ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Pepe Escobar US President Donald Trump could not possibly have predicted the game-changing after-effects of his triumphal sword dance in Riyadh. Or could he? The fact is the House of Saud went amok, in a flash, going after Qatar and bombing from the inside that glorious Arab NATO project – call it NATOGCC — sworn with pomp over a glowing orb. An excited Trump tweeted three times his approval for Riyadh going after Doha.  Trump and NATOGCC had equaled Daesh and Iran as “terrorists”. The House of Saud went one up — and denounced Qatar for top terror financing, which equals Don Corleone hurling Mafioso accusations against Tony Soprano.  But then, in an unexpected plot twist, Daesh, handily, graphically, underlined the cosmic stupidity of the whole charade – staging, or at least claiming to stage a terror attack against the Parliament and the Imam Khomeini shrine in Tehran. The current Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, now “guilty” for not blaming Iran as the root

By Paul Pillar   For Americans fed a diet of rhetoric about Iran that constantly links it to the sending, not the receiving, end of terrorism—in which “the leading state sponsor of terrorism” is the adjectival phrase routinely affixed to Iran, and in which official rhetoric such as President Trump’s  speech in Riyadh  mashes Iran together with Sunni Islamist terrorism of the ISIS variety into one undifferentiated blob of evil—the deadly attacks today in Tehran generate much cognitive dissonance.  But however disorienting this news may have been, it is true.  An obviously well-planned operation struck at the heart of Iran, at its parliament and the monument to the Islamic Republic’s founder.  At least a dozen people were killed and dozens more injured.  The credibility of the claim of responsibility by ISIS is enhanced by the group’s posting of video footage from the attack. For anyone looking beyond rhetoric and at reality, the attack is no surprise.  Iran has been one of the st

Source: http://blog.al.com Written by  Mark Curtis ; Originally appeared at  markcurtis.info   The Telegraph reports that London attacker Rachid Redouane fought in the 2011 British/NATO war against Qadafi  – as did Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber – and joined a militia which went on to send jihadist fighters to Syria. In Libya, he is believed to have fought with the  Liwa al Ummah  unit. [1] The  Liwa al Ummah  was formed by a deputy of Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the former emir of the al Qaeda-linked  Libyan Islamic Fighting Group . In 2012, the Liwa al Ummah in Syria  merged  with the  Free Syrian Army (FSA) [2] , which was formed in August 2011 by army deserters based in Turkey [3]  whose aim was to bring down Assad. In Syria, the  Liwa al Ummah  was often referred to as an ‘FSA unit’ [4]  and sometimes teamed up with  al-Nusra , al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria.  [5] The  UK  has been reported as covertly supporting al-Nusra in Syria. [6] Moreover, the UK backed and s

Yesterday’s  news that Saudi Arabia has issued an ultimatum to Qatar , listing ten demands among which that Qatar end all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, has prompted a dramatic response by the small Gulf nation, and according to a just released report by  Arabic CNN  (and confirmed  locally ) US officials have said they have observed increased Qatari military activity  as the country placed its forces “on the highest state of alert” over fears of an imminent military incursion. Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani attends a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit on December 6, 2016, in the Bahraini capital Manama. / AFP PHOTO / STRINGER (Photo credit should read STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images) The sources add that the Qatari military has  brought up 16 Leopard tanks out of storage in Doha in preparation for a potential military incursion by surrounding Gulf states . Furthermore, the Qatari Ministry of Defense reportedly also sent a letter to Saudi, UAE and Bahrai