IRAN

RENEE PARSONS—The Pentagon helpfully pointed out that 120,000 troops would be insufficient if a ground mission was ordered which led Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to remark that war in Iran would make the Iraq war look like a “cake walk’ referring to the fact that Iran is a cohesive country, four times larger than Iraq and has more than double the population of Iraq. In other words, a recipe for an environmental, humanitarian and military disaster of epic proportions.

CODEPINK’s co-founder Medea Benjamin was forcibly escorted out of the Hudson Institute Sept. 19, after disrupting warhawk Brian Hook, U.S. Special Envoy to Iran and head of Trump’s Iran Action Group. Her protest against Hook’s belligerent speech and the administration’s harsh sanctions struck a chord with people in Iran. #PeacewithIran #Iran CODEPINK has been bombarded via email and Instagram with messages from ordinary Iranians expressing their thanks and echoing the call for peace. “The messages from Iranians keep pouring in and are so beautiful,” said Benjamin. “People in both countries want to live in peace. We have to stop the Trump administration from dragging us into another unjustified, unwinnable, catastrophic conflict.”

WILLIAM BOARDMAN—Posing as a journalist, Martha Raddatz ratchets up the Trump administration’s scare campaign based on nothing more than fear tactics. She’s so busy trying to scare us, she doesn’t even get the geography right. The alleged attack didn’t happen in the Persian Gulf. The four ships that were supposedly attacked were in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of the UAE. Almost all the rest of what Raddatz reports as “fact” comes from government press releases.And that’s not the most shameful part for Raddatz and ABC News. Worse than botching facts large and small is the willingness of such mainstream media players to team up with elements of the US government seeking war with Iran at almost any cost.

PEPE ESCOBAR—Conversations with old-time Persian Gulf traders are quite enlightening. They attest, “if a pumping station is destroyed it takes two years to fill an order for a new pump. The Saudis maintain they have pumps in reserve. If all the pumps are destroyed in Saudi Arabia, no oil would flow for two years. The prime target would be Abqaiq. If this processing plant is destroyed, oil prices would soar.”Abqaiq, with an enormous capacity of 7 million barrels a day, is the primary oil processing plant for Arabian extra light and Arabian light crude oils.Assuming the drone attack was not a false flag, Persian Gulf traders were impressed with the accuracy of the drone at these distances for a precision hit. This would mean that Abqaiq itself is vulnerable