A Summer Of Confrontation Looms In The South China Sea

Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Freedom of Navigation is most important, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea lays down that “The high seas are open to all States, whether coastal or land-locked. Freedom of the high seas is exercised under the conditions laid down by this Convention and by other rules of international law.”

The generally accepted definition of freedom of navigation is “the right recognized in international law especially by treaties or agreements for vessels of one or all states to navigate streams passing through two or more states.”

The United States is the self-appointed guardian of the Seas, and has declared it “will exercise and assert its navigation and overflight rights and freedoms on a worldwide basis in a manner that is consistent with the balance of interests reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention.” 

There is only one problem with this, in that the US Senate refuses to ratify the Convention, which makes nonsense of the constant threats by Washington that everybody must obey it or there will be the United States to reckon with, in the shape of the US Navy which roams the seas with its eleven aircraft carriers, 9 amphibious ready groups (more accurately, strike squadrons), 22 cruisers and 66 destroyers with, down below, some seventy submarines. Nuclear weapons abound, but nobody knows which surface vessels carry them (except the intelligence services of China and Russia), because it is policy to “neither confirm nor deny” if nuclear weapons are on board.

Washington objects to China’s presence in the South China Sea. It upsets the US government that Beijing has continued to build various facilities, including airfields, on islands which in some cases are claimed by other regional nations as their own territory. On March 27 the Pentagon’s Randall Schriver told the House Armed Services Committee that China’s “activities in the South China Sea could be met with consequences elsewhere... We are intent on making sure no one country can change international law per the norms” — in spite of the fact that the United States has not ratified the Convention it quotes to support its aggressive activities in the South China Sea.

And these activities are extensive, including the current commitment of the 11th Amphibious Squadron’s four warships, of which the largest, the USS Wasp, carries F-35 advanced strike aircraft whose armament is not known because the Navy “declined to disclose... the assets aboard the Wasp due to operational security concerns.” The squadron’s current deployment in the South China Sea is consistent with US policy, as noted by Stars and Stripes which reported on April 4 that “The US regularly challenges Beijing’s claims by sailing warships within 12 nautical miles of islands that China has built up in the Paracel and Spratly chains. So far this year, the Navy has picked up the pace, conducting at least five freedom-of-navigation operations since January: one each through the Paracels and Spratlys, and three through the Taiwan Strait, the latest March 24-25.”

Additionally, the US Air Force, not to be left out of the in-your-face fandangos, regularly sends nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the South China Sea. Nobody knows what they are carrying in the way of armaments, as “We do not discuss the nuclear capabilities of our operational bomber aircraft,” but on March 13 it was announced that “Two B-52H Stratofortress bombers took off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and conducted routine training in the vicinity of the South China Sea... US aircraft regularly operate in the South China Sea in support of allies, partners, and a free and open Indo-Pacific... as part of US Indo-Pacific Command’s Continuous Bomber Presence operations.”

Then there is the US Army’s contribution to regional security and stability, which it seeks to improve by mounting exercise ‘Defender Pacific’ later this year. The Commander of the US Army in the Pacific, General Robert Brown, was reported as saying that the manoeuvres “will focus on a South China Sea scenario” and that the thousands of troops deploying from the continental United States “will get the challenge of coming to the Pacific with the Pacific-assigned forces already there. And we won’t go to Korea, we will actually go to a South China Sea scenario where we will be around the South China Sea.” Indicating the focus of its operations, “the US Army recently conducted a joint exercise with the US Marine Corps practicing raiding and seizing a small island in Japan’s southwest Ryukyu chain,” on the boundary of the East China Sea.

While all these manoeuvres will exercise soldiers, sailors and aircrew in their skills, which is part of the rich tapestry of military life, the overflights by nuclear-capable bombers, the combat ships provocatively manoeuvring close to Chinese-settled islands, and the practising of island invasion are also sending a message.

Washington cannot imagine for one moment that the Pentagon’s military antics will result in China withdrawing from even the smallest atoll. Not even the Bolton or Pompeo could think that the US campaign of confrontation in, around and above the South China Sea will persuade Beijing to bend the knee to Washington.

It is obvious that the US armed forces are gearing up for a summer of confronting China, and that this is going to be effected on land, by sea, and in the air. But provocation cannot be accepted indefinitely, and it will be interesting to see just how far the Chinese permit the confrontation to continue. What will happen after they blow a coat-trailing US destroyer out of the water?

Iran Vows To Bust US Crude Sanctions

Tehran officials have vowed that White House plans for taking Iran's oil exports down to zero will never materialize, as the Islamic Republic, along with its regional allies and crude customers - most notably China - plan to bust US sanctions. 

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told parliament on Tuesday: the “U.S. dream to cut Iran’s crude exports to zero won’t be fulfilled,” according to Bloomberg. The minister also said, “We will act wholeheartedly to break the U.S. sanctions,” and cited export deals with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq and Turkey.

He described the US gamble to end the waiver program by bringing the full force of the "oil weapon" as a "big mistake" — referencing the fragility of the market and inflated claims of regional countries to have more reserves than what they actually do. 

Meanwhile, oil prices hit nearly six month highs on Tuesday following Monday's announcement by Trump that the US will end sanctions waivers to a handful of countries that import Iranian oil.

A number of prominent Middle East analysts have questioned the political impact of a complete cut-off of Iranian energy exports to Iraq, especially considering the upcoming hot Iraqi summer is ripe for political instability (similar to events the prior summer). Iraq imports roughly 1.5 billion standard cubic feet of Iranian gas per day, for example, via pipelines in the south and east, which feed several power stations. Iran is also a big supplier of Iraq's electricity.

Last summer's power shortages in Iraq sparked massive protests especially in the south, leading to in some cases protesters storming western-operated oil facilities, and further leading to outrage over government corruption and continued foreign presence on Iraqi soil. 

Trump seems set to expose UN fraud on boundaries of Palestine

President Trump appears set to expose more than forty years of deceptive and misleading information disseminated by the United Nations (UN) in relation to the boundaries of former Palestine.

This welcome development comes with President Trump’s Special U.S Envoy Jason D. Greenblatt telling Sky News in Arabic on 19 April:

“there is no reason to use the term ‘two-state solution,” the reason being that, “every side sees it differently.”

The UN must take responsibility for creating such confusion by perpetuating intellectual and political fraud originating with its 1978 publication: “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestinian problem”(Study)

Part 1 of the Study covering 1917-1947 was trashed by Israel’s Ambassador to the UN—Yehuda Blum—on 16 November:

“Even the most cursory reading of this document can leave no doubt that the means and machinery of the United Nations have been misused once again to disseminate highly selective and tendentious information under the guise, in this instance, of what purports to be a scholarly study.

The history of international conflicts, and particularly those with complex historical origins, can only be properly written by objective historians who enjoy complete academic freedom. The practice of writing and rewriting history according to the transient interests of a political body is of course characteristic of certain regimes. It is regrettable that the United Nations has now been drawn into that pattern.”

Blum then told the UN General Assembly on 30 November 1978:

“At the end of the first part of the publication, ostensibly dealing with the period of the Palestine Mandate, there appear a number of maps. The one map that is conspicuously absent is the official map of the Palestine Mandate which, until 1946, included Transjordan on the east bank of the Jordan River. This map was omitted because it does not fit into the PLO’s own scheme, as it would show too clearly that a Palestinian Arab state has already been in existence for 32 years on more than three quarters of the territory of mandated Palestine - that is, the state now called Jordan. 

That embarrassment is eliminated in this purportedly scholarly and impartial publication by the simple expedient of eliminating the map.”

Blum was not finished— pointing out to the General Assembly on 20 December 1978 that Part 2 of the Study covering 1947-1977:

“Taken in conjunction with the first part, it is clear that this pseudo-scientific “study” is designed to give currency, under the emblem of the United Nations, to a completely misleading version of the history of the Arab-Israel conflict.

Put briefly, that version has it that the League of Nations Mandate over Palestine was illegal, and all subsequent events, including the establishment of the State of Israel, are null and void. This wholly distorted view is set out in almost as many words in article 20 of the so-called PLO’s basic document, the “National Covenant”, and it forms the underlying thesis of the United Nations Secretariat publication in question. It completely ignores the Jewish people’s inalienable rights to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty in its homeland, the land of Israel.

Thus, what purports to be a scholarly study, supported by what appears to be a scientific apparatus, is no more than a crude piece of propaganda.”

Two States exist in former Palestine today: Arab Jordan - created in 1946 in about 78% of former Palestine - and Jewish Israel—created in 1948 in about 17% of that territory. These two states remain pivotal to ending the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict.

Trump seems ready to set the UN fabricated record straight when his peace plan is released.

Iran is facing the worst locust attack in the past 40 years: Biblical invasion threatens crops and food security

A locust outbreak in the Arabian peninsula has been spreading to Iran, threatening crops and food security in large areas of the coastal province of Hormozgan, an official said. Director of a department at Horkozgan’s agricultural organization told Tasnim that Iran is facing the worst locust attack in the past 40 years.

Officials said several swarms of locusts have come from the Arabian peninsula to Iran over the last 10 weeks, some of which have penetrated into farmlands of the province as far as 200 kilometers from the coast.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in February that a locust outbreak in Sudan and Eritrea was spreading rapidly along both sides of the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The FAO also noted that good rains have allowed generations of locust breeding since October 2018, leading to a substantial increase in locust populations and the formation of highly mobile swarms.

The UN agency had also highlighted the control measures in Iran after at least one swarm arrived on the southern coast at the end of January.

Adult locust swarms can fly up to 150 km a day with the wind and adult insects can consume roughly their own weight in fresh food per day.

A very small swarm eats as much in one day as about 35,000 people, posing a devastating threat to crops and food security.

The desert locust is potentially the most dangerous of the locust pests because of the ability of swarms to fly rapidly across great distances. 

Plagues of desert locusts have threatened agricultural production in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia for centuries. The livelihood of at least one-tenth of the world’s human population can be affected by this voracious insect. In 1961, desert locusts attacked agricultural lands in Iran and damaged nearly 2.5 million hectares of farms across the country. 

Recently, Iran was hit by the largest flood disaster in 15 years, killing at least 80 people so far.

Maybe, next there will be some frogs?

Iranian parliament designates all US military forces as terrorists

 Iranian media said Tuesday the parliament has approved a bill that labels all US military forces as terrorist.

The legislation is a step further after Iranian lawmakers last week approved a bill labeling US troops in the Mideast as terrorist, a day after the US terrorism designation for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard came into effect.

The report by the semi-official ISNA news agency said 173 out of 215 lawmakers at the session voted for the bill on Tuesday.

The bill also demanded the Iranian government take unspecified action against other governments that formally back the US designation. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel have all supported the Trump administration’s designation.

Washington’s designation of the IRGC — the first-ever for an entire division of another government — adds another layer of sanctions to the powerful paramilitary force and makes it a crime under US jurisdiction to provide it with material support.

However, the Reuters news agency reported Sunday that the US has largely carved out exceptions so that foreign governments, firms and NGOs are not automatically hit with sanctions for dealing with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The US on Monday said it will no longer exempt any countries from sanctions if they continue to buy Iranian oil.

Also Monday, the US offered $10 million rewards for information on the finances of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.