The Prophecy is much more than seeing into the future. For the Prophecy sees without the element of time. For the Prophecy sees what is, what was, and what always shall be. 11:11 LLC
History of earthquakes in Lower Hudson ValleySwapna Venugopal Ramaswamy 9:05 a.m. ET Feb. 7, 2018 At around 6:14 a.m. this morning, a 2.2-magnitude earthquake was reported about three miles northwest of Mohegan Lake in Yorktown, according to the United States Geological Survey. The epicenter of the quake was in Putnam Valley. Social media was rife with posts on the quake with people from Chappaqua, Cortlandt, Lewisboro, Mahopac and Putnam Valley chiming in with their rattling experiences, though it wasn’t nearly as strong as the 5.0 earthquake our forefathers experienced here in 1783. Lower Hudson Valley earthquakes through the years: 1783 — The epicenter of a magnitude 5.0 earthquake may have been the Westchester-Putnam county line and was felt as far south as Philadelphia. 1884 — A magnitude 5.2 earthquake was centered off Rockaway, Queens, causing property damage but no injuries to people. A dead dog was reported. 1970 to 1987 — Between these years, instruments at the Lamont-Doherty Observatory in Rockland County recorded 21 quakes in Westchester and two in Manhattan. October 1985 — A magnitude 4.0 earthquake was centered in an unincorporated part of Greenburgh between Ardsley and Yonkers. Tremors shook the metropolitan area and were felt in Philadelphia, southern Canada and Long Island. November 1988 — A quake 90 miles north of Quebec City in eastern Canada registered magnitude 6.0 with tremors felt in the Lower Hudson Valley and New York City. June 1991 — A 4.4-magnitude quake struck west of Albany, rattling homes. April 1991 — A quake registering between magnitude 2.0 and 2.6 struck Westchester and Fairfield, Conn. It lasted just five seconds and caused no damage. https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-15/html/container.html January 2003 — Two small earthquakes struck the area surrounding Hastings-on-Hudson. One was a magnitude of 1.2, the other 1.4. March 2006 — Two earthquakes struck Rockland. The first, at 1.1 magnitude, hit 3.3 miles southwest of Pearl River; the second, 1.3 magnitude, was centered in the West Nyack-Blauvelt-Pearl River area. July 2014 — “Micro earthquake” struck, 3.1 miles beneath the Appalachian Trail in a heavily wooded area of Garrison. January 2016 — A 2.1 magnitude earthquake occurred at 12:58 a.m. northwest of Ringwood, N.J., and the earthquake was felt in the western parts of Ramapo, including the Hillburn and Sloatsburg areas. April 2017 — A 1.3 magnitude quake rumbled in Pawling on April 10. Putnam County residents in Brewster, Carmel, Patterson and Putnam Valley, as well as Dutchess County residents in Wingdale felt the earthquake. Twitter: @SwapnaVenugopal
BY DENNIS M. POWELL, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 03/23/23 11:00 AM E
A quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln about the fate of America reads, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
The world is increasingly dangerous. China is courting Russia in a new alliance and extending its sphere of influence into South and Central America, Africa and the Middle East — while the United States continues to wage warfare and deplete its treasury and arsenal in pursuit of more nations adopting democracy.
Meanwhile, China is branding itself a peacemaker. As Foreign Affairs recently reported, “While U.S. President Joe Biden’s Middle East team was focused on normalizing Saudi-Israeli relations, China delivered the most significant regional development since the Abraham Accords: a deal to end seven years of Saudi-Iranian estrangement.” Also, China recently introduced a 12-point plan for peace in Ukraine that included “abandoning Cold War mentality.”
Since the end of World War II, the United States has promoted freedom and democracy around the world from its position as the only superpower and great economy. China is now trying to create its own new world order, based on its economic and military hegemony, which has put us at the brink of conflict.
The fact is, America may not be able to win a war against China today. As Josh Luckenbaugh concluded last fall in a commentary picked up by the CATO Institute, “At the end, defeat for the U.S. and its allies would be possible, if not likely. In recent years, U.S. war games have generally shown Beijing as the victor.” Yet this is incomprehensible for most Americans.
But the whole notion of a shooting war with China may never happen, because our social order is crumbling from within — as we trend toward fulfillment of Lincoln’s prognostication about the destruction of America. There is the possibility that, when presented with the prospect of a “hot war” that threatens internet access and creature comforts, many Americans may just surrender what they consider to be a racist and fundamentally flawed nation.
An entire lexicon of terms designed to shut down debate is being designed to promote conformity to a fixed set of ideas promoted by progressives about climate, race, gender and other matters. Debate ends when terms such as “racist,” “sexist,” “bigot,” “xenophobe,” “privilege,” “patriarchy,” “oppressor,” “supremacist,” “Nazi” and “micro-aggression” enter conversations. Dissent is viewed as a form of violence that can drive a generation of Americans to seek “safe places.” There is no effort to find middle ground — the essence of democracy.
The fallout is everywhere. Congress is dysfunctional. President Biden often fans the flames of division when talking about MAGA Republicans. Cable TV and some other major news outlets are partisan. Comedy comes under attack. Classic books are being rewritten to conform to the “woke” ethos. University admissions are sometimes based on ethnicity, as may be hiring in government or corporations. The National Museum of African American History stated that “whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared.” Before it removed and apologized for its “Whiteness” chart, the museum defined “white qualities” as self-reliance, work ethic, nuclear family, punctuality and putting work before play.
China, meanwhile, recently introduced its Global Civilization Initiative, which “calls for respect for the diversity of civilizations, upholding the common values of humanity in pursuing peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, and promoting robust international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation.”
China continues to build its brand and influence at the highest levels of power (globalists) by making its markets available. It is positioning itself as a peacemaker in the Middle East and, potentially, Ukraine. It is buying influence and respect by investing in infrastructure in third-world nations. And, it is all-in with its rhetoric supporting diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice.
The thought of our great nation ending with a whimper no longer may be far-fetched. The most lethal enemy America faces may be that which comes from within. When the American people no longer are able to share ideas, the idea of America dies.
A proxy war pitting the United States against a paranoid adversary with a massive nuclear arsenal at his command: What could possibly go wrong?
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Peace activists wearing masks of Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and US President Joe Biden pose with mock nuclear missiles in front of the US embassy in Berlin on January 29, 2021, in an action to call for more progress in nuclear disarmament. (John MacDougall / AFP via Getty Images)
Bosley Crowther, chief film critic for The New York Times, didn’t quite know what to make of Dr. Strangelove at the time of its release in January 1964. Stanley Kubrick’s dark anti-war satire was “beyond any question the most shattering sick joke I’ve ever come across,” he wrote. But if the film had its hilarious moments, Crowther found its overall effect distinctly unnerving. What exactly was Kubrick’s point? “When virtually everybody turns up stupid or insane—or, what is worse, psychopathic—I want to know what this picture proves.”
We may find it odd for an influential critic to expect a movie to “prove” anything. Kubrick’s aim was manifestly not to prove, but to subvert and discomfi
With feature-length hyperbole—not a wisp of subtlety allowed—Dr. Strangelove made the case that a deep strain of madness had infected the entire US national security apparatus. From the “War Room” that was the Pentagon’s holiest of holies all the way to the cockpit of a B-52 hurtling toward its assigned Russian target with a massive nuclear bomb in its belly, whack jobs were in charge.
A mere two years after the Cuban missile crisis, few Americans viewed the prospect of nuclear Armageddon as a joking matter. Yet here was Dr. Strangelove treating this deadly serious topic as suitable for raucous (and slightly raunchy) comedy. That’s what bothered Crowther, who admitted to being “troubled by the feeling, which runs through the film, of discredit and even contempt for our whole defense establishment, up to and even including the hypothetical Commander-in-Chief.”
If the nation owed its very survival to that defense establishment—a widely accepted supposition during the Cold War—Kubrick’s contemptuous attitude was nothing short of blasphemous.
We may imagine other inhabitants of the circle in which Crowther lived and worked sharing his unease. Collectively, they comprised a world of believers—not a faith community in a religious sense but an elite establishment. Members of that establishment accepted as gospel an identifiable set of political, cultural, and moral propositions that defined mid-20th-century American life.
Chief among them was a conviction that communism—monolithic, aggressive, and armed to the teeth—posed an existential threat to what was then known as the Free World. In the face of that, it had become incumbent upon the United States to arm itself to the teeth. The preeminent symbol of US readiness to thwart that Red threat was a massive nuclear strike force held on hair-trigger alert to obliterate the entire Soviet empire. (A typical 1961 report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested that a full-scale US nuclear attack on the Soviet Union would kill half its population, or 108 million people. An analysis the Joint Chiefs provided to the Kennedy White House that same year put the dead for Russia and China together at upwards of 600 million.
Instant readiness to wage World War III thereby held the key to averting World War III. Politicians, generals, and PhD-wielding “defense intellectuals” all affirmed the impeccable logic of such an arrangement. As the menacing motto of the Strategic Air Command, which controlled America’s nuclear bombers and missiles, put it: “Peace Is Our Profession.”
Kubrick was not alone in expressing concern that such a saber-rattling pursuit of peace might yield an altogether different outcome. Could policies supposedly designed to prevent a nuclear holocaust actually produce it?
For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.
In a sense, the “disarmament” movement of those years compares to the collective American response to the climate crisis of our own day. Sometimes the most expeditious approach to preserving the status quo, after all, is to make a pretense of embracing change. Think of Frank Sinatra partnering with Elvis Presley in a duet of “Love Me Tender.” Even without Irving Berlin and the Gershwins, Old Blue Eyes kept on selling records well into the era of rock-and-roll.
PUTIN SPOILS THE PARTY
Then came the collapse of communism.
As if at a stroke, worries about World War III dissipated. American schoolchildren soon forgot all about mandatory duck-and-cover drills. Dr. Strangelove became a curiosity from another era like The Maltese Falcon or Gone with the Wind. And while the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists continued to update its creepy “Doomsday Clock,” the public ceased to pay much attention.
Considered in retrospect, Bosley Crowther had seemingly gotten the better of Stanley Kubrick in their little tiff. After all, a quarter-century after Dr. Strangelove appeared, the Cold War ended peacefully without a hint of World War III. Yes, a nuclear holocaust remained hypothetically possible, but it was no longer something worth fretting about.
Yet as nuclear nightmares faded, blissful dreams of peace did not take their place. Indeed, the ensuing post–Cold War era, extending from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, found the United States perpetually at war or verging on war. During that period, however, few paid serious attention to the possibility that any of our conflicts might involve the use of nuclear weapons.
One might have thought that Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the protracted conflict that followed would have revived the nuclear nightmares of an earlier era. After all, Vladimir Putin has shown no reticence when it comes to sowing death and destruction (nor to implicitly threatening the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons). His determination to achieve Russia’s political objectives regardless of cost seems readily apparent.
Furthermore, US officials and major media outlets have concurred in classifying the Russian president as uniquely dangerous. For example, a recent front-page news article in The New York Times—not an editorial or opinion piece—described Putin as beset by “grievances, paranoia and [an] imperialist mind-set” (that is, as an embittered nutcase).
The Biden administration’s insouciance regarding Russian nukes therefore qualifies as, at the very least, odd. According to my colleague at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft Anatol Lieven, “The greatest threat of nuclear catastrophe that humanity has ever faced is now centered on the Crimean peninsula.” His understanding of all things Russian greatly exceeds my own, but that assessment strikes me as about right. And while Planet Earth dangles on the edge of an abyss, the US response is to debate whether or not to supply Ukraine with F-16s.
As far as I can tell, Biden administration policy regarding that embattled land rests on one crucial assumption: In the face of an open-ended, incremental US escalation, the Kremlin will ultimately submit. In turn, Ukraine’s inevitable victory will endow Europe with peace and security until the end of time.
How that assumption meshes with the conviction that Putin is mentally unbalanced isn’t clear. Counting on an irrational actor to behave rationally is an inherently risky proposition.
WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?
Ukraine has become the locus of a conflict that, willy-nilly, pits Russia against the West—which means against the United States. How far can Washington push Putin before he tries to retaliate in some fashion against his primary adversary? Does President Biden even recognize the urgency of that question? If he does, he’s chosen not to share his concerns with the American people.
Granted, Biden has made clear his determination to prevent any direct American involvement in combat with Russia. The president likely calculates that the willingness of Americans to support Ukraine with billions of dollars in weapons and munitions stems in part from the fact that no US troops are fighting and dying.
But there may well be another assumption that underlies popular support for US involvement in Ukraine—namely, that the people in charge, beginning with the man in the White House, know what’s actually going on. Dr. Strangelove confronted that assumption head-on 69 years ago and rejected it utterly, depicting the people then in charge as somewhere between clueless and just plain dangerous.
Not for a moment would I liken Mr. Biden to that movie’s President Merkin Muffley, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to Buck Turgidson, or any senior officer on active duty to Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper, the crazed commander of that film’s Burpelson Air Force Base. (Although I do wonder why the four-star Air Force general who recently told his troops to get ready for war with China in two years wasn’t immediately canned.)
Here’s the problem, at least as I see it: However smart and well-intentioned, the people in charge in Washington today don’t know everything they think they know—and everything they need to know either. Detailed studies of the Cuban missile crisis have revealed that Kennedy and his men were acting on information that was all too often inadequate or simply wrong. They thought themselves in a position to control events when they weren’t. To a considerable extent, the United States and the Soviet Union avoided war in October 1962 through sheer dumb luck—and the selective disobedience of certain US and Soviet junior officers who knew a stupid order when they heard one.
Of course, that was way back in the 1960s, ancient history as far as most Americans are concerned. Today, thanks to the wonders of advanced technology, US intelligence and decision-making are much improved, right? Alas, recent screwups, including the disastrous termination of the Afghan War, don’t treat that claim kindly.
A proxy war pitting the United States against a paranoid adversary with a massive nuclear arsenal at his command: What could possibly go wrong? Kubrick’s timeless masterpiece invites us to reflect on that question—and the sooner we do, the better.
Andrew J. BacevichAndrew J. Bacevich is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new book, Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Long War, co-edited with Danny Sjursen, is forthcoming.
Peace activists wearing masks of Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and US President Joe Biden pose with mock nuclear missiles in front of the US embassy in Berlin on January 29, 2021, in an action to call for more progress in nuclear disarmament. (John MacDougall / AFP via Getty Images)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
Bosley Crowther, chief film critic for The New York Times, didn’t quite know what to make of Dr. Strangelove at the time of its release in January 1964. Stanley Kubrick’s dark anti-war satire was “beyond any question the most shattering sick joke I’ve ever come across,” he wrote. But if the film had its hilarious moments, Crowther found its overall effect distinctly unnerving. What exactly was Kubrick’s point? “When virtually everybody turns up stupid or insane—or, what is worse, psychopathic—I want to know what this picture proves.”
We may find it odd for an influential critic to expect a movie to “prove” anything. Kubrick’s aim was manifestly not to prove, but to subvert and discomfit
Top Stories00:0With feature-length hyperbole—not a wisp of subtlety allowed—Dr. Strangelove made the case that a deep strain of madness had infected the entire US national security apparatus. From the “War Room” that was the Pentagon’s holiest of holies all the way to the cockpit of a B-52 hurtling toward its assigned Russian target with a massive nuclear bomb in its belly, whack jobs were in charge.
A mere two years after the Cuban missile crisis, few Americans viewed the prospect of nuclear Armageddon as a joking matter. Yet here was Dr. Strangelove treating this deadly serious topic as suitable for raucous (and slightly raunchy) comedy. That’s what bothered Crowther, who admitted to being “troubled by the feeling, which runs through the film, of discredit and even contempt for our whole defense establishment, up to and even including the hypothetical Commander-in-Chief.”
If the nation owed its very survival to that defense establishment—a widely accepted supposition during the Cold War—Kubrick’s contemptuous attitude was nothing short of blasphemous.
We may imagine other inhabitants of the circle in which Crowther lived and worked sharing his unease. Collectively, they comprised a world of believers—not a faith community in a religious sense but an elite establishment. Members of that establishment accepted as gospel an identifiable set of political, cultural, and moral propositions that defined mid-20th-century American life.
Chief among them was a conviction that communism—monolithic, aggressive, and armed to the teeth—posed an existential threat to what was then known as the Free World. In the face of that, it had become incumbent upon the United States to arm itself to the teeth. The preeminent symbol of US readiness to thwart that Red threat was a massive nuclear strike force held on hair-trigger alert to obliterate the entire Soviet empire. (A typical 1961 report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested that a full-scale US nuclear attack on the Soviet Union would kill half its population, or 108 million people. An analysis the Joint Chiefs provided to the Kennedy White House that same year put the dead for Russia and China together at upwards of 600 million.)
Instant readiness to wage World War III thereby held the key to averting World War III. Politicians, generals, and PhD-wielding “defense intellectuals” all affirmed the impeccable logic of such an arrangement. As the menacing motto of the Strategic Air Command, which controlled America’s nuclear bombers and missiles, put it: “Peace Is Our Profession.”
Kubrick was not alone in expressing concern that such a saber-rattling pursuit of peace might yield an altogether different outcome. Could policies supposedly designed to prevent a nuclear holocaust actually produce it?
Arbiters of American culture like Crowther might have bridled at such a thought but proved unable to prevent it from gaining purchase. For authors of pulp fiction thrillers and Hollywood studio executives, the anxieties induced by the possibility of nuclear war were pure catnip. In 1964 alone, in addition to Dr. Strangelove, major movie releases included Fail Safe (Moscow and New York City are vaporized) and Seven Days in May (a military plot to overthrow a dovish US president is barely averted). The near-miss of the Cuban missile crisis endowed such fictional plots with an eerie element of verisimilitude. So, too, did the USSR’s atmospheric detonation of a 50-megaton nuclear weapon in October 1961. That “Tsar Bomba” was over 1,500 times more powerful than both of the obliterating atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to end World War II.
As long as the Cold War continued, popular worries about a single spasm of violence extinguishing humankind persisted, with national leaders obliged to offer at least gestures of sympathetic concern. Thus was born the project that came to be known as “nuclear disarmament,” which dated from President John F. Kennedy’s justifiably famous June 1963 speech at American University. Here was his inaugural “pay any price, bear any burden” speech of 1961 turned inside out and upside down. As if anticipating the cultural mood of our own day, the commander-in-chief vowed to “help make the world safe for diversity.” What followed was JFK at his most eloquent:
The quake was at a depth of 184 km (114 miles), hitting at 16:47 UTC.
It was felt in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, alongside a number of Pakistani cities including Islamabad and Lahore.
Elsewhere, India’s ANI news agency reported that tremors were felt in New Delhi, the country’s capital.
Witnesses have described to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre feeling “strong jolts” and “vertical shaking.”
The earthquake located on a map (USGS)
According to CNN, residents were seen evacuating their homes out onto the street. Trees were also seen shaking.
At present, the United States Geological Survey has issued a green alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. To this end, it estimates a low likelihood of casualties and damage.
At least seven people including two children have been injured in Khyber, Swabi, Mardan and Shangla in Pakistan, as confirmed to CNN by Bilal Faizi, spokesperson of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial rescue services.
The resulting landslides have also blocked roads in the northern Pakistani city of Abbotabad.
People come out of a restaurant after a tremor was felt in Lahore, Pakistan on 21 March, 2023 (REUTERS)
According to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 7,000 people have been killed in earthquakes in Afghanistan over the last decade.
In June 2022, an earthquake measuring 5.9 struck in the south-east region of Afghanistan. 80% of homes were damaged in the heavily impacted areas of Khost and Paktika.
Triggering huge casualties, the 2022 quake saw over 1,000 deaths and 1,500 injuries.
Afghanistan is situated on the edge of the Eurasian plate, located between a number of fault lines between the Indian and Eurasian plates.
Measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, the strongest earthquake recorded in Afghanistan occurred on 6 June 1956 in the Kabul region.
FILE PHOTO: Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr delivers a sermon to worshippers at the Kufa mosque near Najaf, Iraq November 4, 2022 REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo
Profile: Moqtada Sadr
Moqtada al-Sadr the Antichrist
Moqtada Sadr has been a powerful figure in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Although the situation has changed in the country since the radical Shia cleric went into self-imposed exile in Iran in 2007, he appears to have has lost none of his influence and has maintained his wide support among many of Iraq’s impoverished Shia Muslims.
At times he has called for a national rebellion against foreign troops and sent out his Mehdi Army militiamen to confront the “invaders” and Iraqi security forces.
At others he has appeared more compromising, seeking for himself a political role within the new Iraq and helping form the national unity government in December 2010.
He returned to Iraq on 5 January 2011. Weeks before the withdrawal of US troops from the country, as negotiations were ongoing between Baghdad and Washington over a possible extension of their mission, he threatened to reactivate the Mehdi Army in case an extension is agreed. Prayer leader The youngest son of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq Sadr – who was assassinated in 1999, reportedly by Iraqi agents – Moqtada Sadr was virtually unknown outside Iraq before the March 2003 invasion.
But the collapse of Baathist rule revealed his power base – a network of Shia charitable institutions founded by his father.
Moqtada Sadr was virtually unknown outside Iraq before the invasion, but quickly gained a following In the first weeks following the US-led invasion, Moqtada Sadr’s followers patrolled the streets of Baghdad’s Shia suburbs, distributing food, providing healthcare and taking on many of the functions of local government.
They also changed the name of the Saddam City area to Sadr City. Moqtada Sadr also continued his father’s practice of holding Friday prayers to project his voice to a wider audience.
The practice undermined the traditional system of seniority in Iraqi Shia politics and contributed to the development of rivalries with two of Iraq’s Grand Ayatollahs, Kazim al-Hairi and Ali Sistani. Moqtada Sadr drew attention to their links with Iran, whose influence on Iraq’s political and religious life his followers resented. Moqtada Sadr has become a symbol of resistance to foreign occupation He also called on Shia spiritual leaders to play an active role in shaping Iraq’s political future, something most avoided.
Armed force
Moqtada Sadr also used his Friday sermons to express vocal opposition to the US-led occupation and the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC).
In June 2003, he established a militia group, the Mehdi Army, pledging to protect the Shia religious authorities in the holy city of Najaf.
He also set up a weekly newspaper, al-Hawzah, which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) banned in March 2004 for inciting anti-US violence. The move caused fighting to break out between the Mehdi Army and US-led coalition forces in Najaf, Sadr City and Basra.
The following month, the US said an Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant for Moqtada Sadr in connection with the murder of the moderate Shia leader, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, in April 2003. Moqtada Sadr strongly denied any role.
The Mehdi Army was involved in fierce fighting with US forces in August 2004 in Najaf. Hostilities between the Mehdi Army and US forces resumed in August 2004 in Najaf and did not stop until Ayatollah Sistani brokered a ceasefire. The fighting left hundreds dead and wounded.
During the negotiations for a truce, the Americans also reportedly agreed to lay aside the warrant for Moqtada Sadr.
The fierce clashes continued in Sadr City, however, and only ended in October after the Mehdi Army had sustained heavy losses. Political power
Though costly, the violence cemented Moqtada Sadr’s standing as a force to be reckoned with in Iraq. Supporters of Moqtada Sadr have performed strongly in all elections since the 2003 invasion
He became a symbol of resistance to foreign occupation – a counterpoint to established Shia groups such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) and the Daawa Party.
Despite this, Moqtada Sadr chose to join his rivals’ coalition for the December 2005 elections – the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
The alliance had easily won Iraq’s first post-invasion election the previous January, and with the Sadr Bloc on board again came out on top.
In the months of government negotiations that followed, Moqtada Sadr used his influence to push for the appointment of Nouri Maliki, then Daawa’s deputy leader, as prime minister. In return, his supporters got powerful positions in the cabinet.
At the same time, extremist Sunni Islamist militant groups – increasingly supported by Iraq’s marginalised Sunni Arab minority – had begun to target the Shia community, not just foreign troops. Insurgents attacked Shia Islam’s most important shrines and killed many Shia politicians, clerics, soldiers, police and civilians. In 2006 and 2007, thousands of people were killed as the sectarian conflict raged in Iraq.
As the sectarian violence worsened, the Mehdi Army was increasingly accused of carrying out reprisal attacks against Sunni Arabs.
In 2006 and 2007, thousands of people were killed as the sectarian conflict raged. The Iraqi security forces seemed unable to stop the violence, though many blamed this on the infiltration of the interior and defence ministries by the Mehdi Army and other Shia militias.
One Pentagon report described the Mehdi Army as the greatest threat to Iraq’s security – even more so than al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iran was accused of arming it with sophisticated bombs used in attacks on coalition forces.
Showdown
Then in early 2007, after US President George W Bush ordered a troop “surge” in Iraq, it was reported that Moqtada Sadr had left for Iran and told his supporters
In August 2007, heavy fighting broke out between the Mehdi Army and Sciri’s Badr Brigade in Karbala, leaving many dead. In March 2008, the Iraqi government ordered a major offensive against the Mehdi Army in Basra
The internecine fighting was condemned by many Shia, and Moqtada Sadr was forced to declare a ceasefire.
In March 2008, Mr Maliki ordered a major offensive against the militia in the southern city. At first, the Mehdi Army seemed to have fended off the government’s attempts to gain control of Basra. But within weeks, it had accepted a truce negotiated by Iran, and the Iraqi army consolidated its hold.
US and Iraqi forces also moved into Sadr City, sparking fierce clashes but also eventually emerging victorious.
In August 2008, Moqtada Sadr ordered a halt to armed operations. He declared that the Mehdi Army would be transformed into a cultural and social organisation, although it would retain a special unit of fighters who would continue armed resistance against occupying forces.
Kingmaker
He meanwhile devoted his time to theological studies in the Iranian holy city of Qom, in the hope of eventually becoming an ayatollah.
Analysts say the title would grant him religious legitimacy and allow him to mount a more serious challenge to the conservative clerical establishment in Iraq.
At the same time, he built on the gains of the Sadr Bloc in the 2005 elections to increase his political influence. His supporters performed strongly in the 2009 local elections and made gains in the March 2010 parliamentary polls as the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), ending up with 40 seats.
The result made Moqtada Sadr the kingmaker in the new parliament. He toyed initially with backing Mr Maliki’s rival for the premiership, but in June agreed to a merger between the INA and the prime minister’s State of Law coalition.
Then in October, he was finally persuaded by Iran to drop his objection to Mr Maliki’s reappointment in return for eight posts in the cabinet.
Secure in his standing, Moqtada Sadr returned from Iran in January to scenes of jubilation.
During his campaign for president, Joe Biden criticized President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and promised to reverse it.
Whereas Trump embraced a policy of “maximum pressure” to compel Iran to cease terrorism, covert nuclear and ballistic missile work, and other rogue behavior, Biden and Rob Malley, his special envoy for Iran, took the opposite approach. They sought to entice Iran with incentives such as sanctions relief, unfreezing assets, and the liquidation of restricted-use escrow accounts.
In May 2021, Malley was offering Iran relief equivalent to $7 billion, nearly equal to the budget of Iran’s entire conventional military for 2022. As Iranian negotiators stonewalled — they have not sat down with Malley or his team but instead insist on talking through intermediaries — Malley’s team upped the ante. Today, the Biden administration appears poised to provide Tehran with $12 billion, equivalent to a quarter of Iran’s total budget at the real exchange rate. This does not include, of course, the windfall Tehran seeks to gain from increased oil sales already augmented by lack of sanctions enforcement. This fund does not include off-budget spending, such as the oil revenue directly allocated to the Revolutionary Guards or the additional billions that Iran’s national oil company allocates for national stabilization and development but in actuality flows into Revolutionary Guards’ coffers.
Should Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei accept Malley’s offer, the regime will receive an infusion of over $20 billion over the following year, essentially doubling the Revolutionary Guard’s budget. To put that conservative estimate in perspective , a suicide belt costs just $1,500, and the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria that killed five Americans cost only $50,000.
Nor does the money now offered to Iran account for the billion-dollar ransoms that the Iranians expect for hostage releases. After all, ever since Jimmy Carter’s administration acquiesced to release Iranian funds in exchange for hostages and Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages, the Iranian regime simply seizes new hostages to use as chits in their negotiations.
The logic of Malley’s approach appears to be the belief that he can overcome the Iranian regime’s enmity by acquiescing to nearly all its demands. These need not only be financial — it could also be to acquiesce to Iranian influence in Iraq and Lebanon, support the Syrian regime’s rehabilitation, or to normalize Yemen’s Houthis at a time they increasingly attack Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with Iranian-made drones and missiles.
While Biden has criticized maximum pressure, the fact is such pressure has a track record of success. Maximum pressure and diplomatic isolation ended the Iran-Iraq War and, under President Barack Obama, a decline of 5.4% in Iran’s gross domestic product forced Tehran to the negotiating table.
The problem with Malley’s approach is that it has never worked. Ideology matters. Both Democrats and Republicans understood during the Cold War that the key to success was grinding down the Soviet economy, not subsidizing it. When the Clinton administration sought to provide food and oil to North Korea, Pyongyang diverted that assistance to the military and held on to its nuclear program. Decades of aid and concession to Russia and China did not end their enmity; they simply pocketed the cash and focused on their own military programs. Likewise, Palestinian terrorism has surged in direct proportion to Western and U.N. assistance.
Simply put, there is a reason why the Biden administration does not put Malley in front of Congress. If Congress asked Malley for any precedent of success or evidence that administration logic works, he could not answer the question. Malley is not gambling with the future security of America, its allies, and, for that matter, an Iranian public that increasingly despises the regime. Rather, he is selling out each one for nothing in return other than a future of terrorist bloodshed and nuclear blackmail.
Michael Rubin ( @mrubin1971 ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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