Guest Post by John Helmer
On Monday, General Lloyd Austin (lead image, left), the US Secretary of Defense, announced that the US is assembling a fleet of warships to defend Israel’s port of Eilat, the Gulf of Aqaba, and Israel’s Red Sea shipping route by threatening to attack Yemen if it exercises its Law of the Sea right to regulate military transit through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (lead image, right).
The Austin fleet is to be assembled from the coalition of NATO states at war with Russia in the Ukraine. Austin’s call, announced by the Pentagon while Austin is in Israel, follows the failure of the USS Eisenhower and its squadron, with additional French and British warships, to prevent the collapse of commercial container and tanker shipping to and from Israel.
“The recent escalation in reckless Houthi attacks originating from Yemen,” Austin announced, “threatens the free flow of commerce, endangers innocent mariners, and violates international law. The Red Sea is a critical waterway that has been essential to freedom of navigation and a major commercial corridor that facilitates international trade. Countries that seek to uphold the foundational principle of freedom of navigation must come together to tackle the challenge posed by this non-state actor launching ballistic missiles and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) at merchant vessels from many nations lawfully transiting international waters.”
“This is an international challenge that demands collective action. Therefore, today I am announcing the establishment of Operation Prosperity Guardian, an important new multinational security initiative under the umbrella of the Combined Maritime Forces and the leadership of its Task Force 153, which focuses on security in the Red Sea. Operation Prosperity Guardian is bringing together multiple countries to include the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain, to jointly address security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, with the goal of ensuring freedom of navigation for all countries and bolstering regional security and prosperity.”
Bahrain on the Persian Gulf — the only Arab state included on Austin’s list — and the Seychelles, the island state in the Indian Ocean, are included to provide shore base facilities for the proposed Yemen-attack fleet. However, no country with naval bases on the Red Sea shore, territorial waters, and exclusive economic zones extending into the waterway — Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, and Djibouti — has publicly agreed to participate or approved this escalation of the Gaza war to benefit Israel.
The Pentagon has also asked the Australian Navy for a frigate to join the Red Sea fleet, but the Australian government in Canberra is reluctant to agree, and Austin has dropped the country from his list.
All of the governments on Austin’s list, with the exception of the US, voted last week at the United Nations General Assembly for Israel to halt its operations in the Gaza war. In this context, none of these states recognizes Israel’s right to impose its blockade of Gaza’s ports extending into Palestine’s territorial waters, the Gaza Maritime Area, and Israel’s de facto military rule of the international waters of the Mediterranean, including the Gaza Marine gas field.
“Freedom of navigation”, Austin’s version of the legal doctrine of his Operation Prosperity Guardian, does not apply to the Gaza Maritime Area.
In the Red Sea, maps of the International Institute for the Law of the Sea Studies show overlapping territorial waters and economic zone claims from the eastern and western shore states, leaving no international waters for the passage of warships, particularly through the southern gateway to the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Austin’s operation is not innocent passage, as the international Law of the Sea requires, and it defies Yemen’s right to exercise prior authorization.
Russia’s response is no response, for the time being.
For a summary up to 2021 of the military record and the international law claims for the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, read this.
Source: https://upsccolorfullnotes.com/red-sea-countries-map/
Source: https://www.marineinsight.com/
In an interview with a Russian-speaking American on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not explicitly address the new US intervention plan in the Middle East.
He did say that “Europe and the United States are now rushing in the Middle East, calling on the Lebanese, Iranians, Iraqis, and Syrians to do everything so that the war in Gaza does not spread to the surrounding territories. Perhaps they need to apply the same fervour to ensure that this does not happen in Ukraine.”
Also on Monday, in the Moscow newspaper Vedomosti, it was reported that Russian experts expect “most likely, the Americans will launch missile and bomb attacks on command centres and military depots of the Houthis, or targeted strikes by special forces may follow in order to eliminate the commanders of the movement. The operation will be roughly comparable to the actions of Western allies in Syria or Iraq.”
The newspaper claimed that, according to its source, “the military forces of Saudi Arabia and the UAE may participate in the operation – their armed forces and their proxies have been waging a sluggish war against Iran’s allies in Yemen since 2015. I think the Arab monarchies themselves would like to involve the Americans in the conflict, but it will not come to a full–scale war.”
The implication is that the Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry, and Kremlin are reluctant to publicly condemn the Austin fleet operation move so as not to upset current Russian relationships with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
What this means for Russia’s relationship with Iran materialized on Monday afternoon when the Iranian Ambassador to Moscow, Kasem Jilali (right), asked for a meeting at the Foreign Ministry, and met Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. If Yemen and the Red Sea were discussed, the official communiqué is keeping it secret. “During the conversation,” the ministry release says, “the Middle East agenda was discussed in detail, with an emphasis on developments in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict zone. There was general concern about the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip. The importance of intensifying international efforts aimed at an early ceasefire, providing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population and turning the situation into a political channel was stressed. The issues of the Syrian settlement were also touched upon, including the continuation of close coordination of efforts between Russia and Iran in the Astana format in the interests of supporting the unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the SA [Syrian Arab Republic]”.
For analysis of the most recent round of Russian-Iranian negotiations, click to read.
In the past, Moscow officials have consistently defended the Yemeni state’s sovereignty, including its territorial waters in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Ministry has also defended “dialogue with the Houthis and other Yemeni political associations, as well as with all interested states”.
Russia has also proposed that the United Nations legalize and regulate all operations impacting Yemen.
But that was long ago. The last but one statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry mentioning the Houthis, the civil war in Yemen, and Saudi military intervention was issued six and a half years ago, on March 17, 2017: “We reaffirm our fundamental position in favour of an early cessation of hostilities and the resumption of a negotiation process in the Republic of Yemen, taking into account the interests of all leading political forces in the country. We continue to believe that the unilateral steps taken by the parties to the conflict, including the current court ruling, as well as the sea and air blockade of certain regions of Yemen controlled by the Houthis and Saleh supporters, are not conducive to creating a favourable environment for restoring trust and restarting the dialogue, and put off the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the crisis, which is so much needed by the long-suffering Yemeni people.”
Abdulmalik Al-Mekhlafi meets Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, January 22, 2018.
In January 2018, Abdulmalik Al-Mekhlafi, Foreign Minister of the Aden-based Yemeni government, met Lavrov in Moscow for talks. “We believe,” Lavrov said at the press conference following their negotiations, “that the UN should henceforth be able to deliver humanitarian aid to Sanaa without fail. It is important to strive to lift the sea and air blockade, to remove all limitations on the deliveries of food, medicines and other prime necessities to all regions of Yemen with no exceptions…Yemen’s Foreign Minister Abdulmalik Al-Mekhlafi and we have agreed to maintain close contacts both directly and via our embassy in Yemen, which due to security reasons has been recently relocated from Sanaa to Riyadh. At the same time, we will continue our dialogue with the Houthis and other Yemeni political associations, as well as with all interested states, including the Arab coalition, on which the further developments in the country and around it depend. We will urge everyone who can contribute to the settlement and the transition from war to a political dialogue to do so as soon as possible.
There is no Foreign Ministry record of a meeting with Hisham Sharaf, Foreign Minister since 2016 of the Sanaa-based Yemeni (Houthi) government. The Russian Embassy in Sanaa was evacuated in December 2017.
In November 2019, Moscow appeared to be saying the only international Red Sea operation it would countenance for Yemen should be led by the United Nations (UN). “We”, declared the Ministry’s press department, “urge the parties to the Yemeni conflict to do everything in their power to keep up this positive change so as to be able to stop the hostilities altogether and to launch a UN-led process of peaceful settlement based on the regard for the interests of all the main political forces as well as religious and regional groups in Yemen. We are still convinced that these developments will not only benefit friendly Yemen but will also help to ensure security of all the neighbouring countries.”
The Chinese government approach appears to be different.
Source: https://maritime-executive.com/
On Sunday, Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), the Chinese state-owned fleet company, announced that it is halting all shipments to and from Israeli seaports. However, unlike its European peers, OOCL did not say it will stop sailing through the Red Sea. The implication, a shipping source comments, is that Beijing has declared its support for the Arab-led blockade of Israel, and will negotiate directly with Houthi and Yemeni officials so that OOCL vessels will be able to navigate safely through the Red Sea and into the Suez Canal, and vice versa. The commercial advantage to the Chinese is plain, the source said. Whether the Chinese Navy will send escorts for Chinese-flagged cargo vessels remains to be seen.
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NATO = First stage N.W.O. / UN armed forces , but nobody calls it that.
Fuck this faggot pussy footin around !
Time for the democrat party to declare war on the entire world …………friend and foe alike.
Deploy merca’s potent MIRACLE weapons !
Crush them under the heel of the lethal-laid up Zumwalt class destroyer/frigate fleet.
Crush them in the talons of the mighty grounded Osprey hunter/killer heli-plane.
Crush them with complexity with the “world class” F-35 hanger warmer.
The enemies of merca will quake before our mighty boondoggles of death !
Oh, hell yeah. Them boondoggles of death will just plain fuck them up. Cry “BULLSHIT” and let slip the Boondoggles of Death. (take that, Willie Shakespear)
You go zappa!
Still got “Joe’s Garage”?
Hell yes…………”Catholic girls” is a hoot.
Great vocals from Ray White.
Shut up scrutinizer.
I just arrived, so you get to be the first one on this thread to be told to go fuck yourself you lying stupid asshole.
A pre-emptive scrutinizing?
What we are seeing is a type of Hollywood production, the problem is the whole act is incapable of highlighting any heroic good guys. The absurdities of the world stage cannot allow any rational actions. The world is therefore willing to accept any bad actors in its production. The question being which actor will finally hit the trip wire?
All supply lines are legitimate targets in war.
I love the uSA invoking “rules of war” with the deliberate incineration of 1.6 million citizens of Tokyo in one night in 1945.
Or the deliberate incineration if over 250,000 German civilians in Dresden in one night.
USA has no moral standing to dictate terms of war.
The open borders suggest uSA has already capitulated.
Rules are anathema to war.
The current Whitehouse suggests this country was anally raped.
It was over TWO nights and was in the neighborhood of over 100,000 deaths.
SMH….
Israel’s Gaza war has ‘spilled over into the Red Sea’
In the name of blockading Israel, these attacks have taken the form of missile strikes on ships serving Israeli ports or boarding parties making ‘inspections’ of ships passing through the Red Sea or taking them over and diverting them to Yemen, as happened with one tanker thus far.
This stretch of water is part of the main shipping route from Europe to Asia through the Suez Canal. It is a choke point which, if closed, as now effectively is occurring, interrupts the entire global supply chain…
If the United States now begins direct military action against the Houthis, it will quickly come up against Iran and the regional conflagration that so far has been averted by all parties may yet break out.
Is this a question that concerns Russia? It most certainly does, because just as China cannot afford to see Russia be defeated by NATO-backed Ukraine, so Russia cannot afford to see Iran be defeated by the United States and its allies inside and outside of NATO.
When the earth catches a cold, the symptoms are genocide.
The Red Sea is where the Chozenites lead the West to die. Book it.
“Flash”
“Thunder”
“The CFR [Council On Foreign Relations, New York City] is the American Branch of a society which originated in England and believes national directives should be obliterated and one-world rule established. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years, and was permitted in the early 1960’s to examine its papers and secret records… I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known”. Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor of International Relations, Georgetown University Foreign Service School, Washington, D.C., author of the epic “Tragedy & Hope”, advocate of one-world government and personal mentor of President William Clinton (who acknowledged Professor Quigley during his 1992 presidential inauguration speech)
The narrow straight between Djibouti and Yemen is called The Gate of Tears. Fitting.
Auntie takes comfort in knowing the USSA has a military installation in Djibouti since at least 2002.
Downvoater wants send moar Yankee Doodle money, troops and maybe even navy to Country 404 instead, yes?
Forgot the “/s” obviously. You Pentagram trolls.
Once the uS Navy enters it will be “The Straight of Queers”
I thought we agreed to call it “Taint”.
The Queer Straight works!
Read Alastair Crooke’s latest bombshell:
Headline Repair Services
“THE US PREPARES ITS UKRAINE WAR COALITION FLEET FOR A FALSE FLAG ATTACK IN THE RED SEA IN ORDER TO OFFICIALLY KICK OFF WW3”
Question: Why was the uSA NAVY ever near the Gulf of Tonkin?
Who told you?
Who benefits?
US NAVY PREPARES TO BLAME AMMO ROOM EXPLOSION ON ATTACK BY YEMEN, WHO WAS ARMED BY IRAN SO WE ARE LEGITIMATELY BOMBING THAILAND NOW.
I grew up in a Navy family. It sucked, moving all the time between Florida and California with three tours in Hawaii and one on Midway Island. Dad’s three brothers also served in the Navy, as did I, as a sonar technician. There was an esprit de corps in the Navy in those days, a bond created among those in peril on the sea.
The best part was finding old friends at a new duty station. My best friend then now lives in Portugal. We surfed lots of waves in our 20’s. The worst part was leaving friends behind and knowing nobody in a new school.
I made no friends during short tours, and there were many. Dad only had an eighth grade education but he was a genius electrical engineer; an electron whisperer. I was born on the Patuxent River Naval base, where the Navy tested their new jets; he maintained their electronics.
My heart pumps USN blue-water blood, but it runs cold when I hear the US Secretary of defense say, “The rapidly escalating consequences of Israel’s finding out after fucking around requires our bold, collective insertion into the fuckfest. We are lubricating, ahem, launching a NATO interdiction, “Liberty Bombing II” to ensure Israel has lots of US Navy lifeboats to strafe.”
This is the US Navy’s next Pearl Harbor and were going to lose a lot of sailors.
“This is the NEW US Navy’s first Pearl Harbor and were going to lose a lot of gaylors.”
FIFY
Awesome diogenes.
Have you studied human bioelectric fields at all?
I really hope someone more edumacated than I looks into it.
From the potassium ion channel level of comunication to the CNS/brain, billions of nanosignals continuously manage the life of every cell and the collective as a whole.
With the human biofield extending around the body, it seems to me that placing a high output radiofrequency emitting device within the biofield would at best be disruptive, at worst? Destructive.
If the DNA of human is a multufrequency antenna in the gigahertz ranges….
Yes.
In my late teens, the combination of Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” (at a time when ‘electric’ was not a common term) and Lobbing Rampa’s “Third Eye”, had me exercising my pineal and pituitary with mantras to be able to see auras (human coronas).
All living things produce a corona, as will crystals in torsion and any metal exposed to voltage. I expect that when Edgar Cayce was giving remote ‘health’ readings, he was examining the patient’s aura as a visual diagnostic for energy-based treatments. Similarly, acupuncture unblocks ‘clogged’ electric channels as do yoga asanas.
In 1939, Semyon and Valentina Kirlian, a Russian electrical engineer and his biologist wife, discovered coronal photography and confirmed Whitman’s song. As a BPA construction manager, I used Kirlian goggles to inspect the corona of high-voltage transmission lines.
Plenty of highly educated and motivated people have examined the human bioelectric field, with good and bad intent because it is highly susceptible to both.
Our neural networks, cranial and solar plexus, are infinity finer ‘anteena’ than anything produced by man. They are easily disrupted by directed energy, deleteriously. Microwaves can be attuned so that those in range are driven mad, made paranoid, homicidal… you name it. Those frequencies are well mapped.
Microwaves have already been ‘weaponized’ to control human cattle but, absent chronic WiFi screen time, are a critical ‘future’ threat only to those who live in big cities and never get barefoot in nature to ground and recharge their auras.
DNA responds to everything you think, feel and do. It has an acute response to emphatic willpower and encodes genetic memories. The effects of microwaves on the bioelectric fields and DNA of plants, animals and people are well documented…
The us position the fleet in Operation: Isaac onto the altar they made in the red sea, the Israelis will provide the holy fire to burn the human sacrifice via usa made missiles.
The lord provides the sacrificial us navy!
Again.
“The Federal Reserve Act
Most people think it’s the middle section of the United States government; it’s not! The Federal Reserve Act is a stockholder owned company. It’s illegal, it’s against the Constitution of the United States, but nobody dares oppose it. Now, what most people don’t realize is that the Constitution says: Congress will set our weights and measures and the values of our dollar. But the Federal Reserve Act does that!
Now the Federal Reserve Act was pushed through by Woodrow Wilson, the first Illuminati president since Thomas Jefferson. And he was smart! He adjourned everybody to go home for the Christmas holidays, and kept 55 congressmen and senators back that belong to the Illuminati, just held back before they could run Congress. And before that everybody could get back here during Congress, and they passed the Federal Reserve Act. You see, now they do it in a different way: they own everybody.”
It’s the Illuminati, and they belive that the Pindar: Moloch Mammon, always a Rothschild is GOD.
“they gain control the world by bankrupting their own businesses. The Illuminati owns most, I would say 99.09% of the stores that you walk into and shop, and the gas stations you go to. And they are going to destroy them on purpose! They are in the process of buying up, for the last few years, of stores they don’t own. They just bought up two guys, and you can watch for them to go out of business. And they keep in business, the ones that they’ve always owned , and they are going to bankrupt the ones they don’t own, and cripple them and destroy them! And the idea of taking over is to bankrupt the whole world, where nothing is of any value, and the currency does not exist anywhere, and then come back and solve all the problems!’
“the oil shortage that doesn’t exist. They say that they destroy their own oil wells, that they hide their own oil, so nobody can have it. They state how they destroy the coal mines, and shut the coal mines down. They shut the electricity down. They say how they cripple the country, and no food is grown. It states how they pick and derail trains, so that no trains go. It states how they sink thousands of ships every year. ”
The common name for the Illuminati is the Conspiracy or the Great Conspiracy
‘Atlas Shrugged’ is the book that maps the takeover of whole of the world. It is not a political book. It is an Illuminati book! The book was ordered, written and produced by Philip Rothschild, the leader of the Illuminati in his day and age. It was ordered and written by a woman, named Ayn Rand. And she was, at that time, one of those Rothschilds’ mistresses. When she wrote the book; it was supposed to be a novel, but It’s a code book! And within the book is a step by step plan to take over the whole world, by taking over the United States.
They look at the world as a chess board, and watch and control both sides.
The ONLY way to defeat them is to destroy their financial power the poewer they have over the money system.
Let me guess, they are going to sink a nuclear powered ship in the Red Sea off of Yemen. Where it will leak and poison the ocean for a couple of decades.
The UN will declare the Red Sea “off limits” due to “deadly radiation levels” and an alternative canal will be dug through Palestine to solve the shipping crisis.
The DE-parting of the Red Sea?
Houthis. Nothing but respect for those guys. They make the Taliban look like suburban kids in comparison.
If you can’t use Ukraine to start WW3, then try Israel…right?
The recent escalation in reckless American attacks originating from bankers, threatens the free flow of commerce, endangers innocent mariners, and violates international law.
Fixadented it.