has not seen a plot of this scale in years.
“It shows that while domestic terrorism rightly takes a good amount of counterterrorism focus, the threats are not there alone,” Hughes said.
Two confidential informants and surveillance of the alleged plotter’s WhatsApp account reveal plans to smuggle assassins into the U.S. to murder the former president, according to a search warrant application discovered by Forbes.
An Iraqi man in the U.S. accused of being linked to ISIS operatives was plotting to kill George W. Bush, going so far as to travel to Dallas in November to take video around the former president’s home and recruiting a team of compatriots he hoped to smuggle into the country over the Mexican border, according to an FBI search-warrant application filed March 23 and unsealed this week in the Southern District of Ohio.
The FBI said it uncovered the scheme through the work of two confidential informants and surveillance of the alleged plotter’s account on the Meta-owned WhatsApp messaging platform. The suspect, Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, based in Columbus, Ohio, said he wanted to assassinate Bush because he felt the former president was responsible for killing many Iraqis and breaking apart the country after the 2003 U.S. military invasion, according to the warrant.
The case shows how federal investigators continue to monitor threats from ISIS even as the group has been severely weakened by American intelligence and military operations in recent years. It also shows how the FBI, despite its claims of being prevented from investigating major crimes because of Meta and other tech providers’ use of encryption, has been able to work around WhatsApp security by using old-school policing with sourcing of informants and tracking the metadata they can get from the messaging company.
A snippet from the search warrant uncovered by Forbes detailing the plot on George W. Bush’s life. The name of the suspect has been redacted.
Shihab is an Iraqi national who’d been in the U.S. since 2020 and had an asylum application pending, according to the FBI’s search-warrant application. Federal agents used two different confidential sources to investigate the plot, one who claimed to offer assistance obtaining false immigration and identification documents, the second a purported customer of the alleged people smuggler, who was willing to pay thousands of dollars to bring his family into the country.
(As the criminal complaint against the suspect has not been made public, Forbes is not publishing the full warrant. According to NBC, he was arrested earlier today, a fact later confirmed by the Department of Justice.)
Freddy Ford, chief of staff for the Office of George W. Bush, said, “President Bush has all the confidence in the world in the United States Secret Service and our law enforcement and intelligence communities.”
In November 2021, Shihab revealed to the FBI insider the plot to assassinate Bush and asked the confidential source if he knew how to “obtain replica or fraudulent police and/or FBI identifications and badges” to help carry out the killing, and whether it was possible to smuggle the plotters out of the country the same way they came in after their mission was complete, according to the warrant. The alleged smuggler said he also wanted to find and assassinate a former Iraqi general who helped Americans during the war and whom he believed was living under a fictitious identity in the U.S., investigators said.
The alleged plotter claimed to be part of a unit called “Al-Raed,” meaning “Thunder,” that was led by a former Iraqi pilot for Saddam Hussein who had been based out of Qatar until his recent death, the warrant said. As many as seven members of the group would be sent to the U.S. to kill President Bush, according to a conversation described in the warrant, and the Shihab’s job was “to locate and conduct surveillance on former president Bush’s residences and/or offices and obtain firearms and vehicles to use in the assassination.”
After traveling to Dallas with the informant to take video of Bush’s residence, the accused took more footage at the George W. Bush Institute, according to federal agents. The Texas city was the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Bush, a Republican who was in the news last week when he inadvertently referred to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in a speech about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was president from 2001 to 2009.
In one conversation with a confidential FBI source, the suspect said he was planning to get four Iraqi national males located in Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and Denmark into the U.S., according to the warrant. In a later conversation, he claimed that one of the four was “the secretary of an ISIS financial minister,” the FBI said. The alleged smuggler described the men as “former Baath Party members in Iraq who did not agree with the current Iraqi government and were political exiles,” the FBI said. He was planning to charge each $15,000 to be smuggled into America, the FBI said. The Baath Party was the political organization of Hussein, who was deposed in the 2003 U.S. invasion.
His plan, according to the warrant, was to get Mexican visitor visas for the ISIS operatives, using passport information he would send to the informant over WhatsApp, before getting them over the border. Meanwhile, he was communicating with a contact in Egypt over a fake Facebook profile, which carried a profile picture of two individual hands each holding a rose, designed to look romantic and “not suspicious,” according to the FBI’s account. In 2021, the FBI got a warrant to search that Facebook account, though it’s unclear what they obtained.
Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Forbes, “It’s clear this was a sophisticated counterterrorism operation with a lot of moving parts. It was both far reaching and unique in its targeting.
“It also shows that while the debate on so called “going dark” can be overcome through the use of undercover operatives, it’s labor intensive but possible.” The term “going dark” is used by law enforcement to describe the inability to get to data that has been encrypted by software applications.
“Also, we haven’t seen a plot of this scale in a number of years. It shows that while domestic terrorism rightly takes a good amount of counterterrorism focus, the threats are not there alone.”
As part of its surveillance of the alleged plotters, the FBI recently received permission to acquire mobile location information from AT&T. It had already used what’s known as a “pen register” on the WhatsApp account believed to belong to the chief suspect, helping them determine how often the account was used, what numbers it was contacting and whether or not it was active.
Though Shihab seemed convinced his WhatsApp account was secure, he was unaware that the confidential sources were passing on messages to the FBI. Nor was he aware that starting in October he was using a phone that he was given by the informant at the FBI’s request. The informant noted that the target was a keen user of WhatsApp and was a member of Baath and ISIS chat groups on the app. In another conversation with an informant, the suspect claimed to have “been in recent communications with a friend in Qatar who was a former minister in Iraq under Saddam Hussein who had access to large quantities of money” and was messaging him over WhatsApp, the FBI said.
A mysterious group known as Al-Raed was allegedly plotting to kill former President George W. Bush, according to an FBI search warrant, shown here in redacted form.
While the sources were passing on what they learned over WhatsApp throughout 2021 and 2022, they were also secretly recording the in-person meetings with the alleged plotter in which additional startling details were revealed, according to the FBI. In one conversation from December, according to the warrant, the suspect claimed to have had just smuggled two individuals associated with Hezbollah — a terrorist organization, according to the U.S. — into the U.S. for a fee of $50,000 each.
Also in the FBI court filing, the alleged plotter claimed to be a member of “the resistance” and had killed many Americans in Iraq between 2003 and 2006, packing vehicles with explosives and detonating them when U.S. soldiers were near.
Updated at 1.50pm ET to publish the suspect’s name, following NBC reporting that he had been apprehended.Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website. Send me a secure tip.
I’m associate editor for Forbes, covering security, surveillance and privacy. I’m also the…
Trying to condemn the war in Ukraine, Bush inadvertently calls Iraq war unjustified
Former President George W. Bush was criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday when his old nemesis, the verbal slip, struck again. Bush eventually condemned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — but not before he condemned “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”
Bush was drawing a parallel between how countries conduct elections and their stance toward other nations when his tongue went rogue.
“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean of Ukraine,” Bush said.
“Iraq… anyway,” he said with a shake of his head, as members of the audience chuckled. He then cited his age, 75, before returning to his speech.
Bush was speaking to an audience at his presidential library in Dallas, Texas, at an event focused on the importance of ensuring free, fair and secure elections, aiming to bolster voters’ confidence in U.S. elections. But the former president’s verbal gaffe quickly drew notice on social media and in headlines.
In 2003, Bush led the U.S. into an invasion and war in Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction and was working toward a nuclear weapon. No evidence of such threats was found in the country. Members of his administration have insisted they were acting on faulty intelligence.
In Thursday’s speech, Bush was comparing the free and fair election of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyyto Putin’s suppression of his political opponents.
He also said he recently spoke to Zelenskyy via Zoom, declaring the Ukrainian leader to be a “cool little guy — the Churchill of the 21stcentury.”
Bush has famously been a wellspring of malapropisms, even prompting the term “Bushisms” and sparking research into slips of the tongue. His latest high-profile foray into mangled speech adds to what is shaping up as an odd return to the early 2000s, when news outlets tracked Brittney Spears and reported on the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan.
President George W. Bush: “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
A little over a year later, the U.S. invaded Iraq, despite lacking any evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The attack was widely considered illegal under international law. According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, there have been over 180,000 Iraqi civilians killed by direct violence since the U.S. invasion.
The former US secretary of state was instrumental in paving the way for the invasion of Iraq on spurious intelligence in his infamous speech at the UN in 2003.
Former US secretary of state Colin Powell, who paved the way for the 2003 Iraq War under President George W Bush, died today at the age of 84 from complications from Covid-19.
Born in Harlem of Jamaican heritage, Powell was the nation’s first Black national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and secretary of state.
A fixture in American politics for decades, he was a four-star army general whose career began in Vietnam and later spanned several Republican administrations, even toying with a presidential run in 1995 before deciding against it.
A tendency towards careerism – what admirers chalked up as “being a good soldier” – was an attribute that would serve him well during his ascent up the US national security bureaucracy.
In Vietnam, Powell was part of the army division that ended up being responsible for the My Lai massacre. While he talked about it in his best-selling memoir, “My American Journey,” he absolved himself by recounting he was unaware of the scale of the institutional coverup.
Never one to buck the system, Powell was the consummate inside man; someone who thought whatever compromises he made were worth it because it would offer him a chance to do the right thing.
Whether that meant participating in Ronald Regan’s Iran-Contra operation, or being an architect behind the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the Persian Gulf war in 1991 under George H W Bush, the ostensibly prudent Powell was, at the end of the day, a yes man.
And there was no better example of that on display than his role in justifying the war in Iraq.
Believed to be a moderating influence in the Bush administration and skeptical of the idea of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, Powell still went out to make the case. Because he was held in such high esteem by members of both parties, the fact that he so forcefully made the case solidified bipartisan support for the war.
Coupled with his infamous UN speech on Iraq harbouring Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), the image of Powell holding up a vial of an alleged chemical agent is iconic from that era (along with artistic renderings of what the alleged biological labs would look like), was a display of propaganda the self-advertised moderate found hard to scrub from his legacy.US Secretary of State Colin Powell holds up a vial that he said could contain anthrax as he presents evidence of Iraq’s alleged weapons programs to the United Nations Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003. (Ray Stubblebine / Reuters)
The ‘grand game of Powellian deception’
On February 5, 2003, Powell gave testimony to the UN Security Council in which he claimed that the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s government was hiding a secret chemical weapons program from the international community and supporting terrorism following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
His address was an effort to provide delegates “with additional information…about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as well as Iraq’s involvement in terrorism, which is also the subject of resolution 1411 and other earlier resolutions.”
The proof? “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid evidence.”
Did Iraq revive their nuclear weapons program? “There is no doubt in my mind,” he concluded.
Privately, however, he displayed less certainty. “I wonder how we’ll all feel if we put half a million troops in Iraq and march from one end of the country to the other and find nothing,” he told his chief of staff Larry Wilkerson at the time.
It was all part of a “grand game of Powellian deception,” wrote Binoy Kampmark in Counterpunch.
One of the clues Powell furnished was drawn from an intercepted conversation about UN inspections between Iraqi army officers that he turned on its head: “Clean out all of the areas…Make sure there is nothing there.” None of which was in the intercept.
As Jon Schwarz wrote in The Intercept: “Powell took evidence of the Iraqis doing what they were supposed to do – i.e., searching their gigantic ammunition dumps to make sure they weren’t accidently holding onto banned chemical weapons – and doctored it to make it look as if Iraq were hiding banned weapons.”
“Clearly Powell’s loyalty to Bush extended to being willing to deceive the world: the United Nations, Americans, and the coalition troops about to be sent to kill and die in Iraq,” Schwarz said.
“He’s never been held accountable for his actions, and it’s extremely unlikely he ever will be.”
Despite the eventual hand wringing by acknowledging how the UN speech was a “blot” on his record and a “great intelligence failure,” Powell displayed no sincere remorse over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of US soldiers. He remained insistent the war was a just one
Wilkerson said Powell’s UN testimony was significant for both its dishonesty and that Powell’s “gravitas” was a crucial “part of the two-year-long effort by the Bush administration to get Americans on the war wagon.”
“That effort led to a war of choice with Iraq, one that resulted in catastrophic losses for the region and the United States-led coalition, and that destabilized the entire Middle East,” wrote Wilkerson in 2018.
Nor was the UN speech the first example of Powell’s acquiescence. Reports revealedhow timid he was in speaking against the Bush administration’s imprisonment and torture policy, despite knowing the legal risks, in another instance where Powell seemed to put career before principles.
Despite falling out with the administration and leaving at the end of Bush’s first term, Powell continued to be held in high regard as a statesman within Beltway circles. His credibility with the American public, however, had been sacrificed at the altar of Iraq.
Following the Bush era, Powell endorsed President Barack Obama in 2008 and voted for the Democratic ticket ever since. He was an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump and the direction the Republican party took under Trump’s presidency.
While publicly walking back some of his blunders on Iraq, Powell embarked on a path of restoration that ultimately assuaged any greater responsibility.
“Iraq was not his debacle but that of others,” argued Kampmark. “He has spent years cultivating his apologias, showing up his peers as imbeciles and he, a warning filled sage of reason.”
It cannot be denied that Powell left an indelible mark on the history of US foreign policy. He, along with Dick Cheney, were two of the chief designers behind the strategic legacies of the Regan and Bush Sr eras. At the core of the new military doctrine was that the US should avoid the kind of protracted engagement that could become politically costly, as it did in Vietnam.
But for someone who established what came to be known as the ‘Powell Doctrine’ – don’t get into a war you don’t know how to get out of – it is somewhat tragically ironic that Powell failed to heed that lesson himself in 2003.
Colin Powell, who was the nation’s top diplomat, its top general, and the first Black man to be either, died on Monday at the age of 84. Rarely, if ever, has an American statesman or warrior risen to such heights of power, then been cut off at the knees by his bureaucratic rivals.
Born in Harlem to Jamaican parents, a classic tale of a working-class kid pulling himself up by his own bootstraps, Powell joined the Army, fought in Vietnam as a grunt, rose through the ranks to corps commander, then, after a stint as President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, was named by President George H.W. Bush to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As a rare officer who combined battlefield experience with political savvy, Powell turned the chairmanship into a powerhouse, utilizing his large staff—several hundred of the military’s smartest officers, split into several specialized units—in a way that, as one official at the time told me, “ran circles around the rest of the national-security bureaucracy.” It was in that position that Powell emerged as a public figure, devising much of the strategy for the first Gulf War, which pushed Iraq’s invading army out of Kuwait, and explaining the strategy at several televised press conferences.
During that time, he also enunciated what came to be called the “Powell doctrine,” a view that the U.S. should go to war only if the political objectives are vital and defined, if military force can achieve those objectives at an acceptable cost, if all nonviolent means have failed—and then, if war is necessary, that we should go to war only with overwhelming force. The doctrine amounted to a critique of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam—both its flawed rationale and its piecemeal tactics—and has influenced the debate on the proper role of military force ever since.
After Democrats regained the White House in 1992, Powell wrote a bestselling memoir, My American Journey, and considered running for president. (His wife, Alma, urged him not to run, fearing that some racist would assassinate him.) When the Republicans won again in 2000, President George W. Bush named Powell secretary of state, to unanimous acclaim, in what seemed the pinnacle of his rise—but it proved to be the start of his downfall. Taking office with an air of confidence, assuming that he could rule the realm of foreign policy through his clout and popularity, he soon found himself—to his initial surprise—outmaneuvered, on one major issue after another, by the tag team of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had been friends and colleagues dating back to the Nixon administration.
Powell accomplished a great deal on issues that Cheney and Rumsfeld didn’t care about. In the fall of 2001, they let him conduct the shuttle diplomacy that may well have prevented war between the nuclear-armed nations of India and Pakistan. Powell also helped soothe tensions with China after its shoot-down of a U.S. spy plane. However, he lost almost every other battle. In one of his first statements, Powell declared that he would resume President Bill Clinton’s nuclear negotiations with North Korea—only to be told by Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, that he would do no such thing. He had to eat his words.
Whenever Powell tried to initiate any form of arms control, his undersecretary of state, John Bolton, who had been installed in the job as a spy for Cheney, did his best to sabotage the move. On the few occasions when Powell won a debate in the National Security Council, Cheney would go talk with Bush privately—and usually get the decision reversed.
By the middle of Bush’s first term, his counterparts in Europe—who had celebrated Powell’s appointment and spoke with him frequently—came to realize that his views, which they found agreeable, did not reflect the president’s views, and he lost his influence abroad. When Bush wanted to send a message on the Middle East, he sent Rice. When he dispatched an emissary to Western Europe to lobby for Iraqi debt cancellation, he sent James Baker, the Bush family’s longtime friend who had been his father’s secretary of state.
The war in Iraq might have served as Powell’s off-ramp to redemption but instead deepened his downslide to Nowheresville. As Bush crept toward the invasion, Powell warned him of its pitfalls—most prophetically on what he called “the Pottery Barn rule: you break it, you own it”—but to no avail. (Shortly before the war started, a European diplomat reminded him that Bush was said to sleep like a baby. Powell replied, “I sleep like a baby, too—every two hours, I wake up screaming.”) Once again, though, he was outmaneuvered. Unable to muster support for the invasion, either on the homefront or among allies, Cheney came up with the diabolical idea of having Powell—the one senior Bush official with international credibility—make the case for war before the U.N. Security Council. Initially, Powell resisted, tearing up the script the White House gave him to read. But then, in an effort to be helpful and loyal, he went to CIA headquarters and buried himself in documents and briefings for days on end, tossing out claims that had no support and leaving in those that seemed at least plausible. In the end, he gave his fateful speech, with passion. Many critics of the invasion were won over, in good part because it was Colin Powell making the case.
But all the claims that Powell was believed—all the evidence he recited to support the idea that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction—turned out to be false as well. In his excellent book, To Start a War, Robert Draper wrote that plenty of CIA analysts could have told Powell that the claims were false, or at least dubious—but that CIA Director George Tenet, eager to please Bush with the conclusions Bush wanted to hear, deliberately kept Powell from talking with them.
Powell left the administration after Bush’s first term. Toward the end, he was portrayed in several journalistic accounts, most notably Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, as a critic of the war who regarded Cheney as having “the fever” for invasion; but, even a year after leaving his post, Powell stayed mum on these matters in public. As late as June 2005, six months into Bush’s second term, Powell went on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart in one of his first TV guest spots since leaving office. Stewart asked questions that left him wide openings to take jabs at his former colleagues, who were still in power, or at the war, which was still raging. But he took none of them. Sure, there were disagreements, Powell said, but that’s true in any administration. The president is the boss, and he’s a swell guy. Why, he and Laura were just over at his house for dinner the previous week.
Powell later openly regretted his role in the U.N. speech and denounced those who’d manipulated him at Langley. Too late. If he had resigned in protest before the invasion, he might have stopped the war from happening; if he had spoken out after leaving office, he might have affected its future course. But this wasn’t his way. He was, at heart, a team player, a “good soldier.”
Over time, he turned away from the Republican Party. In the 2008 presidential election, he endorsed Barack Obama, calling him a “transformational” candidate, to the great dismay of his old friend and Obama’s opponent, Sen. John McCain. However, Obama rarely called him for advice on defense issues. Powell subsequently endorsed only Democrats—Obama again in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020.
In recent years, apart from the endorsements, Powell remained out of the limelight of national politics—though it wasn’t clear whether this was by choice. He devoted most of his time to personal and public causes, especially the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at his alma mater, the City College of New York. He wrote more bestselling books and spoke widely, sometimes for fees, sometimes not. He had a wonderful life. At one pivotal moment in our history, it could have been a more decisive one.
US President Donald Trump and Israel joined forces to launch their own Arrow 3 missile days after they accused Iran of testing a new mid-range ballistic missile in a sign of defiance towards Washington’s demands to end their nuclear development programme. An American defence official last week announced its arch-foe in the Middle East had fired a medium-range ballistic missile that travelled some 1,000 km (620 miles), but insisted it posed no threat to shipping or US personnel in the region.
Brigadier General Amir Hatami stopped short of explicitly confirming the test.
But said: “Such things are normal across the world.
“The research programmes of the armed forces are drawn up and carried out every year including missile tests,” according to the semi-official news agency ISNA.
His comments come after the US and Israel successfully tested a long-range missile in a joint effort to increase military security amid growing tension with Iran.
Iran news: Brigadier General Amir Hatam did not confirm the tests (Image: REUTERS )
The test of the jointly developed defence system was hailed as a “major milestone” in the collaboration between the US and Israeli military.
Speaking following the launch at the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska, Missile Defence Agency director Vice-Admiral Jon Hill said: “These successful tests mark a major milestone in the development of the Arrow Weapon System.
“This unique success in Alaska provides confidence in future Israeli capabilities to defeat the developing threats in the region.
“We are committed to assisting the government of Israel in upgrading its national missile defence capability to defend the State of Israel from emerging threats.”
Iran news: Israel and the US have joined forces to combat the threat from Iran (Image: REUTERS )
The drills will take place in the same waters in which the US has accused Iran of attacking and seizing international vessels.
Tension has been mounting in the Middle East as Tehran and the US continue to engage in a series of skirmishes over US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw his support from the Iran nuclear deal.
The US leader left the world powers’ 2015 nuclear deal last year, arguing he wanted a wider accord that not only limited Iran’s nuclear activity but also curbed its ballistic missile programme and reined in its support for proxies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.
Iran news: The US and Israel launched their own Arrow 3 missile (Image: GETTY )
Iran news: The joint test was hailed as a “major milestone” (Image: GETTY )
The agreement, originally brokered by former US President Barak Obama, was aimed at monitoring and controlling Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Earlier this month President Trump announced a new swathe of sanctions against Tehran after the Iranian Government confirmed they would exceed the limits of enriched uranium they are permitted to hold under the deal.
Iran has ruled out talks with Washington over its military capabilities, particularly the missile programme which it argues is only used in defence and deterrent purposes.
US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said he had offered to travel to Tehran for emergency talks with the regime but later claimed he had been rejected.
Iran news: Tensions have been growing between Iran and the US since Trump axed the nuclear deal (Image: EXPRESS)
Secretary Pompeo wrote on Twitter: “I recently offered to travel to Tehran and speak directly to the Iranian people. The regime hasn’t accepted my offer.
“We aren’t afraid of @JZarif coming to America where he enjoys the right to speak freely. Are the facts of the @khamenei_ir regime so bad he cannot let me do the same thing in Tehran? What if his people heard the truth, unfiltered, unabridged?”
The Islamic Republic has denied its missiles are capable of being tipped with nuclear warheads and insist its nuclear programme is peaceful.
On Saturday, Iran said missile tests were part of its defensive needs but were not directed against any country, without confirming last Wednesday’s reported test.
Iran warns it will continue to test missiles (Image: REUTERS )
Meanwhile, US citizens have said Iran poses a “threat to US safety” according to a fresh Fox News poll.
Fifty-three percent supported military action to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, while 57 percent support military action to curtail the expansion of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program (a record-high).
The poll also found voters were dissatisfied with the way Mr Trump has handled the spiralling relations with both North Korea and Iran.
His approval ratings on Iran (39 percent approve-46 disapprove) and North Korea (39-49) fell by 7 and 10 points respectively.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Wednesday in comments directed at Pompeo, “You don’t need to come to Iran,” according to The Associated Press.
Speaking from a Cabinet meeting, Zarif said that Pompeo should rather allow Iranian reporters to obtain visas to go to the U.S. and interview him, saying that Pompeo rejected their attempts to get visas.
His statements follow a recent tweet by Pompeo in which the secretary of State offered to visit Tehran and address the Iranian people.
“We aren’t afraid of [Zarif] coming to America where he enjoys the right to speak freely,” Pompeo tweeted.
“Are the facts of the [Khamenei] regime so bad he cannot let me do the same thing in Tehran?” he said, referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “What if his people heard the truth, unfiltered, unabridged.”
An establishment Republican, Dan Coats clashed with President Trump over Russia and other issues as his director of intelligence.CreditCreditEric Thayer for The New York Times
“I am pleased to announce that highly respected Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas will be nominated by me to be the Director of National Intelligence,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “A former U.S. Attorney, John will lead and inspire greatness for the Country he loves. Dan Coats, the current Director, will be leaving office on August 15th. I would like to thank Dan for his great service to our Country. The Acting Director will be named shortly.”
Mr. Ratcliffe has been a staunch defender of Mr. Trump. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, he sharply questioned Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, at last week’s hearing.
A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.
Mr. Coats, who helped devise President George W. Bush’s compassionate conservative agenda, had been an important link between the Trump administration and the Republican establishment. With Mr. Coats gone, those ties, at least on national security matters, are likely to weaken.
But Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party has only strengthened, and he has long since demonstrated that members of the party’s establishment need his support far more than he needs theirs.
Mr. Trump’s frustration with Mr. Coats was reignited in recent months, during spring weekends spent at his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to people who spoke with him at the time.
His pending departure has been whispered about in Washington for weeks, and Axios first reported on Sunday that Mr. Ratcliffe was the favorite to replace him. The New York Times then reported that Mr. Coats’s resignation was imminent.
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, favored Mr. Ratcliffe as a replacement for Mr. Coats, as did several of Mr. Trump’s more conservative allies, according to administration officials. However, others in Mr. Trump’s group of advisers were skeptical that Mr. Ratcliffe was the right choice. Mr. Ratcliffe’s name has periodically been floated for attorney general, a job he is said to prefer over the intelligence director post, but one unlikely to be available anytime soon.
In picking Mr. Ratcliffe, the president tapped a lawmaker who, unlike Mr. Coats, has come to his defense against the investigation into Russia’s efforts to aid Mr. Trump’s campaign in 2016.
Mr. Ratcliffe met privately with Mr. Trump at the White House on July 19, according to administration officials, to discuss whether he would take the job. Less than a week later, Mr. Ratcliffe accused Mr. Mueller of not following Justice Department guidelines when the special counsel said he could not exonerate the president on obstruction of justice. If a special counsel cannot bring charges, he should not presume to say a target was not cleared, Mr. Ratcliffe said.
“So Americans need to know this as they listen to the Democrats and socialists on the other side of the aisle as they do dramatic readings from this report that Volume II of this report was not authorized under the law to be written,” Mr. Ratcliffe said of the portion of Mr. Mueller’s report that described how the president sought to impede the investigation.
“It was written to a legal standard that does not exist at the Justice Department, and it was written in violation of every D.O.J. principle about extra-prosecutorial commentary,” Mr. Ratcliffe added. “I agree with the chairman this morning when he said Donald Trump is not above the law. He’s not. But he damn sure shouldn’t be below the law, which is where Volume II of this report puts him.”
Critics disagreed with Mr. Ratcliffe’s conclusion, noting that department guidelines call for a special counsel to provide a report “explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” at the end of an investigation.
Before the Finland meeting, Mr. Coats had become increasingly vocal in defending the intelligence agencies and their assessment that the Kremlin has been pursuing a campaign of cyberattacks aimed at undermining American democracy. Though Mr. Coats has long held those views, he made a deliberate decision to emphasize the intelligence agencies’ findings before the summit, in what some saw as a challenge to the White House.
At a security conference in Aspen, Colo., soon after, Mr. Coats expressed surprise about reports that Mr. Trump could invite Mr. Putin to the White House. “That is going to be special,” he said in a notably unguarded moment.
Political aides to Mr. Trump seized upon the performance to suggest in private discussions that the intelligence chief was disloyal.
After the Aspen appearance, Mr. Coats adopted a lower profile, avoiding any comments that contradicted the president. But Mr. Coats has also tried to protect national security officers from Mr. Trump’s criticism.
In an indignant Twitter post, Mr. Trump wrote, “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”
The report, and Mr. Coats’s testimony before the Senate, said North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear stockpile, Iran was not immediately taking steps to build a nuclear weapon and the Islamic State was still capable of stoking violence in Syria — all facts at odds with Mr. Trump’s worldview.
In a speech to intelligence officers in January, Mr. Coats said it was their duty to seek the truth about the world. “And when we find that truth, to speak the truth,” he added.
With the departures from the administration at the end of 2018 of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Coats was one of the last establishment senior national security figures in the Trump administration.
But in recent months, Mr. Coats discovered that even as he tried to stick to factual assessments of national security threats, it was difficult to align himself with the president.
There was no greater point of friction between the men than Russia. Time after time, the White House has sought to weaken Mr. Coats’s language regarding the Kremlin.
Mr. Coats argued for a view of Russia as an adversary and pushed for closer cooperation and stronger ties with traditional American allies in Europe, nations that have been the focus of Mr. Trump’s ire as he sought closer relations with Moscow and wavered onwhether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
A secret report by Mr. Coats about Russian interference in the 2018 midterm electionscontained a harsh assessment about Russia’s efforts to influence the American public by stoking conspiracy theories, inflame positions and polarizing the American population. But the public statement released by Mr. Coats’s office and edited by the White House contained little of the tough language.
Intelligence officials had expected a fall departure for Mr. Coats, perhaps soon after Labor Day. He was scheduled to speak at an annual intelligence conference in September, and some American officials said they expected him to depart soon after that. But Mr. Coats ultimately did not wait.
Mr. Ratcliffe, who served as mayor of Heath, Tex., and as a United States attorney, boasts on his website that he once “arrested 300 illegal aliens in a single day.” He was elected to the House in 2014, ousting Representative Ralph Hall, who at 91 was the oldest member of the House in history, in a Republican primary with the support of Tea Party activists.
Mr. Ratcliffe quickly established a reputation as a stalwart conservative. He has a 96 percent lifetime rating by the American Conservative Union and earned a 100 percent in the most recent ranking by Heritage Action for America.
We have a very serious problem in the U.S. Do we trust our national intelligence services or don’t we? The president repeatedly has favored Vladimir Putin (a known liar) over our national intelligence services. He has openly questioned the performance of our national intelligence services. He has openly questioned the performance of our national intelligence services during the run-up to the Iraq War. In fact, he has used this as the basis for his case against our national intelligence services. Is he correct? Did our intelligence services completely botch intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq War or was it the fact that the George W. Bush administration was given mostly good intelligence but misused it in its desire to go to war.
Consider the following…
First. In an August 2002 speech, Vice President Dick Cheney asserted, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” But earlier this year, Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, had told Congress that Iraq possessed only “residual” amounts of WMDs.
Second. In September 2002, Cheney insisted there was “very clear evidence” Saddam was developing nuclear weapons: Iraq’s acquisition of aluminum tubes that were to be used to enrich uranium for bombs. But Cheney and the Bush White House did not tell the public that there was a heated debate within the intelligence community about this supposed evidence. The top scientific experts in the government had concluded these tubes were not suitable for a nuclear weapons program. But one CIA analyst-who was not a scientific expert-contended the tubes were smoking-gun proof that Saddam was working to produce nuclear weapons. The Bush- Cheney White House embraced this faulty piece of evidence and ignored the more informed analysis. Bush and Cheney were cherry-picking-choosing bad intelligence over good-and not paying attention to better information that cut the other way.
There are many more examples. We will run out of room.
Finally, consider the following article in the March/April edition of the magazine “Foreign Affairs” by Paul R. Pillar titled “Policy and the War in Iraq.” I will only present the summary. “Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the communities expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make it’s public case.
The conclusion is that it was not faulty intelligence from our intelligence services that got us into the Iraq War. We can trust our national intelligence services. But, we have to worry about our politicians misusing the intelligence they are given. Robert Peterson
Can we trust our national intelligence services? - The Fergus Falls Daily Journal