John Helmer, in a brilliant article for the Burning Platform, has put together the best analysis I’ve seen about the military maneuvering going on right now in the Middle East. If this article doesn’t make it real that we are teetering on a razor’s edge of full-blown World War III, then nothing will. You suffer from a hopeless case of normalcy bias and I can’t help you.
Both sides are engaged in a high-stakes game of chess, and one miscalculation by either side at this point leads to full-on war between the world’s two most heavily armed nuclear superpowers and their allies — U.S./U.K./NATO/Canada/Australia vs. China/Russia/Iran/North Korea. Two wildcards in this clashing of worldviews are Turkey and India. Nobody really knows for sure how these two very formidable nations, one Muslim the other Hindu, will act when the missles (conventional and otherwise) start to fly and the bodies start to pile up.
What the article by Helmer tells me is that times have changed and China, thanks to its decades-long, very fruitful economic relationship with America, is no longer a third-rate power, economically or militarily. It’s a force to be reckoned with and the perfect military partner for Russia. One has natural resources galore, the other has manpower and technology. Iran is also technologically advanced.
So the U.S. government created its own enemy, China, and then balks when it sides with Russia. Sorry, but that kind of stupidity can only be explained by the fact that we as a nation have been governed for way too long by a cabal of elitists who are obsessed by greed, self-indulgence and self-importance. All of their little elitist clubs over the years, outfits like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, World Economic Forum, the Club of Rome, Bilderbergs, etc., have preached and preached about the necessity of bringing China into the 21st century economically and that a prosperous China would lead to a peaceful China willing to accept Western values. That was always a lie, but it was a convenient lie that made the Western elites more wealthy and powerful at the expense of the struggling American middle class, whose well-paying jobs and individual freedoms were disrespected at every turn.
Now we’ve got a big problem on our hands and it looks like the psychopaths in Washington, D.C., are ready to step right into the mess that they created, and they will get a lot of us Americans killed in the process. We know they won’t loose a minute’s sleep over that, but what they will wet their pants in fear over is if their own cushy, privileged lifestyles get taken down with the country as a whole. That’s the one thing, the only thing, that scares them to death.
The article below should drive us all to our knees in a desperate prayer for peace and repentence.
By John Helmer
The sudden change of US warfighting plans in defence of Israel, disclosed on Saturday by General Lloyd Austin, the US Defense Secretary, reveals the trap which Russia, China, and Iran have opened, and the desperate measures the US has taken as it falls in.
Austin announced that he has “redirected the movement of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to the Central Command area of responsibility. This carrier strike group is in addition to the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which is currently operating in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. It will further increase our force posture and strengthen our capabilities and ability to respond to a range of contingencies.”
“I have also activated the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery as well as additional Patriot battalions to locations throughout the region to increase force protection for U.S. forces.”
The Eisenhower’s new destination has not been announced. US military media are claiming it will be the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea, or both.
The Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR) is officially the Arab and Iranian territories east of the Mediterranean shoreline, focusing on the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and targeting Iran, Russia, and China.
“In a small change that could have major meaning,” Pentagon officials are telling their press, “the U.S. is changing its plans for the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group. The change could place the strike group in waters where Chinese warships have been active in recent months. Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the Eisenhower strike group would head to the eastern Mediterranean instead of Europe as had been planned. Sailing in the eastern Mediterranean would have put the strike group to the west of Israel. But that plan changed after a week in which U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq came under fire from Iran-backed militias, and a U.S. Navy ship in the Red Sea downed missiles launched from Yemen…On Saturday, Austin said in a statement the strike group will now go to the ‘Central Command area of responsibility.’ Central Command covers a vast amount of Middle East territory, including the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.”
The purpose of “these steps,” Austin said, is to “bolster regional deterrence efforts, increase force protection for U.S. forces in the region, and assist in the defense of Israel.” The priority order is a switch. Israel comes last – Iran, Russia and China come first.
For the first time too, the US command has acknowledged what President Vladimir Putin meant when he said in Beijing last Wednesday, October 18, that he has deployed MiG-31s armed with Kinzhal missiles within range of the Eisenhower.
Austin added for Sunday television viewers in the US: “If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see, our advice is: don’t. We maintain the right to defend ourselves, and we won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action.”
The US doctrine of self-defence while attacking states like Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Somalia isn’t new. In September 1969, when Libyan Army Captain Muammar Qaddafi took control of his country, he carefully skirted the US Air Force (USAF) base at Wheelus (Mellaha), which was stocking nuclear weapons at the time; Qaddafi then squeezed the US forces out of Wheelus over twelve months, but the USAF evacuated its nuclear weapons swiftly.
Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon don’t have time; the Israelis even less.
But Austin’s rush to change the sailing orders for the Eisenhower and fly THAADs and Patriots to US bases in the Arab territories reveals he’s short of time too. This is because the entire portfolio of US air defence systems is being defeated. The Russian Kinzhal has defeated the US Patriot batteries around Kiev; the Hamas swarms of drones and rockets defeated Israel’s Iron Dome on October 7. THAAD has been tested in combat once, against a Houthi missile, rocket and drone attack against Abu Dhabi targets in January 2022. “Several were intercepted, a few of them [weren’t].”
The USS Carney’s firing against Houthi missiles and drones in the Red Sea has exposed how vulnerable that southern line of attack against Israel would be if the Houthis try swarming instead of testing their ordnance, as they did against the Carney. Originally, in the Pentagon version of Friday, October 19, three Houthi missiles and several drones were intercepted on their way to Israel. A day later, CNN revised the story by reporting “a US official familiar with the situation” to say there had been a “nine-hour duel” and four cruise missiles and fifteen drones came down.
Tongue-biting and stammering are clinical symptoms of the mind which knows what to say but has difficulty getting it out; this usually causes loss of self-esteem. When General Austin is speaking like this, it signals the mind doesn’t know what to say, and is desperate for self-esteem.
Austin also signalled that the Pentagon is preparing rapid deployment forces for evacuation of air and ground base soldiers and airmen in Jordan, Syria and Iraq if they are swarmed by protesters. “I have placed,” Austin said, “an additional number of forces on prepare-to-deploy orders as part of prudent contingency planning, to increase their readiness and ability to quickly respond as required.” The likelihood that the Pentagon is laying plans for US ground troops to fight to keep the bases is low; secret Congressional briefings are bound to leak if that possibility is entering the US presidential race at this stage.*
Instead, these are Kabul Airport type evacuation missions. The fear in the Biden White House, and the Democratic National Committee, is that US military personnel or other officials may be taken hostage following swarm attacks by the Arabs across the region.
According to a military source near Washington, “Biden got them out of Kabul. [President Jimmy] Carter didn’t get them out of Teheran. If CENTCOM has anything in mind it’s missile defence capability, readiness and base security – and figuring what the hell the Chinese are up to.”
Russia and China are saying little, doing more.
By redeploying the Eisenhower from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, the US has moved the aircraft carrier out of range of Russian Kinzhals in the Black Sea. However, in the Persian Gulf, the Eisenhower will be within shooting distance of MiG-31s and the Kinzhal in the Caspian Sea, as well as other long-range Russian missiles.
RIGHT: The red line from international waters and airspace of the Caspian to the mid-Persian Gulf is about 1,700 kms.
In the Red Sea, the US fleet will be within range of several types of Iranian ballistic missiles against which there have been no US combat tests to date. Click here to review the Iranian missile armoury, including estimated range, payload and accuracy. There is ample evidence that the general staffs of Russia, China, and Iran are currently coordinating in the Persian Gulf, where there was a visible surface navy exercise in March, and since then much that is invisible in intelligence-gathering and sharing, targeting, early-warning systems, and the like.
According to this source, the anti-air and land target capabilities of the DC-10 missile arming the Chinese Navy’s Type-052D destroyer now in the Persian Gulf “poses a number of security challenges for the United States. The DH-10 has a low flight altitude that increases its stealth capabilities against the air defense radars. The DH-10 can also be updated during its flight with new targeting data, allowing it to change targets. The stealth capabilities employed by the DH-10 allow it to confuse or outmaneuver the radars and defenses around ships in the region.”
SOURCE: LEO HOHMANN
