Sunday, 20 April 2025

An Unbalanced Ledger: The Real Cost of Ukraine Conflict
The Thought Collective - Special Report 

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 represents more than a brutal military confrontation; it marks a profound geopolitical rupture, unleashing immense human suffering and triggering economic shockwaves felt across the globe. Beyond the immediate tragedy, the conflict has acted as a powerful, if grim, catalyst for the global arms industry. Historically, war fuels demand for weaponry, enriching manufacturers and reshaping international trade dynamics. This article delves into the multifaceted impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the international arms sector, examining shifts in manufacturing, trade patterns, and the financial performance of defense corporations across domains from traditional land armaments to emerging drone technologies. It scrutinizes the complex web of arms flows to both Ukraine and Russia, distinguishing between government aid and commercial sales, and identifying key national and corporate players. A central focus is the economic equation for major supplier nations, particularly the United States, weighing the financial windfalls for defense contractors against broader fiscal costs and benefits. This is sharply contrasted with the devastating economic price borne by the direct belligerents, Ukraine and Russia, encompassing staggering military expenditures, infrastructure destruction, crippling sanctions, and profound humanitarian costs. Through a cost-benefit lens, the analysis weighs the profits accruing to a select industry against the widespread economic hardship generated by the conflict. Finally, drawing on expert analyses, the article explores the potential long-term geopolitical, economic, and security implications stemming from the war and the associated proliferation of arms, assessing the enduring impact on regional and global stability. This investigation seeks to illuminate the intricate, often discomfiting interplay between modern warfare, the global arms trade, and the international economy, identifying the winners and losers in a conflict actively reshaping the 21st-century landscape.

Photo by Alex Fedorenko

Thursday, 10 April 2025

Global Shadows: Foreign Entanglement in the Ukraine Conflict

The Thought Collective - Special Report

What began in February 2022 as a conflict largely perceived through the lens of a localized, bilateral dispute between Russia and Ukraine has inexorably drawn in a complex web of international actors. More than two years on, the war's character has been fundamentally reshaped, its ripples extending far beyond Eastern Europe to touch nearly every corner of the globe. Mounting evidence and official reports now paint a picture not just of external support, but of direct foreign military involvement on both sides of the front lines, alongside unprecedented levels of financial and material aid. The conflict is no longer merely Ukraine's struggle; it is a globalized confrontation with profound and far-reaching consequences.

This article delves into the multifaceted nature of this foreign entanglement. It examines the substantiated, active participation of North Korean military personnel fighting alongside Russian forces and analyzes the more ambiguous, though officially claimed, presence of Chinese nationals in Russian ranks. Conversely, it catalogs the extensive, coordinated efforts by a broad coalition of nations, led prominently by the United States and European powers, to arm, fund, and train Ukrainian forces. Furthermore, this analysis explores how this deepening international involvement signifies the conflict's metamorphosis into a global issue, dissecting the significant and varied economic shocks felt across Russia, Ukraine, Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Russian Soldier: Stock Photo
Russian Soldier: Stock Photo

Saturday, 29 March 2025

How Billionaires Are Shaping the Most Expensive Court Race in U.S. History
By Megan O’Matz, ProPublica 

Ten years ago, when Wisconsin lawmakers approved a bill to allow unlimited spending in state elections, only one Republican voted no.

“I just thought big money was an evil, a curse on our politics,” former state Sen. Robert Cowles said recently of his 2015 decision to buck his party.

As Wisconsin voters head to the polls next week to choose a new state Supreme Court justice, Cowles stands by his assessment. Voters have been hit with a barrage of attack ads from special interest groups, and record-setting sums of money have been spent to sway residents. What’s more, Cowles said, there’s been little discussion of major issues. The candidates debated only once.

Pic: Kalhh, Pixabay

Friday, 28 March 2025

Tuesday, 25 July 2023

Decoding the Challenges Hampering the Growth of Indian Manufacturing

By Mudit Jain, edited by Naveed Ahsan, Fair Observer

Between April 2022 and March 2023, India's trade deficit in manufacturing exceeded $250 billion. This serves as a stark reminder of the challenges and lack of competitiveness of Indian manufacturing. The roots of this decline began in the 1990s and a lack of comprehensive reforms has limited the sector's ability to compete effectively on a global scale.

Indian Welder
Image by Swastik Arora from Pixabay

Tuesday, 18 July 2023

The Two Decades That Created World’s First Middle Class

By Sam Pizzigati, Editor, Inequality.org

If we take on our rich, we can recreate that success.

Urban Housing - Picture from Pixabay

Amazing things can happen when societies realize they don’t need an awesomely affluent.

What sort of amazing things? Take what happened in the United States between 1940 and 1960, as economists William Collins and Gregory Niemesh do in a just-published research paper on America’s mid-century home ownership boom.

Over a mere 20-year span, the United States essentially birthed a “new middle class.” The share of U.S. households owning their own homes, Collins and Niemesh note, jumped an “unprecedented” 20 percentage points. By 1960, most American families resided in housing they owned “for the first time since at least 1870” — for the first time, in effect, since before the Industrial Revolution.

Monday, 3 July 2023

The Chronicles of Lili - A Must-Read Children's Adventure Book

 A Magical Journey Around the World

The Chronicles of Lili - Vol 1
The Chronicles of Lili - Volume 1

Welcome to a world of imagination, excitement, and thrilling adventures! We are thrilled to present to you "The Chronicles of Lili - Vol 1," a delightful children's book that will take young readers on a journey they will never forget. Join Lili, Bruno, Inge, and Mr. Squeak as they embark on captivating escapades around the globe. With its vivid illustrations, engaging stories, and heartwarming characters, this book is sure to captivate the minds and hearts of children aged 6-12.

Friday, 27 May 2022

The Collective Psychological Effect of Mass Shootings

By Arash Javanbakht, Wayne State University
The deadly shooting of at least 19 children and two adults in Texas on May 24, 2022, is the latest in an ever-growing list of national tragedies, leaving families and friends of the victims gripped with grief, anguish and despair.

Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images News via Getty Images
The latest mass shooting, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has plunged the country into yet another cycle of collective trauma. Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images News via Getty Images
In addition to those who experience direct loss, such events also take a toll on others, including those who witnessed the shooting, first responders, people who were nearby and those who hear about it – yet again – through the media.

I am a trauma and anxiety researcher and clinician, and I know that the effects of such violence reach millions. While the immediate survivors are most affected, the rest of society suffers, too.

Saturday, 11 January 2020

Reason Why West Hates Iran So Much
By Stuart Littlewood,  Columnist, American Herald Tribune

Mossadeq’s great sin: he “broke the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests”. US and Britain are still smarting.



Nobody saw that coming. Trump ordering Soleimani’s execution, I mean.

Nobody thought even he was quite so stupid.

It follows his last year’s caper when the "cocked and loaded" drama-queen ordered military strikes against Iran's radar and missile batteries in retaliation for their shootdown of a US spy drone. He changed his mind with only minutes to spare on account of a reminder that such lunacy might actually cost human lives.

Plus the fact that the drone was eight miles from the coast, well inside the 12 nautical miles considered to be Iran’s territorial waters under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and it clearly represented a military threat and provocation. So he had no lawful claim of self-defense that would justify a military attack.  The United Nations Charter only allows the use of military force in self-defense after an armed attack or with Security Council approval. So his proposed action would have been illegal as well as unwise, but none of that seemed to enter into his calculations then, or now.

Before that we had Trump’s executive order in August 2018 reimposing a wide range of sanctions against Iran after pulling the US out of the seven-party nuclear deal for no good reason, a spiteful move that annoyed the EU and caused  all sorts of problems for other nations. And he was going to impose extra sanctions aimed mainly at Iran’s oil industry and foreign financial institutions.

“If the ayatollahs want to get out from under the squeeze,” warned US national security adviser John Bolton, “they should come and sit down. The pressure will not relent while the negotiations go on.” To which Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani responded: “If you stab someone with a knife and then you say you want talks, then the first thing you have to do is remove the knife.”

United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy described the sanctions as "unjust and harmful.... The reimposition of sanctions against Iran after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, which had been unanimously adopted by the Security Council with the support of the US itself, lays bare the illegitimacy of this action."

The other countries party to the nuclear deal - Russia, China, Germany, France, the UK and the EU – vowed to stick with it and continue trading with Iran, some EU foreign ministers saying Iran was abiding by the agreement and delivering on its goal when Trump withdrew and they deeply regretted the new sanctions. Trump in turn called Iran “a murderous dictatorship that has continued to spread bloodshed, violence and chaos.”  The irony of such a remark was, of course, completely lost on him.

I read today that the EU “will spare no efforts” to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive though I doubt if Boris Johnson, passionate Zionist that he is, will be among them.

When it comes to aggression and dishonesty the US has form, and lots of it. Who can forget during the Iran-Iraq war the cruiser USS Vincennes, well inside Iran’s territorial waters, blowing Iran Air Flight 655 to smithereens and killing all 290 passengers and crew on board? The excuse, which didn’t bear examination afterwards, was that they mistook the Airbus A300 for an Iranian F-14 Tomcat manoeuvring to attack.

George H. W. Bush commented on a separate occasion: "I will never apologize for the United States – I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy." Trump seems to have caught the same disease. And, from the outside, the White House itself seems home to the the sort of “murderous dictatorship” he describes.

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The Need to Continually Demonize Iran


When I say the West’s hatred of Iran, I mean primarily the US-UK-Israel Axis.  Ben Wallace, UK Defence Secretary filling in for Boris Johnson who had absented himself, has told Parliament: “In recent times, Iran has felt its intentions are best served through… the use of subversion as a foreign policy tool. It has also shown a total disregard for human rights.” This is amusing coming from the British government and especially a Conservative one which adores Israel, the world’s foremost disregarder of human rights and international law.

Britain and America would like everyone to believe that hostilities with Iran began with the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But you have to go back to the early 1950s for the root cause in America’s case, while Iranians have had to endure a whole century of British exploitation and bad behaviour. And the Axis want to keep this important slice of history from becoming part of public discourse. Here’s why.

In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy obtained from the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar a 60-year oil concession to three-quarters of the country. The Persian government would receive 16% of the oil company's annual profits, a rotten deal as the Persians would soon realise.

D’Arcy, with financial support from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil, formed a company and sent an exploration team. Drilling failed to find oil in commercial quantities and by 1908 D'Arcy was almost bankrupt and on the point of giving up when they finally struck it big.  The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was up and running and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan.

Just before the outbreak of World War 1 Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, wished to convert the British fleet from coal. To secure a reliable oil source the British Government took a major shareholding in Anglo-Persian.

In the 1920s and 1930s the company profited hugely from paying the Persians a miserly 16% and refusing to renegotiate terms. An angry Persia eventually cancelled the D'Arcy agreement and the matter ended up at the Court of International Justice in The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement but still didn’t amount to a square deal for the Persians.

In 1935 Persia became known internationally by its other name, Iran, and Anglo-Persian changed to Anglo-Iranian Oil. By 1950 Abadan was the biggest oil refinery in the world and the British government, with its 51% holding, had affectively colonised part of southern Iran.

Iran's tiny share of the profits had long soured relations and so did the company’s treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 went on strike in 1946 and the dispute was violently put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951 while Aramco was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis Anglo-Iranian declared £40 million profit after tax and handed Iran only £7 million.

Iran by now wanted economic and political independence and an end to poverty. Calls for nationalisation could not be ignored. In March 1951 the Majlis and Senate voted to nationalise Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran's oil industry since 1913 under terms frankly unfavourable to the host country. Social reformer Dr Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister by a 79 to 12 majority and promptly carried out his government's wishes, cancelling Anglo-Iranian’s oil concession and expropriating its assets.

His explanation was perfectly reasonable...

“Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries… have yielded no results this far. With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people. Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.” (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525)

For this he would be removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death.

Britain was determined to bring about regime change so orchestrated a world-wide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran’s sterling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins.... Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

America was reluctant at first to join Britain’s destructive game but Churchill (prime minister at this time) let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into Russia's arms at a time when Cold War anxiety was high. That was enough to bring America's new president, Eisenhower, on board and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down.

Chief of the CIA's Near East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt Jr, played the lead in a nasty game of provocation, mayhem and deception. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi signed two decrees, one dismissing Mossadeq and the other nominating the CIA's choice, General Fazlollah Zahedi, as prime minister. These decrees were written as dictated by the CIA.

In August 1953, when it was judged safe for him to do so, the Shah returned to take over. Mossadeq was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. He remarked: “My greatest sin is that I nationalised Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire… I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.”

His supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed. Zahedi's new government reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion's share - 40% going to Anglo-Iranian. The consortium agreed to split profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but refused to open its books to Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

The US massively funded the Shah's government, including his army and his hated secret police force, SAVAK. Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954. Mossadeq died on 5 March 1967.

The CIA-engineered coup that toppled Mossadeq, reinstated the Shah and let the American oil companies in, was the final straw for the Iranians. The British-American conspiracy backfired spectacularly 25 years later with the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9, the humiliating 444-day hostage crisis in the American embassy and a tragically botched rescue mission.

Smoldering Resentment For At Least 70 Years

And all this happened before the Iran-Iraq war when the West, especially the US, helped Iraq develop its armed forces and chemical weapons arsenal which were used against Iran.  The US, and eventually Britain, leaned strongly towards Saddam in that conflict and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King writing in 2003 summed it up…

“The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.”

And while Iranian casualties were at their highest as a result of US chemical and biological war crimes what was Mr Trump doing? He was busy acquiring the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Trump Castle, his Taj-Mahal casino, the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.... oh, and he was refitting his super-yacht Trump Princess. What does he know, understand or care about Iran and the Iranian people today?

On the British side our prime minister, Boris Johnson, was at Oxford carousing with fellow Etonians at the Bullingdon Club. What does he know or care?

The present Iranian regime, like many others, may not be entirely to the West’s liking but neither was Dr Mossadeq’s fledgeling democracy nearly 70 years ago. If Britain and America had played fair and allowed the Iranians to determine their own future instead of using economic terrorism to bring the country to its knees Iran might have been “the only democracy in the Middle East” today.

So hush! Don’t even mention the M-word: MOSSADEQ.

Stuart Littlewood worked on jet fighters in the RAF. After working on jet fighters in the RAF Stuart became an industrial marketing specialist with manufacturing companies and consultancy firms. He also "indulged himself" as a newspaper columnist. In politics he served as a Cambridgeshire county councillor and member of the Police Authority. He also held various sales and marketing management positions in manufacturing, oil and electronics. He is a senior associate with several industrial marketing consultancies. Graduate Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (MInstM). BA Hons Psychology, University of Exeter.

This article was originaly published on American Herald Tribune under CC 4

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Friday, 10 January 2020

US Military Contractor CEOs Making a Killing Out of Iran Crisis
By Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Project, Institute for Policy Studies

As long as the top executives of our privatized war economy can reap unlimited rewards, the profit motive for war in Iran — or anywhere — will persist.

Image by dayamay from Pixabay

CEOs of major U.S. military contractors stand to reap huge windfalls from the escalation of conflict with Iran. This was evident in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian military official last week. As soon as the news reached financial markets, these companies’ share prices spiked, inflating the value of their executives’ stock-based pay.

I took a look at how the CEOs at the top five Pentagon contractors were affected by this surge, using the most recent SEC information on their stock holdings.

Northrop Grumman executives saw the biggest increase in the value of their stocks after the U.S. airstrike that killed Qasem Suleimani on January 2. Shares in the B-2 bomber maker rose 5.43 percent by the end of trading the following day.

Wesley Bush, who turned Northrop Grumman’s reins over to Kathy Warden last year, held 251,947 shares of company stock in various trusts as of his final SEC Form 4 filing in May 2019. (Companies must submit these reports when top executives and directors buy and sell company stock.) Assuming Bush is still sitting on that stockpile, he saw the value grow by $4.9 million to a total of $94.5 million last Friday.

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New Northrop Grumman CEO Warden saw the 92,894 shares she’d accumulated as the firm’s COO expand in value by more than $2.7 million in just one day of post-assassination trading.

Lockheed Martin, whose Hellfire missiles were reportedly used in the attack at the Baghdad airport, saw a 3.6 percent increase in price per share on January 3. Marillyn Hewson, CEO of the world’s largest weapon maker, may be kicking herself for selling off a considerable chunk of stock last year when it was trading at around $307. Nevertheless, by the time Lockheed shares reached $413 at the closing bell, her remaining stash had increased in value by about $646,000.

What about the manufacturer of the MQ-9 Reaper that carried the Hellfire missiles? That would be General Atomics. Despite raking in $2.8 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts in 2018, the drone maker is not required to disclose executive compensation information because it is a privately held corporation.

We do know General Atomics CEO Neal Blue is worth an estimated $4.1 billion — and he’s a major investor in oil production, a sector that also stands to profit from conflict with a major oil-producing country like Iran.

Stock options not included. *Resigned 12/22/19. **Resigned 1/1/19 while staying on as chairman until 7/19. New CEO Kathy Warden accumulated 92,894 shares in her previous position as Northrop Grumman COO.
Suleimani’s killing also inflated the value of General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic’s fortune. As the weapon maker’s share price rose about 1 percentage point on January 3, the former CIA official saw her stock holdings increase by more than $1.2 million.

Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy saw a single-day increase in his stock of more than half a million dollars, as the missile and bomb manufacturer’s share price increased nearly 1.5 percent. Boeing stock remained flat on Friday. But Dennis Muilenberg, recently ousted as CEO over the 737 aircraft scandal, appears to be well-positioned to benefit from any continued upward drift of the defense sector.

As of his final Form 4 report, Muilenburg was sitting on stock worth about $47.7 million. In his yet to be finalized exit package, the disgraced former executive could also pocket huge sums of currently unvested stock grants.

Hopefully sanity will soon prevail and the terrifyingly high tensions between the Trump administration and Iran will de-escalate. But even if the military stock surge of this past Friday turns out to be a market blip, it’s a sobering reminder of who stands to gain the most from a war that could put millions of lives at risk.

Embed from Getty Images

We can put an end to dangerous war profiteering by denying federal contracts to corporations that pay their top executives excessively. In 2008, John McCain, then a Republican presidential candidate, proposed capping CEO pay at companies receiving taxpayer bailouts at no more than $400,000 (the salary of the U.S. president). That notion should be extended to companies that receive massive taxpayer-funded contracts.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, for instance, has a plan to deny federal contracts to companies that pay CEOs more than 150 times what their typical worker makes.

As long as we allow the top executives of our privatized war economy to reap unlimited rewards, the profit motive for war in Iran — or anywhere — will persist.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-edits the IPS publication Inequality.org. This artical was originally published on Inequality.org under CC 3

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Thursday, 9 January 2020

Are We Looking at Another Gulf War?
By Abbas Farasoo, Dekin University

Eliminating Qassem Soleimani significantly raises the risk of a direct confrontation between the US and Iran.

USS Wisconsin (Pic: Alan Wilson - Flickr, CC 2)

The assassination of the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani, by the United States on January 3, along with his right-hand man in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was a surprising move for many. Soleimani’s assassination increased pressure on President Donald Trump in Washington and has already intensified concerns about a new war between the US and Iran, which would be a disaster for the region.

On January 8, Iran carried out a ballistic missile attack on air bases hosting US forces in Iraq in retaliation for Soleimani’s death. So far there are no reports of American casualties, but Iran claims it killed at least 84 US soldiers. This has not been independently confirmed.

Iran’s retaliation seems more symbolic. Tehran wanted to respond to its domestic impulse for revenge. According to Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Iraqi prime minister, Iran informed him about the attack. According to Iraqi diplomatic sources, the attack has been “coordinated” with Washington in advance in order to avoid fatalities.

If this is true, Iran’s retaliation happened just to save face, on the one hand, and avoided a full-blown war with the US, on the other. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, quickly tweeted after the attack on the US bases in Iraq that Iran took “concluded proportionate measures” and, similarly, Donald Trump tweeted that “so far, so good.” It sounds like a process of de-escalation now.

Proxy War


In Soleimani, Iran lost a well-known strategist. Soleimani was the mastermind of Iran’s asymmetric warfare in the region, comparable perhaps to someone like General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, director-general of Pakistan‘s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) between 1979 and 1987. Rahman was the architect of the jihad movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s when Pakistan supported, organized and trained the Afghan mujahedeen.

This strategy is known as “death by a thousand cuts.” As head of Quds Force — the external branch of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — for more than 20 years, Soleimani made it his mission to force the United States from the region.

Embed from Getty Images

Inside Iran, Soleimani was considered a “pillar of the Iranian Revolution itself” and has been portrayed as Iran’s most powerful man after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Outside Iran, he became a charismatic leader for many of Tehran’s allies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq and other Iran-backed militant groups in Syria and Yamen. He was also considered as a mastermind of Iran’s strategy in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. After the defeat of IS, Iran continued putting pressure on the US through proxies.

The Middle East has been squished into the spectrum of radical securitization and open hostility between aligned actors for a long time. Four decades of confrontation with the US and the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s pushed Tehran to adopt an asymmetric strategy to fight threats beyond its borders. US presence in the region has been perceived as the primary threat by Tehran since 2002, when President George W. Bush included Iran as part of the “axis of evil.”

Iran’s concerns intensified after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since then, one option for Iran was to increase the cost of the US presence in the region. Maintaining its regional influence and fighting real or perceived threats beyond its borders has been a key goal for Tehran, especially following the breakout of the civil war in Syria.

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Potential for Escalation


Based on what has happened between the US and Iran in the few last days, we can draw some conclusions. First, proxy warfare has the potential to transform into a full-blown war. On December 27, a US contractor was killed and four other Americans wounded when more than 30 rockets were fired on the Iraqi military base near Kirkuk. Washington accused Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia, for the attack. Two days later, the US launched airstrikes and killed at least 25 militia fighters, wounding 55.

The attack sparked violent protests by supporters of the Iran-backed militia groups, targeted at the US Embassy in Baghdad. The protests brought back unwelcome memories of the 2012 attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, that took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador John Christopher Stevens. The embassy attack also brought up the specter of Iran’s hostage crisis of 1979. All these events have pushed the US and Iran a step closer to a full escalation.

Second, responses to proxy warfare are not the same. For example, Soleimani’s assassination raises the question about US reluctance to take similar action against Pakistan’s generals who are supporting the proxy war in Afghanistan. On May 2, 2011, the Haqqani Network — a military branch of the Taliban based in Miramshah, Pakistan — launched an attack against the US Embassy in Kabul.

The US accused Pakistan’s ISI of supporting the attack. Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the US Senate that “the Haqqani network, for one, acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” and that “with ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy.”

Since 2001, more than 2,400 Americans troops have died in combat with the Pakistan-backed Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan has been denying its support for the Taliban and keeps insisting on its position as a “key ally” of the US in the war on terror. Pakistan’s strategy is a “double game” that enables it to have both a relationship with the US while pursuing its regional strategy by providing sanctuaries for the Taliban.

However, the US treats Pakistan differently because their relationship is based on a combination of diplomatic interaction and tactical engagement. Also, Pakistan pursues its regional strategy without insisting on political and ideological differences to fuel confrontation with Washington.

Washington justified the attack on Soleimani as “preemptive action” to avoid further attacks against the US in the region. In April last year, the US designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization. According to Reuters, IRGC provided more sophisticated weapons to the pro-Iran Shia militia in recent months. These weapons included Katyusha rockets and shoulder-fired missiles that could bring down helicopters. Despite these concerns, many were surprised by the unilateral decision to assassinate high-profile officials, with experts questioning US evidence suggesting an imminent attack on American targets as “razor thin.”

The Right Temperature


Third, countries have different proxy war strategies. In comparison, Pakistan conducts its proxy warfare differently to Iran. In the 1980s, in the context of the Cold War, General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, the Pakistani president at the time, instructed the ISI that “the water in Afghanistan must boil at the right temperature.” He was worried about a full Soviet escalation against Pakistan.

However, it is hard to know what is the right temperature for avoiding direct confrontation. Perhaps Iran raised the heat too high by its bold involvement in Iraq and Syria. Soleimani played a vital role in helping the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, mobilized tens of thousands of Shia militia from Iraq to Lebanon, and provided them with arms and military advisers. This level of involvement intensified the concerns in Washington about its future in the region. Leaked archives of Iranian intelligence cables show that Iranian agents privately expressed concern about Soleimani’s brutal tactics in Iraq and their consequences.

Fourth, the US does not have a good record of fighting proxy wars in the region, but this should not create a false sense of confidence. After 2001, the US fought insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, which had required a different military doctrine known as counter-insurgency strategy (COIN). However, the COIN doctrine resulted in no substantial achievement in either theaters.

In Afghanistan, the US ultimately started negotiations with the Taliban to withdraw its forces. This happened after 18 years of war that cost an estimated $2 trillion and tens of thousands of Afghan lives. 

Embed from Getty Images

Pakistan appears to have won the proxy war in Afghanistan against the US to bring back the Taliban and undermine the Afghan government. The US failure in the region gave more confidence for Soleimani to play the game with confidence. For example, he kept promoting himself by taking photos on battlefields across Iraq and Syria, not unlike a rock star.

Fifth, Iran’s real revenge will come through the continued proxy warfare to force the US from the region. After Soleimani’s death, Iran will pursue cautious methods without changing its main strategy in the region. Iran has vowed to take “severe revenge” for Soleimani’s death, but its conventional forces are no match for the US military machine in a direct confrontation. Therefore, Iran will not fight a conventional war with the US.

After a ballistic missile attack on the US bases in Iraq, President Hassan Rouhani said: “Our final answer to his [Soleimani’s] assassination will be to kick all US forces out of the region.” Iran already pulled out of the nuclear deal, and Iraq’s parliament has passed legislation calling for the US forces to leave the country. If it happens, the US will likely end its presence in Syria as well because the US bases in Iraq are critical for the support of US forces in Syria.

After Soleimani’s death, the situation is extremely unpredictable. Proxy warfare can provoke an all-out war whether with the US or regional actors. From Tehran’s point of view, the US is not the only threat in the region, with enemies such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and anti-Iran Sunni groups such as IS and al-Qaeda to be considered.

Even if the US leaves the Middle East, the existing pattern of the amity/enmity between state and non-state actors in the region will remain stubborn for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it seems that Iran will not gamble its whole capability on a full escalation with the US. However, any miscalculation can push the US and Iran toward further escalation. If retaliation happens as tit for tat on a spiraling trajectory, a full-blown war could not be far away. This is how wars begin.


Abbas Farasoo is a PhD candidate at Deakin University in Australia. His research focus is on proxy wars, regional security, ethnic conflict and social movements. Previously, he has worked as chargé d'affaires and deputy ambassador at the Afghan Embassy in Australia. 


This article was originally published on Fair Observer

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Wednesday, 18 December 2019

NRC - A Mass Weaponization of Paper in India to Reduce Muslim Voters in the Country
By Haimanti Roy, University of Dayton 

The Indian government will soon ask its 870 million voting-age citizens for documentation that they are legal citizens with ancestral ties to India.


All voting-age Indians may soon be asked to submit government-issued ID to prove citizenship. That may be a challenge for women, religious minorities and members of oppressed castes. AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh

On Nov. 20, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah announced a plan to expand the National Registry of Citizens, a four-year documentation effort that recently concluded in India’s northeastern state of Assam, to the entire country. Shah claims that the effort will help identify illegal immigrants in a “nondiscriminatory” fashion.

The news was met with some dismay. After Assam finished tallying its 30.5 million people in August, about 1.9 million were declared “foreign.” Some were Bangladeshi immigrants living in Assam illegally. Others were refugees who migrated to India after Bangladesh’s independence war in 1971. Most were women, members of oppressed castes, religious minorities or poor. 

Even some people with paper ID were rejected from the register because of misspelled names or incorrect formats.

As a historian who studies identity and exclusion in India, I know that when governments try to determine who belongs and who does not, the most marginal are inevitably left out.

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