The General Staff of Armed Forces’ statement on Friday described the assassination as a “terrorist attack ” carried out by the “criminal American regime”. “The brave commander, Major General Qassem Soleimani, played a key and unique role in fighting terrorist Takfiri groups which were set up by the criminal American government,” it read.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Many are understandably claiming that this geostrategically pivotal confrontation was precisely what Trump was installed to facilitate all along. The largest donor to any campaign in 2016 was oligarch Sheldon Adelson, who gave $25 million to the Trump campaign, and who in 2013 said that the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.
PAUL EDWARDS—America has lately performed the exquisitely difficult geopolitical maneuver of alienating all nations it considers friends while simultaneously actively provoking those it considers enemies. That extraordinary diplomatic Quadruple Axel had never yet been attempted, much less accomplished.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—No other nation comes anywhere remotely close. No other nation is encircling the planet with hundreds of military bases and engaged in dozens of undeclared military operations. No other nation has cultivated a giant globe-sprawling empire in the form of tightly knit alliances with powerful murderous governments like the UK, Israel and Saudi Arabia. No other nation is constantly laboring to sabotage and undermine any government which refuses to be absorbed into military and economic alliance with it using sanctions, staged coups, covert CIA operations, color revolutions, economic manipulations, propaganda, the arming of dissident militias, and launching full-scale military invasions.
YONDEN LHATOO—Since the snake oil-peddling swamp dwellers of Congress command so much respect in Hong Kong, let us hold the likes of House speaker Nancy Pelosi to her word when she indiscriminately encourages the protests, warts and all, and promises blanket American protection for everyone, hailing them for their “courage and their stick-to-it-iveness”.