Is War With Iran Imminent?

It is beginning to feel like a recurring nightmare.

You know it is not real. You know it will end badly. Yet you are unable to stop it.

The four "sabotaged" tankers in the Gulf of Oman were the beginning of a very familiar narrative.

The smoking gun appearing as a mushroom cloud.

In this iteration, Saudi Arabia recently claimed that four of its tankers (actually one belonging to a Norwegian company) were seriously damaged and implied that Iran was behind the attack.

Despite an initial lack of pictures or other evidence, it subsequently became clear that the damage in question consisted of small holes in the hulls and no explosions were reported.

By the way, this is still the only damage picture I could find, the Saudi tankers, initially photographed from a distance, seem to have vanished.

Still, both the Saudis and the UAE maintained that it was obviously Iran's work. And an American investigative team concurred after a very cursory examination, which lasted less than a day.

Then John Bolton and his moustache argued that the damage was "almost certainly" caused by Iranian mines. However, neither Bolton nor his moustache offered any proof or an explanation for the lack of accompanying explosions.

A few days later, UAE diplomats made a presentation to the UN Security Council and blamed "a state actor" for the incident.

But the whole thing looked, well, hokey.

No explosion, no sinking of ships, no wounded personnel and no real leakage (even though they tried to make it appear as one did).

So during that presentation, UAE, Norway and Saudi Arabia went technical and claimed that the damage was caused by "limpet mines."

That made the whole thing sound real and ominous. I could hear people saying OMG, limpet mines.

Remember Colin Powell's presentation on "high-grade (7075-T6)" aluminum tubes.

UAE and Saudi Arabia copied but sadly they could only do limpet mines.

Limpet Mines Are As Effective As Loose Lips in Sinking Ships

Do you know what limpet mines are?

They were introduced just before WWII and they are different from traditional mines in that they are attached to the hull of a ship with magnets.  Typically, they have timers to get them to explode at a specific time.

Here is the interesting part. Because their payload is small they are always placed below water level to ensure that the explosion opens up a hole in the hull to sink or seriously damage the ship.

In accordance with that common practice, Norway, UAE and Saudi Arabia claimed that limpet mines were placed by divers. Or frogmen as they were known when the limpet mines were in vogue.

Curiously, as you can see from the picture of Andrea Victory, these archaic mines were placed above the water line to make small holes that could be photographed and not below where they might sink them.

In any event, when it became clear that the world was not impressed with this alleged Iranian attack which callously aimed to open tiny holes in Saudi tankers, a new one was staged.

A few days ago, two tankers with "Japan related cargo" were attacked In the Strait of Hormuz.

The timing of Thursday’s attacks was especially sensitive because it came as the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, held talks with the Iranian leadership in Tehran in an effort to find a basis for discussions between the US and Iran.

Such an unlucky coincidence.

This time they went for a more spectacular explosion as you can see in this clip.

And this a screenshot.

You can see the difference from the earlier "attacks." 

Notice also the smoke coming from the stern from inside the tanker which couldn't be caused by limpet mines. And the flames emerging from below the water line which didn't jive with the rest of the reported incidents.

I was curious. So, I looked around a bit. The tanker in the clip is Front Altair owned by Frontline Ltd. This is what they said:

Frontline was able to deploy emergency responders in a timely manner, who extinguished fire on the vessel within hours of the incident and ensured no pollution resulted. Contrary to media reports, the vessel remains afloat and is being attended to by a salvage vessel. 

It is clear that the picture was worse than what the damage was.

More importantly,

No close-up images of the damage to the vessel's hull have been released, but the crew of a tug that helped put out the fire was heard saying on the radio that there was a large hole just above the waterline. 

Above the waterline.

As breathless speculations ensued about the terrorist regime in Tehran, the US Navy released a footage that showed some folks on a boat removing limpet mines from one of the tankers. They claimed that these were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

That is the video.

Now look at the still from the video. This is the "Japan related cargo" ship, named Kokuka Courageous.

It is annotated by the US Navy.

You have to grant me that this is a curious image.

The hole on the side of the tanker is relatively tiny compared to the flames in the picture and clip I posted above. It barely looks bigger than the unexploded "limpet mine" shown to the right.

Moreover, both mines are way above the water line and the one that exploded seems to have caused very little damage.

There is a clear cognitive dissonance between this picture and the tanker in flames.

My guess is that Iran realized that they were being set up, sent out patrol boats to see if there were more limpet mines. Their job was easy as none of them seemed to have been placed below water line.

The divers who placed the limpet mines were in fact climbers.

Today we were shown a new image from Kokuka Courageous.

The limpet mine damage is unbelievable.

Literally.

What About A War With Iran?

Remember my earlier concern about the three amigos trying to ignite the region to save their own skins?

Well, there are more signs.

To begin with, Israeli media claimed that the intelligence about Iran's involvement came from Mossad.

Then I found out that,

the National Security Advisors of Russia, the US, and Israel, Nikolay Patrushev, John Bolton and Meir Ben-Shabbat, respectively, are expected to meet in Jerusalem to talk about Iran and Syria and what Israel considers the “threat to its security” in the Levant.

You have to admit that this is strange.

Why would Russia, ostensibly an Iranian ally, would meet with John Bolton and his moustache and of all places in Jerusalem to discuss Iran.

Then, yesterday, Iran announced that it will breach the enriched uranium limit set by the 2015 agreement on 27 June, just nine day from now.

The following day we had this:

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said his country did not seek to wage war with any nation and had remained "loyal" to its international obligations.

Which tells me that the hardliners were egging on the Orange Man.

Who responded by sending an additional 1,000 troops to the region. They will join the 1,500 sent last month.

Can you see the trend?

Color me concerned.

Very concerned.

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UPDATE

I stand corrected. There were pictures of the other three tankers involved in the original incident. They were released by the UAE.

The damage was so extensive (!) that they did not need to evacuate the crew.

There were other pictures provided by the UAE. But I will not bore you with them as they were close ups of nondescript hull damages.

Any serious damage that does not require the evacuation of the crew cannot be serious by definition.

Hemedti Crackdown: "People Power Takes a Big Hit"

In my recent post on Sudan, I expressed my dismay with the disinformation element in the "People Power" or the Arab Spring II narratives.

The removal of Omar al-Bashir was a basic coup d'etat orchestrated by Saudi Arabia. The goal was to bring malleable generals to power who will do anything to support Mohammed bin Salman's (MBS) adventures, including providing troops in a Saudi war with Iran.

In fact, the more I think about it and the more it looks like MBS is putting together an Arab military alliance comprised of Egypt and Sudan in order to challenge Iran.

I can see that al-Bashir was too old, too cynical and too vacillating for the bellicose young prince.

Yesterday, Khartoum witnessed the limits of the People Power. In fact, the quote in the title is from the BBC's coverage.

The leader of the Janjaweed militia and the architect of its crimes against humanity Hemedti ordered his Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to open fire on peaceful sit-in protesters in Khartoum.

The result? 

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, which is close to the protesters, said 30 people - including an eight-year-old child - had been killed, and that the toll was likely to rise as not all casualties had been accounted for. 

Hundreds of people had been injured, it added.

As I noted in my previous post, the real power figure is Hemedti, because he has the complete backing of MBS.  And I am not the only one who suspects that he is the one pulling the strings in Sudan.

Once the carnage was completed and terror message was sent, the head of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the one everyone praised for his moderate views as the ombudsman of the army, made a declaration:

(T)he TMC's head, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said in a statement broadcast on state television that they had decided to "stop negotiating with the Alliance for Freedom and Change and cancel what had been agreed on". 

An election in nine months' time would take place under "regional and international supervision", he added.

Now, I have an issue with this, a question no one seems to want to ask.

Why the sudden change in the timeline?

TMC wanted two years to organize itself into an Algerian or Burmese or insert-country-name-here style election where they would retain levers of power. It takes time to terrorise your opponents, disrupt the formation of a cohesive opposition, write a bogus constitution and build a power block that can control media outlets, state institutions, the judiciary and everything else.

In nine months all you can do is to go with the previous people in those institutions, as the former British ambassador Rosalind Marsden argued.

It seems like the deadline was ordered from outside. Someone used Tim Gunn's immortal words and said "make it work" we have a war planned and we need someone in power to back us up

If I were a Middle East analyst trying to figure out if there is going to be a Sunni/Shia war, I would pay really close attention to Sudan.

Hemedti and MBS are your guys.

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UPDATE

BBC goes cynical but after the Hemedti massacre.

The plan is more than likely a fiction, not designed to produce civilian rule or anything like it. 

There is ample precedent in Africa and elsewhere these days for elections which go through the motions of democracy but deliver none of its substance.
Don't be surprised to see senior figures from the TMC "retiring" from the military and standing as civilian candidates. 

What will not change is military control of Sudanese life. 

This was written half a day after the "People power takes a big hit" piece.
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UPDATE 2

The death toll in now over 60.

A woman, identified only as Sulaima, told the BBC that troops from the Rapid Support Forces were "all over Khartoum".
"They're surrounding neighbourhoods, they're threatening people. They're also using live ammunition. They're everywhere. We're not feeling safe and we don't have trust in the security forces. It's complete chaos."

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UPDATE 3
They are now pulling bodies out of Nile, with the death toll having reached 100 people.

Interestingly the State Department asked Saudi Arabia to intervene, leaving no doubt who is behind the coup.

The US state department voiced concerns on Tuesday over the violence to Saudi Arabia - a key ally of Sudan's military rulers. A department official telephoned the Saudi deputy defence minister Khalid Bin Salman to stress the importance of a transition to a civilian-led government.

Khalid is MBS' brother, the guy who reassured Adnan Khashoggi to go to Turkey.

Why Was There a Coup in Sudan After 30 Years?

My oldest readers might remember that I started this blog because of my massive frustration with mainstream media platitudes about the Arab Spring. A self-immolating Tunisian street vendor forcing strongman Ben Ali to flee the country. Or Tahrir Square students overthrowing Hosni Mubarak.

None of these symbolic acts explained what really happened but you wouldn't know that by simply reading to headline.

I had a similar reaction when I first found about the ousting of Omar al-Bashir after 30 years in power. The mainstream narrative was that popular unrest and daily protests increased the pressure on the man and he was finally toppled by his own military.

Once more, we were shown pictures of happy crowds, singing and dancing and marching with signs.

Sudanese protesters at the sit-in in Khartoum last week. Photograph: Amel Pain/EPA

And the narrative was that this was sufficient to get rid of an indicted war criminal who killed, tortured, raped literally millions of people in Darfur and elsewhere. A ruthless autocrat who suppressed every protest violently during his blood-soaked reign.

Omar al-Bashir

If it was that easy, why didn't they do it 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago?

Is it possible that this time the street chanting and sit-in protests was too much for his generals who told him that it was time to go.

I decided to take look.

Now, I admit that my knowledge of Sudan was fairly rudimentary.

I knew that Bashir came to power in 1989 with a coup against an elected president.

I knew that he oversaw the Islamization of the country by using the ideological guidelines of Hassan Turabi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure.

I knew of the Nile conflict with Egypt and Ethiopia.

And I knew about his horrifying crimes in Darfur to grab their oil and to further subjugate black Africans (vs Arabs of the North).

So it took me some digging. In the end, I uncovered a remarkable story which involved a complex regional power play by Turkey, Qatar on the one side and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE on the other.

Suakin Island

Omar al-Bashir was probably one of the most cynical rulers in the world. For instance, despite being a Sunni fundamentalist, when it suited him, he established close relationships with Iran, a rare Sunni/Shia alliance, which lasted until 2016.

Then when he needed Saudi Arabia's money more, he cut-off Sudan's ties to Iran and offered Sudanese troops for the war in Yemen.

Two years ago, he did something remarkable. He leased the Suakin island to Turkey for 99 years. It didn't hurt that Erdogan was and is a staunch supporter of the Brotherhood. Nor Qatar's $4 billion dollar deal to develop the port city was a hindrance.

But the deal was a subtle reminder to Egypt that Sudan had powerful friends and border disputes and conflict over Nile could be addressed in a different manner.

If you never heard of the island, you are in good company. The island is strategically placed as a historical port for Muslim pilgrims to reach Mecca.

Now, Turkey claimed that it was going to renovate the island and return it to its former glory. But it soon became clear that it had more value as a military base. More importantly, a base that would connect the Turkish base in Qatar and the third one in Somalia.

When the deal was signed, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, taken by surprise, expressed their deep concerns.

At the time, Turkey's deal caused concern on the international scene, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, over allegations that Turkey was seeking to expand its military foothold in Africa, in the Gulf and the Red Sea.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who overthrew Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's former President affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood, was especially upset. Following the ousting of Morsi, Egypt's relations with Turkey became rather frosty and a war or words ensued between Erdogan and al-Sisi.

Equally concerned was Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler of the Kingdom. He is suspicious of Turkish motives because of Erdogan's support for Muslim Brotherhood and his alliance with Qatar.

A Sudanese analyst warned at the time that the Suakin deal was very dangerous.

"Turkey and Egypt, as well as Ethiopia and Eritrea, all have ambitions along Sudan's Red Sea coast, and the situation needs to be handled with great sensitivity," he said. (...)

"Egypt already has a presence in the Halaib disputed area in the northern part of the Red Sea state, and now Turkey has a presence in Port Sudan and Suakin. That's really playing with fire," the analyst said.

With hindsight, prophetic warning to al-Bashir.

The Squeeze Between Qatar And Saudi Arabia

While the Suakin island deal was unfolding Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and Bahrain tried to bring Sudan into their Anti-Terror Quartet (ATQ) but Sudan refused.

Even though these were important donors for Sudan, Qatar was a big supporter of Muslim Brotherhood and that was a line al-Bashir would not cross.

However, to appease MBS, he distanced himself from Iran and joined the Yemeni coalition.

Omar al-Bashir was playing a high-risk balancing game trying to contain incompatible options. What brought it to a head was Sudan's precarious economy. In 2017 IMF asked the government to gradually remove subsidies on food and fuel.

Unsurprisingly, protests erupted but he violently suppressed them killing scores of civilians.

Despite the presence of Sudanese troops in Yemen, Saudi Arabia did not help him financially. Riyadh waited until his ousting to pledge $3 billion to the new military government.

Within days of the removal of Bashir, Saudi’s purse strings loosened. Along with the UAE, it pledged a $3bn aid package to prop up Sudan’s economy and thus the transitional military government.

Curiously, Qatar refused to help as well.

The Sudanese president, who was ousted by the military on April 11, visited Doha in late January in hopes of getting financial support to ease economic conditions that had triggered more than a month of protests. He received only an offer of political asylum, according to sources.

The Emir must have sensed that the jig was up and there was no way to prop up al-Bashir's government.

As for the dictator himself, my guess is that, strapped for cash, he was contemplating a partial pull out of Yemen.

L’Arabie saoudite (...) vise effectivement à bénéficier de l’absence d’Omar el-Béchir, qui s’opposait à l’engagement militaire « trop vaste » de son pays dans les conflits au Yémen.

Even though he denied such plans, he seems to have failed to convince UAE and the Kingdom.

According to some analysts, al-Bashir’s recent visit to Damascus suggests that Khartoum is distancing itself from the Saudi/UAE axis.

According to Al-Binna, a Lebanese journal, the coup instructions came from MBS himself. who hosted the vice president and the first coup leader, Awad Ibn Auf after al-Bashir's removal.

Le coup d’État au Soudan a eu lieu très probablement suite à une série de coordinations entre le prince saoudien Mohammed ben Salmane et le ministre soudanais de la Défense Aouad Ibn Aouf qui s’était rendu, quelques jours auparavant avant le coup de force, à Riyad pour prendre part à une réunion de “l’OTAN arabe”.

The protesters clamored because of Ibn Auf's closeness to al-Bashir. Shockingly, within 24 hours he resigned. Even more shockingly, his replacement, Salah Abdallah Mohamed Saleh (Salah Gosh) also lasted 24 hours. The third guy was Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

Do you know who he is?

As chief of Sudan’s ground forces he oversaw Sudanese troops fighting in the Saudi-led Yemen war and has close ties to senior Gulf military officials.

Moreover,

A Sudanese source close to Sudan’s military leadership said the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt had a role in planning “the removal of Bashir and General Ibn Auf and Salah Gosh” as part of a strategy of “weakening the power of the Islamists in power in Sudan”.

By Islamists, they mean Muslim Brotherhood.

Given this background, the first thing the new generals did was to reassure Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries that Sudan would continue to provide troops to the war in Yemen.

Then Burhan tweeted that Suakin was an "inseparable part of Sudan."

"Its value cannot be measured with a material price, its history cannot be sold. We emphasize that we care about the sovereignty of our territories. We will not accept the presence of a foreign military existence in Sudan," Burhan added.

Turkey tried to downplay the statement but the implication was clear.

Burhan

 A week ago, Burhan's deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti, affirmed that Sudan would back Saudi Arabia against Iranian threats.

General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy chief of Sudan's transitional military council, met with Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, the official Saudi Press Agency reported earlier in the day.

"Sudan is standing with the kingdom against all threats and attacks from Iran and Huthi militias," Dagalo, widely known as Himeidti, told the crown prince during their meeting, the council said in a statement.

Incidentally, Hemedti is a dark figure who heads the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF is a paramilitary grouping that grew out of the Janjaweed militias that fought in Darfur and has provided troops to fight in Yemen.

Besides its role in killing and raping in Darfur and Yemen, RSF is the main paramilitary group that al-Bashir used to suppress uprisings.

And now he has MBS' total support and approval.

When you look at the whole picture, what took place in Sudan was not Arab Spring 2 as some media outlets claimed.

MBS moved to have the last regime that had Muslim Brotherhood as its base overthrown and replaced its president with more malleable generals who will continue to help him in his murderous Yemeni campaign. And Egypt got rid of a ruler who could have posed too many problems.

They won.

The influence of their regional rivals Qatar and Turkey, which both had ties to Bashir, will be limited, said the Sudanese military officer. “It was a tug of war, and right now UAE and Saudi won,” he said.

Ostensibly, the losing side is Turkey and Qatar.

But I wouldn't count them out yet. The battle in Sudan might be lost but the wider war is still in play. And I don't even mean this metaphorically.

MBS' war in Yemen is unwinnable and it will ruin the Kingdom financially. He is also less and less able to inject cash into client states like Egypt and soon they will feel the squeeze.

On the Turkish side, the economic picture is not any better. But it has other options like teaming up with Iran and Russia, changing its regional priorities and adopting a softer approach towards Kurds and Syria.

Time will tell.

We live in interesting but scary dangerous times.