How the US & Russia Colluded in Covering up a Submarine Incident….
06 July 2019
It took President Vladimir Putin four days and charges of a cover-up to disclose for the first time on Thursday, July 4, that a top-secret Russian military submarine was hit by a fatal fire on Monday.
The vessel was also confirmed to have been nuclear-powered only when Putin asked Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to assure him that its nuclear reactor had been contained.
Shoigu replied that the reactor was completely isolated and unmanned and remained in complete working order.
The fire had erupted in the submarine’s battery compartment, the minister said.
However, the whys and the wherefores of the fatal fire aboard the AS-12 deep-diving submarine may never be complete revealed.
It was only a day later, on Tuesday, July 2, that the Russian military reported that 14 crew members had died in a fire on a “deep-sea military vessel.”
The Russian military accounts thereafter shifted from hour to hour, prompting an outcry and suspicion that the authorities were hiding the truth.
At one point, all the crew were said to have perished instantly; later, a note was found by a crew member who survived long to enough to write that 23 sailors were trapped in the burning sub.
Another Russian report said the 14 sailors had died of smoke inhalation from the fire which occurred in Russian waters.
It was never clear if the sub was submerged at the time of the fire or even if there were survivors.
The accounts from Moscow held back confirming that the ship was powered by a nuclear reactor, raising fears of radiation leaks, although on Tuesday night, the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority reported measuring no unusual radiation levels.
Asked on Wednesday if the vessel had a nuclear reactor on board, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov [pictured above] referred the question to the defence ministry.
He told reporters in a conference call that details of the submarine were classified.
The AS-12’s mission was so highly classified that it was referred to by officials only by the nickname of “Losharik” ever since its launch in 2003 as one of the most secret submarines in the Russian fleet.
Reliable sources found the sobriquet’s double connotation.
In the 70's, Russian TV ran an animation series built around a horse called Losharik made of small balls.
The stricken submarine was made of interlinked titanium balls. [see pic below] In addition, the most hush-hush department of the Russian Defence Ministry is also referred to by the few insiders in the know as “Losharik.”
It appears to have been based at Severomorsk, the same Arctic port on the Murmanks Fjord, which opens to the Barents Sea, where the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in 2000, killing 116 sailors leaving a searing scar on the Russian Navy.
Then too Putin at the outset of his rule was held to account.
Otherwise, the conflicting versions of the AS-12 disaster spilling out left unanswered questions:
Where was the secret sub at the time of the fire? And what caused it?
One source surmised that the vessel was struck by an external object and its self-destruct mechanism reacted - either automatically or on a remote order from an escorting vessel.
One premise is that the vessel was engaged in testing a secret new underwater weapon, which misfired; another, that the submarine, while on covert surveillance of a secret American underwater object, came too close to its target and caught fire from an explosion or a hostile attack.
The Russian authorities were unable to stem the speculation by old Navy hands rife in the social media:
One such expert identified the stricken sub as an AS-12; another as an AS-31 of a similar design.
The AS-12 is known to be a deep-diving, special missions ship operated by the Russian Navy’sMain Directorate Deep Sea Research.
With a crew of up to 25, the AS-12 can dive as deep as 6,100 metres, below the level of normal Russian attack or ballistic-missiles submarines.
It is designed to be carried, or ferried, under the belly of a larger sub and so screened on its classified missions from sonar and other surveillance measures.
At least one Russian naval expert said the ship which most often ferries the AS-12 is the BS-136 Orenburg, a modified Delta III ballistic-missile submarine.
Some US intelligence sources worry that the Russians have developed new ways to clandestinely tap - or even cut - fiber-optic cables carrying transatlantic Internet traffic undersea.
There are also concerns that Moscow is using new devices against the undersea acoustic array networks laid down by the US and NATO years ago to track submarine traffic, or even classified naval cables.
Military sources also link the incident to the start on that same fateful Monday of NATO’s annualDynamic Mongoose exercise in the Norwegian Sea west of Andaya which lasts until July 14.
Taking part are six frigates, 10 aircraft and several submarines from the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, Poland, Spain and Turkey plus the Norwegian host.
Among them are NATO’s Standing Maritime Group One, which sailed north after completing its annual Baltic Operations exercise.
It consists of the US flagship guided-missile USS Gravely destroyer and two frigates, the British HMS Westminster [pictured below] and the Turkish TCG Gokova.
Our sources suggest that the Russian submarine may have been tracking the Dynamic Mongoose exercise when it drew too close to the one of the NATO vessels and then, sensing a strange, unreported presence in dangerous proximity, the ship’s captain decided or was orderedto take counteraction.
This would have accounted for the fire and rumours in Washington of a hostile exchange between an American and a Russian submarine.
The same mystery surrounds the urgent consultations conducted without explanation in Washington and Moscow by top American and Russian leaders on that same Tuesday.
Why were Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recalled suddenly to the White House for an emergency meeting with security and military chiefs to discuss anunspecified occurrence?
And why did President Putin, at the same moment, cancel a planned visit to the provincial city of Tver to stay in the Kremlin?
He was later shown on local TV directing Defence Minister Shoigu to fly to Severomorsk to oversee what the Kremlin defined as “the Russian military response.” Response to what? No one is saying.
The mystery is further deepened by a postscript offered on Thursday, July 4, by Norwegian fishermen who were trawling illegally late Monday in a small boat off the coast of the Kola Peninsula.
One claimed that at half past nine in the evening, he was amazed to see a submarine suddenly and completely surfacing with people running around apparently in a panic.
Hiding in a nearby bay, they saw a Russian navy vessel and two tugs escorting the submarine away from the area.
Significantly, they saw no sign of smoke, indicating either that the story of the fire was false or that the submarine the Norwegian fishermen saw was not the Losharik.
A Russian Navy source later said that what the fishermen saw as most likely the Podmoskovie, the mother vessel of the Losharik.
Developing hourly……
High alert in US, British Navies after UK marines seize Iranian oil tanker..
July 6, 2019
The high alert was declared even before Mohsen Rezai’s [pictured below] threat on Friday, July 5, to seize a British vessel unless the Iranian oil tanker impounded by UK Marines on its way to Syria was released at once.
The Panama-flagged Grace 1 was carrying Iranian crude oil for the Banyas refinery in Syria on Thursday, when troops of the Royal Marines boarded and impounded the vessel in keeping with European Union sanctions in force against Syria since 2011.
The vessel was towed to port in Gibraltar. The island’s British and Spanish authorities admitted they had acted on US intelligence and meeting a special request from Washington.
Some of the British marines were dropped onto the ship’s deck by rope from a helicopter; a second group clambered aboard from speedboats.
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman called the action a “form of piracy.” The British ambassador was summoned to the office in protest.
Iranian and European diplomats had just spent a week on tough talks on compensation for US sanctions, especially on its oil exports.
They ended in impasse.
French President Emmanuel Macron had offered to travel to Tehran, provided the Iranians backtracked on their decision to exceed the 2015 nuclear limits on uranium enrichment as of Sunday, July 7.
After that let-down, the seizure of the oil tanker was a major blow for Iran and set back the deterrent advantage gained by a string of Revolutionary Guards sabotage attacks on Gulf oil targets and the US in Iraq since May 12.
Tehran will not allow this extreme affront to go unanswered.
Military sources note that the capture of the tanker at Gibraltar blocked the Mediterranean route for dodging US sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
US intelligence tracked the Grace 1 [pictured below] from its port of origin in Iran in mid-June and watched the vessel circumnavigating Africa instead of sailing through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and Mediterranean up to its Syrian destination.
Now that the Gibraltar gate to the Mediterranean is slammed shut, Iran can only fall back on the Chinese outlet.
For now, the Trump administration is turning a blind eye to the oil tankers moving Iranian oil freights to terminals in China.
Mohsen Rezai, a former IRGC commander, is described by our sources as enjoying the rare advantage of high prestige in regime circles and wide popularity on the Iranian street.
His voice is relatively moderate and measured compared with his hardline colleagues.
The threat to seize a British oil tanker or other vessel coming from him should be taken seriously.
Netanyahu Pitches Regional Go-It-Alone Initiative against Iran without Big Powers…..
06 July 2019
Washington’s declining to state unequivocally that Iran was responsible for last month’s string of attacks on oil and US-related targets in the region – including even the US embassy in Iraq – is perceived in Jerusalem as signifying the Trump administration decision to wash its hands of military engagement with the Islamic Republic of Iran at this time.
Iran’s victims, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, too, hide behind America’s broad back rather than name the party which blew up their tankers and pipelines.
Israel looks like offering to step into this void.
That is one obvious interpretation of two suggestive comments made by the Director of the Mossad intelligence agency Yossie Cohen, [pictured above] on Monday, July 1 at a lecture in Tel Aviv.
Binyamin Netanyahu, both prime minister and defence minister, appeared to be relaying a proposal through the normally laconic Mossad chief, to lead a group of regional nations in a campaign for putting an end to Iranian aggression – even if this entailed challenging Iran and its allies to war, including the Lebanese Hizballah.
The spymaster declared his absolute certainty that Iran was behind the attacks on the Gulf oil tankers and facilities, which, he said, were ordered by the regime and executed by the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The first intelligence chief to point a blunt finger at Iran for those sabotage attacks, Cohen then made this remark: “A rare opportunity is opening up at this moment for achieving a regional understanding” that may herald the chance of “a comprehensive peace” between Israel and the Arab world.
The Mossad Director explained: “Shared interests and the struggle against shared enemies, have together opened the window for a one-time opportunity.”
His comments had teeth.
A few hours earlier, Israel conducted one of its most comprehensive military strikes ever on Syrian soil. [pictured above]
Missiles flying from IDF fighter jets and warships blew up a string of Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah army bases, singling out facilities where the IRGC had laid in a stock of ballistic missiles ready for launching against Israel when a green light came from Tehran.
The facilities destroyed included command posts and bases in and south of the Damascus region, the Homs district and, to the west, the Qalamoun mountains athwart the Syrian-Lebanese border.
It was from those mountain bases that Iran and its proxy were planning to shoot rockets into Israel.
This terrain offers a better launching pad for missile war than Hizballah’s bases in South Lebanon.
Disabling this war machine is an unending uphill task, for the IRGC quickly rebuilds and replenishes the destroyed bases with fresh supplies of advanced weaponry, tapping into a bottomless Iranian pocket, regardless of US sanctions, when it comes to its war mission against Israel.
Cohen’s disclosures were embedded in the following facts:
1. Hard evidence in the Mossad’s hands of Iran’s culpability in the sabotage attacks on Gulf oil, which is more solid than the video of limpet bombs attached to the hull of a targeted tanker, which Tehran quickly disowned.
2. The crisis over Iran’s reactivation of its uranium enrichment program, in excess of the 2015 nuclear pact’s limits, distracts attention from another breach. Iran is lying when it claims a halt on the production of advanced new centrifuges for speeding enrichment to weapons grade levels.
3. Iran is pressing ahead with its efforts to produce a nuclear warhead which can be fitted onto the ballistic missiles stockpiled for attacks on the US and Israel.
4. Tehran will not suspend aggressive operations so long as the Trump
administration refuses to ease sanctions. They will only escalate.
The Mossad director’s reference to a possible line-up of regional nations against “shared enemies,” was in fact an invitation from Netanyahu to come aboard a line-up standing up militarily to Tehran by entering into treaties that also incorporate peace and mutual defence cooperation commitments among its members and with Israel.
New Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz [pictured above] who visited Abu Dhabi this week as the first top Israel diplomat to visit an important Gulf capital pitched the same message.
Cohen added that the Mossad was ready to undertake the task of putting together this regional line-up, making it the first important political mission entrusted to the Mossad.
Reliable sources: That the Israeli prime minister was willing for the first time in a decade to take the lead of a regional Israeli-Arab military initiative against Tehran – even at the risk of a straight showdown with Iran and Hizballah missiles - means that no one else is ready to pull this chestnut out of the Middle East fire.
His high hopes of the US and Russia coming together on a solution came to naught when last week’s ground-breaking meeting of US, Russia and Israeli national security advisers in Jerusalem failed to find common ground on Syria or Iran.
At a time that neither Washington or Moscow show any signs of coming to grips with the region’s ills and disorders – so long as they don’t get in the way of their own international plans – the region staggers along without direction on an ever more combustible course.
Yossie Cohen pointed to the hazards inherent in this course and found support from one of his predecessors as Mossad chief.
Tamir Pardo, [pictured above] another speaker at the Tel Aviv event, had this to say:
“In recent years, no superpower dominates the Middle East. No one is around to damp down the flames. We now have China and Russia. But we see no clear Middle East foreign policy coming from the US. We do see a policy for Iran but not for the rest of the Middle East. Today, the name of the game is economy. China is capable of lowering the flames but is not doing this.”
Netanyahu has put in a bid for this role, but the Gulf governments are unlikely to take him up on it.
And he too may simply be hoping to prod the Trump administration into action before Israeli fingers are singed.
Trump Acts to Salvage Bahrain, Netanyahu to Rescue the Palestinian Authority…..
06 July 2019
The Trump administration is working overtime to somehow salvage the economic prosperity conference staged by the president’s adviser Jared Kushner at Manama, [pictured below] Bahrain last week, after it failed to advance by an iota the Trump peace plans for Israel and the Palestinians.
Although the US program for boosting the economies of the Palestinians and supportive Arab nations was greeted with extreme scepticism, it is still going forward.
We can report from Washington, that five to seven international working teams for the application of the elements of the Kushner program are being formed of Arab and international business entities.
Each is to be assigned a specific subject, which are still to be determined.
The Palestinians remain adamantly opposed to any part of the Trump Middle East peace plan and have opted out of all related events.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has not given up trying to bring them around.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is also engaged in some quiet salvage work with the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Last year, he cut off money transfers to the PA until such time as Ramallah stopped paying stipends to convicted Palestinian terrorists and their families.
Abbas stuck to his guns and preferred to let the Palestinian economy go bust rather than giving in to the Israeli ultimatum.
This week, Netanyahu quietly admitted his tactic had failed.
To save the Palestinian Authority from total collapse without losing face, the prime minister ordered the fuel tax on supplies to the Palestinian Authority to be dropped.
This step releases around $50-55 million per month.
Under previous arrangements these taxes were ultimately refunded to the Palestinian Authority through the clearance revenue transfer, which Netanyahu had stopped.
Since the cut-off of Israel’s regular transfers, the PA has been borrowing $50 million from banks every month to partially cover salaries.
It has now reached its debt limit. Qatar also stepped in this month with $25 million out of its $50 million grant.
The PA received another $25 million from the $250 million loan approved by Qatar. It is now able to cover 60% of its payroll in both the West Bank and Gaza.
The UAE Folds Its Military Tents in Yemen, Sudan and Syria. Libya is Next…..
06 July 2019
The United Arab Emirates’ military and intelligence intervention in Arab conflicts added lustre to the image of its promoter, young Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (aka MbZ), [pictured below] and lent him high prestige in Washington, Moscow and Beijing.
Just a month ago, he was ranked in Washington as “the most powerful Arab ruler.”
During his nine years on the UAE throne, MbZ devoted considerable energy and his great fortune to projects for enhancing Abu Dhabi’s influence in the Arab world.
He jumped into the “Arab Spring” upheavals a decade ago, first by sending special forces to Libya to help topple Muammar Qaddafi, then by furnishing Syrian rebel groups with arms for fighting Bashar Assad; backing the Egyptian officers coup to oust Muslim Brotherhood rule two years later, intervening in the Sudan civil war and, in 2015, sending UAE forces to join the Saudi army fighting the Iran-backed insurgent Houthis in Yemen.
The emir even extended clandestine assistance to factions of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in order to undermine their leaders.
MbZ laid out a colossal fortune for acquiring a chain of strategic ports and military bases at key points on the Suez Canal and the Red Sea as well as the Horn of Africa and East Africa.
Five major assets were at his disposal for achieving his goal: Abu Dhabi’s fabulous wealth; a small although modern and effective army; a contingent of special forces; an air force and intelligence agencies.
For some time, however, the UAE ruler had been giving careful thought to the question of whether the emirates’ gains on these projects matched up to his vast investment.
In recent weeks he decided that they did not. None had fortified the Emiratis for facing up to their foremost enemy, Iran.
He also concluded, like Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu (see separate article above on this), that it is no use relying on the US, France and Britain. Even with the use of his network of bases, none of them can be counted on to shield Abu Dhabi against Iran’s aggression.
Acting on these conclusions, MbZ is pulling in his horns: he is suspending outside investments and gathering in the forces he has scattered around the Arab world.
They are now home preparing for a showdown with Iran, which he believes is impending.
Some of those investments and military footholds are being retained because they may prove useful in a future conflict - for example, the UAE’s military control of southern Yemen’s coastline, which commands the Gulf of Aden and Socotra Island.
At the same time, he is pulling UAE armoured and artillery forces out of the Yemen conflict, not least because he and Riyadh are not of one mind on the conduct of the war.
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment