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By: Patrick Cockburn, Sunday 14 September 2014

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) has been aided by the continuing failure of the US Government to investigate the role of Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attacks and its support of jihadi movements such as al-Qaeda in the years since, says former Senator Bob Graham, the co-chairman of the official inquiry into 9/11.

Senator Graham, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that successive administrations in Washington had turned a blind eye to Saudi support for Sunni extremists. He added: “I believe that the failure to shine a full light on Saudi actions and particularly its involvement in 9/11 has contributed to the Saudi ability to continue to engage in actions that are damaging to the US – and in particular their support for Isis.”

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by Akbar Ganji
antiwar.com

The Middle East is burning in fires of wars, violence, and destruction from Syria, to Yemen, and Iraq. But, amid all these wars, a new one has begun between Israel and the Palestinian people living in Gaza. The truth is that the war between Israel and the Palestinians is the mother of all the wars in the region. If there were peace between the people of Israel and Palestinians, we would probably never have any war in that region, at least not one initiated by the people of the Middle East. To understand this we must consider at least four important factors.

Israel as an occupying force

Israel was created in 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 181 of the UNGA that recognized Israel devoted 45 percent of the land to the Palestinians, 54 percent to Israel, and the remaining 1 percent – Jerusalem – was designated as international territory. And, while Israel was born by the resolution, over the last several decades it has violated the resolution itself. After the June 1967 war, the Palestinians’ share of the land has reduced to 22 percent. Resolution 465 of the United Nations Security Council twice mentions the territories occupied by Israeli forces and asks Israel to evacuate them. It also declares the settlements in the occupied territories, including in East Jerusalem, violation of Fourth Geneva Convention that deals with protection of civilian population during wars. The British Foreign Office has even declared the violation of the convention as war crimes. Israel has even violated the Oslo agreement that it has signed and committed itself to, and nearly 600,000 Israeli citizens live in the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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US company World Eco Energy has signed a preliminary agreement to invest $1.175 billion to generate electricity in Iran. The plan is to turn solid waste into power.
Representatives from the American company and the Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari Province Governor General, Malek-Mohammad Qorbanpour, signed the deal, the Tehran Times reported.
It is expected the project will create 650 immediate jobs, with another 2,000 emerging over the next two to three years, Oorbanpour told the IRNA news agency. Local companies will also be investing the same amount of money into the project.

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US secretary of state says negotiations taking place ‘in good faith’ though formula for a deal is elusive at the moment.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, in Vienna where he has been negotiating with Iran about its nuclear capacity. Photograph: Heinz-Peter Bader/REUTERS

The top diplomats from the US and Iran have hailed the progress made so far at nuclear talks in Vienna but say more time may be needed to close the remaining gaps between the sides.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, said on Tuesday that there had been tangible progress after two days of face-to-face negotiations with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

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At least 411 prisoners have been executed in Iran from the beginning of January 2014 to the end of June of the same year. This indicates that the execution wave, which recommenced after the most recent Iranian presidential election, is continuing. According to reports by Iran Human Rights (IHR), more than 870 people have been executed since the election of Mr. Hassan Rouhani in June 2013. IHR calls on the international community to take serious measures to stop the execution wave in Iran.

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By Aurélia

Paris (AFP) – As the world’s reserve currency, the dollar gives Washington a powerful influence over global financial markets — a point underlined again this week when a record fine was levelled against France’s leading bank.
French banking giant BNP Paribas has agreed to pay $8.9 billion (6.5 billion euros) to US authorities for violating sanctions against Iran, Sudan and other countries even though the transactions were not illegal under French or European law.

It fell foul of US rules because the exchanges were carried out in dollars, and the huge penalty has sent shockwaves across Europe where other major banks such as Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank and UniCredit fear they could be next in the cross-hairs of the US authorities.
For some, it is a sign that Europe must wean itself off the dollar.
“The global reach of American standards through the use of the dollar should push Europe to boost the euro as an international exchange currency,” French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said after the fine was announced.
US authorities were able to catch BNP’s embargo violations by monitoring clearing houses for large interbank transactions.

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By Leonid Bershidsky

It’s not the projected size of the fine — $8 billion to $9 billion. It’s not even the demand to fire specific employees. No, as BNP Paribas prepares to settle claims by U.S. authorities that it has transacted some $30 billion worth of business in violation of U.S. international sanctions, the part of the settlement most likely to stick in Gallic throats (and cause a bit of choking elsewhere) is a ban on clearing dollar transactions.

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By: David Ingnatius

With the sudden rise of the terrorist Islamic State , a little-noted aspect is that Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the supposed strategic genius of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, has blundered disastrously. By overreaching in Iraq and Syria and triggering a violent reaction, Iran now faces dangerous instability on its border for years to come.

Most commentary on the Iraq situation has focused on U.S. errors and the potential dangers to U.S. interests, and there are plenty of both. But perhaps we can put aside our national myopia and look at what recent events mean for Iran, which shares a 900-mile border with Iraq and desperately wants political hegemony there. It’s not a happy picture.

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Washington and Tehran don’t agree on much, but they both see the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as a real threat. As both countries consider how to respond to the militants in Iraq, one option is to cooperate.

It’s unusual for the interests of Iran and the United States to align. But some think the ISIS menace could actually present an opportunity to reimagine relations between the two countries after 40 years of hostility.

To discuss the future of Iran-U.S. relations, we were joined by three guests:

• Ali Nourizadeh fled Iran after the revolution in 1979. He’s now the Director of the Centre for Iranian and Arab Studies in London, England.
• Patricia DeGennario is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute who specializes in US Foreign Policy and International Security. She was in Washington
• John Mundy was Canada’s last ambassador to Iran until he was expelled in 2007. He’s now a Senior Associate with the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa.