The deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has said that the US fleet in the Gulf is already within striking distance of his country’s short range missiles, adding that the US could not sustain a new war in the region.

“Even our short-range missiles can easily reach (US) warships in the Gulf,” Mohammad Saleh Jokar, the IRGC’s deputy for parliamentary affairs, was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying Friday. Jokar added that the US would be unable to sustain a conflict with Iran on account of financial, personnel and social reasons.

It marks the latest escalation in a war of words between the two countries as tensions mount amid renewed sanctions and political pressure from the US, along with a build-up of US forces in the region.

“Iran is not after a conflict in the region but has always defended its interests powerfully and will do so now too,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Thursday.

US carriers always deploy as part of a battlegroup so Iran’s large fleet of smaller fast boats would find it very difficult to get within striking distance without themselves being destroyed by US surface warships.

The guided missile destroyers USS Gonzalez and USS McFaul recently joined the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group on stand-by off the coast of Oman.

In recent years, Iran has developed the Khalij Fars (‘Persian Gulf’) anti-ship ballistic missile, which uses infrared guidance to slam a 1,433lb warhead into moving naval targets. Iran also unveiled the Mach 4 version of the Khalij Fars, the Hormuz -1 and -2 which is designed to seek out enemy radar systems and destroy them.

The Persian Gulf is quite narrow (ranging from 35 miles to 220 miles across in parts), for a carrier battle group and could afford the IRGC the opportunity to amass launchers within range of the US fleet with relative ease.

The consequences of any armed conflict between Iran and the US “would be literally incalculable” according to James Jatras, a former US diplomat and GOP Senate policy adviser.

“One doesn’t really know where this goes next – let’s suppose Iran strikes the UAE or the Saudi oil fields or strikes the Israelis … then what do those parties do next?” Jatras told RT.com, emphasizing that the conflict would quickly escalate to include US regional allies in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“Especially the Israelis who everybody knows have nuclear weapons. Although I doubt very much they would use those unless they were really down to an existential threat.”

Jatras also warned that “Moscow and Beijing would be foolish to stand back and watch the US take another piece off the chessboard” despite Pompeo’s attempts at warning the Kremlin against involvement in any potential conflict with Iran.

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Russia will respond ‘reciprocally’ to the US sanctions placed on Chechen special police unit Terek, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson said, slamming Washington’s move as ‘destructive.’

“Obviously, the principle of reciprocity applies here,” Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday, adding that Washington’s recent actions against Chechnya’s Terek Special Rapid Response Team will trigger “necessary countermeasures.” 

Peskov did not specify what steps are being considered.

On Thursday, the US Treasury Department included the rapid-response unit – a local equivalent of a SWAT team – into the anti-Russian sanctions list. The sanctions also personally apply to the team’s commander.

It was done under the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act, which is an extension of an earlier US law adopted to target Moscow. The legislation allows the US government to sanction anyone it sees as complicit in violating human rights anywhere in the world.

Russian officials heavily criticized the law, saying that Washington does not provide sufficient evidence for its enactment and uses it to target people arbitrarily.

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Even adversaries of the US president should admit that he is the only one who has stood up to the disturbing anti-free speech proposal concocted by illiberal globalist world leaders and compliant tech companies.

Ironically, by becoming the sole leader of a major Western power to reject the ‘Christchurch Call’ – the cross-border plan to restrict “terrorist and extremist” content online – Donald Trump has consolidated support for the document, sparing it deserved scrutiny.

After all, who doesn’t want to stop violence being spread through social media, particularly in the wake of the double mosque shooting in New Zealand in March? Well – judging by the commentary in mainstream media outlets – only that exceptionalist US president, and that band of white supremacists on whom he is relying to win in 2020.

But I would urge those of all political persuasions to study the text of the document, presented by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron in Paris this week, and endorsed by every major US online giant – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter.

Are these really the powers you want to give away to officials and Silicon Valley execs? Or should we at least ask some clarifying questions first?

Orwell’s bingo

Here are some notable and representative excerpts:

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This is the first bullet point, and we are already onto loaded political terminology rife with assumptions. Why must societies become more “inclusive” – a byword for multiculturalism – to stop terrorism? Why is the “fight against inequality” – a predominantly leftist agenda – a pre-condition for preventing it? Osama bin Laden wasn’t a pauper, and neither was gym trainer Brenton Tarrant for that matter.

More important are the treacherously vague definitions that almost invite abuse. Who decides what is a “distorted narrative”? How do you “build media literacy” – is it, as always, by using NewsGuard to tell people not to click on RT.com instead of the New York Times? What is even “violent extremist ideology”? Support for mass murder in mosques is. But what about those who want mosques shut down because they believe Islam is a scourge on Western society? Or those who ride out in militias to protect the US-Mexican border from illegal migrants? Are they advocating a “violent extremist ideology”? How about Black Lives Matter – they often engage in violence, and demand radical social change? Antifa? The Venezuelan opposition, who plan to overthrow their elected president and want the army to defect?

I’ve written at length about the fallout from the New Zealand-only censorship of Tarrant’s trial, but the core point here is: why should governments tell the free media – through these nebulous “industry standards” – how to cover what politicians say is “extremist content”? Or anything at all.

What is “amplify”? Where does the line lie between “not amplifying” and hushing up? What is “responsible coverage”?

So rather than a post-moderation internet, the document wants us to move to pre-moderation – if Facebook doesn’t like your video you simply will never ever be able to put it online, and considering that the networks plan to share all data, this should automatically apply to all the others. You will be shouting silently into the void.

One is not sure that the fact algorithms are currently so imperfect is a good or a bad thing.

So you click, for example, for an Alex Jones link, or even a Paul Joseph Watson one – both already “dangerous” personae non-grata on most of the signatories’ websites – and instead it takes you to a “credible, positive alternative”approved by Macron or Angela Merkel or Justin Trudeau? Or perhaps, even more neatly when you search for these names – or RT, for example – none of their content will come up. Deprioritized and delisted content can never corrupt you.

Avenging Hillary

I do not believe that the politicians and entrepreneurs gathered in France on Wednesday are in a conspiracy to shut down free speech or neuter their political opposition. Most of them surely believe that they are merely safeguarding the internet from – to note another loaded term – “bad actors.”

But they are not political neutrals either. The Christchurch Call did not come after any of the dozens of Muslim bombings that happened in the West, or at the peak of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) propaganda efforts, when polished beheading videos made it online every week and were shared by millions, and freely “amplified” by the media.

The unequivocal far-right atrocity serves merely as a cynical hook for countering years of mainstream party anxiety about losing control of the narrative online, which turned into an ongoing breakdown with Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016.

While reactive, the Christchurch Call isn’t some brainstorm knocked up in eight weeks. This is the establishment’s unifying achievement – a non-binding agreement that will nonetheless serve as a blueprint for future international regulation. If adopted, for most living in the West, there would be no escape.

It is very possible that these new tools will be used cautiously – filtering out only the guns and splatter. But with definitions of hate speech and what is considered extremist being systematically broadened, over time – years? months? – there will be appeals to use these technologies to suppress more and more voices.

And judging by the previous record of the social networks involved, the losers will be the “Islamophobes” and the “transphobes” and the “Russian trolls” – real or imagined – and not the radical feminists calling for all men to be castrated, nor Antifa protesters in balaclavas filming themselves disrupting a campus speech.

While the document talks about the need for “transparency” and “an efficient complaints and appeals process” for any censorship, it leaves both the decisions and the implementation to the tech companies themselves. “Enforcing community standards or terms of service” will still be king – so if a Twitter mod wants to close your account it will be his call and enshrined right.

This is also bound to have a chilling effect on contributors who know that one over-the-line video will exile them from all the biggest internet forums, and deprive them of their income streams.

Less clear is whether pushing the marginalized into the darker corners of the internet actually helps to prevent the flourishing of extremism, or will create a parallel underground network that will be far more radicalized. Imagine a bigger and more toxic 4chan for all the rejects, if you can.

What is certain is that any filtering, reporting and pre-moderation technologies developed as a result of the Christchurch Call will be adopted with enthusiasm by genuinely repressive regimes, and likely deployed by the California giants themselves at the request of such governments, who will cite their own anti-extremism legislation.

By abstaining from the document, the US now has a chance not only of protecting its own population, but of sabotaging the entire Christchurch Call project. All the companies involved are still operating primarily under US jurisdiction, so they will be shielded from these initiatives. Indeed, if they decide to impose these measures over the will of American citizens, they leave themselves open to First Amendment-based government regulation, and what may eventually become costly lawsuits.

So, there remains one opportunity here to drop the partisan politics, and rally behind the White House decision for the sake of free speech – if you believe in it. By not making it a Donald Trump versus the World issue, there is a chance to help not only Americans, but the cause of freedom around the globe.

By Igor Ogorodnev

Igor Ogorodnev is a Russian-British journalist, who has worked at RT since 2007 as a correspondent, editor and writer.

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Japanese lawmakers are determined to chase a fellow MP out of parliament after he suggested Tokyo could wage war on Russia over the Kuril Islands.

MP Hodaka Maruyama horrified many in Japanese political circles during his visit to “the Northern territories” – as the islands are known in Japan, earlier this month. While talking with a former Japanese resident of one of the islands Maruyama asked if he thought the Kurils “could only be taken back by means of war,” causing a massive diplomatic faux pas.

The lawmaker later apologized, claiming he was drunk. But his party – the Nippon Ishin Japan Innovation Party – the third largest opposition force in parliament, took matters into their own hands. They expelled the politician, while the party leader apologized to Russians for the remarks.

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Maruyama was also urged to give up his parliament seat, which he refused to do. Today six opposition parties submitted a resolution to the lower house officially calling for the MP’s resignation.

The territorial dispute over the South Kuril Islands has been one of the major stumbling blocks in Russian-Japanese relations since the end of World War II, with the two countries still lacking a formal peace treaty. The islands were handed over to the USSR under the 1945 Potsdam Declaration, but since then Tokyo has been trying to reclaim them.

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Iran has pulled no punches with regards to Washington, saying that while the US is urging talks, it simultaneously holds a gun at Tehran. It comes as tensions between two states continue to grow.

“The actions of American leaders in exerting pressure and launching sanctions […] while speaking of talks, is like holding a gun at someone and asking for friendship and negotiations,” Rasoul Sanai-Rad, a political deputy of the armed forces command said as quoted news agency Mehr.

US President Donald Trump has been recently insisting his country was not on a path of war with Iran and that the latter “will want to talk soon.” That said, two US Navy destroyers entered waters of the Persian Gulf on Thursday. 

Hawks in Trump’s administration have long been calling for tougher stance on Tehran. Last year, Washington unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and renewed sanctions on the country.

In recent days, the situation in the Middle East has dramatically worsened with the White House rushing the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the region ahead of schedule in response to “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings”. The deployment was meant to be “a warning” to Iran.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier this week assured that neither Iran nor the US actually seeks war. Meanwhile, as tensions between Washington and Tehran gain ground, European leaders have urged both countries to measure their statements. That said, the bloc again expressed its regret on US sanctions targeting Iran as well as ditching the landmark nuclear accord (known as JCPOA), which Trump has been boasting as one of his major achievements.

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Two Indian airbases in Kashmir have been placed on high alert in response to a warning of planned terrorist attacks, reports say. One of the sites houses jets that participated in aerial combat with Pakistan in February.

Fresh intelligence data shows that terrorists plan to target two military sites on the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, New Delhi-based ANI reported on Friday, citing government sources.

The installations mentioned are Srinagar and Awantipora airbases, both in western Jammu and Kashmir State, bordering Pakistan. Security forces in and around the bases have been reportedly put on high alert.

The report did not specify the type of anticipated attacks or the terrorist groups involved.

Srinagar base is the home to the No. 51 Squadron of the Indian Air Force. Its MiG-21Bison fighter jets clashed with Pakistan’s F-16s during a dramatic flare-up of cross-border tensions in February.

Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, who was shot down and later returned by Islamabad to India, was stationed at Srinagar until he was deployed to a different site last month.

The aerial combat happened a week after India had sent jets into Pakistani territory to strike what it said were camps of terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), which earlier claimed responsibility for attacks on Indian security forces and civilians.

New Delhi insists that Pakistan aids JeM and other militants to commit acts of terrorism against India. Pakistani officials strongly deny this.

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A ‘dense bullet’ of dark matter a million times larger than the sun may have plowed through the Milky Way, dragging stars out of line behind it, in an astrophysical model that explains a mysterious ’glitch’ in the galaxy.

The “galactic hit-and-run” theory explains the ragged gap discovered in GD-1, the longest stellar stream in the galaxy, according to Ana Bonaca, a fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who presented her theory at the American Physical Society last month. Instead of the single smooth-edged gap one would expect to find at the origin point of the stellar stream, GD-1 has a second gap, with a “spur” of stars hanging off, as if they were dragged by gravity behind some huge “dark impactor” barreling through the universe.

Why a gigantic blob of dark matter? “We can’t map [the impactor] to any luminous object that we have observed,” Bonaca explains, and “it’s much more massive than a star…a million times the mass of the sun.” That doesn’t rule out the possibility – “it could be that it’s a luminous object that went away somewhere, and it’s hiding somewhere in the galaxy” – but it would be hard to hide something 30 to 65 light-years across.

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With no visible culprit on which to pin the celestial fender-bender, then, and no tell-tale signs of a black hole like the massive one believed to lie at the center of the Milky Way, Bonaca believes a large “clump” of dark matter could be responsible for the tear in GD-1. Despite researchers’ frustrating inability to “prove” the existence of dark matter, most agree it’s there and that it greatly outnumbers luminous matter, holding galaxies together and clustering at their centers.

Bonaca was able to pinpoint the space oddity by studying a galactic map from the Gaia mission, the most complete rendering of the Milky Way, and cross-referencing it with observation through a multi-mirror telescope capable of distinguishing the direction in which stars are moving. This method created the most precise image of GD-1 yet, and she hopes to map more of the Milky Way in the hope of turning up other areas where similar dark behemoths might have trundled through – eventually mapping the location of these dark matter “clumps” throughout the galaxy.

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An airstrike by the NATO-led Resolute Support mission reportedly killed 17 police officers in Afghanistan on Thursday, injuring a dozen others in a ‘mistake’ during fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban.

The strike was conducted as Afghan police were fighting the Taliban outside Lashkar Gah in southern Helmand province, with Afghan officials describing the incident as a “mistake”. Head of the provincial council Attaullah Afghan said 14 policemen were also wounded in the strike.

It wasn’t clear whether Afghan or US forces carried out the strike, the AP reported, although the Taliban claimed it had been US forces.

The provincial governor’s spokesman Omar Zwak said the strike was carried out by NATO Resolute Support mission forces in the Nahr-e-Seraj area, al Jazeera reports. DW reports Zwak said that only eight police officers were killed in the NATO strike.

Resolute Support is a NATO-led mission that advises and assists Afghanistan’s national security forces and consists of over 13,000 troops from the US, Germany, the UK, and other countries. NATO has not commented on the incident.  

Helmand’s Governor Mohammad Yasin said the air strike is being investigated.

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The US has failed to prevent the Runit Dome temporary nuclear waste storage site from leaking into the ocean, leaving the inhabitants of Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands and cleanup workers with an array of health problems.

“There was never any lining put in that dome,” Ernest Davis, an Enewetak Atoll cleanup veteran, told RT, noting that the US government apparently had never planned to replace the temporary dome with a permanent containment structure that would be properly sealed from radiation leaks. “Nobody said anything about going back in and removing it or making it permanent. We were told that it was permanent.”

“I don’t think it was ever [the US government’s] intention to further clean up the island. It was too costly,” Brooke Takala Abraham, who lives in the Marshall Islands, told RT.

The United States detonated 43 atomic bombs around the Marshall Islands in the 1940s and 50s. The highly contaminated debris left over from the weapons tests was then dumped into a 100-meter-wide bomb crater on Enewetak Atoll. US servicemen sealed it up with a concrete cap to create a structure called the Runit Dome. The work, however, was allegedly carried out without any proper safety consideration for the cleanup crew.

“Those people who were involved in the cleanup… did not receive proper protection from radioactive elements,” Abraham said.

Furthermore, the government has never even bothered to study the long-term health issues of those exposed to radiation waste.

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“There was no radiation study with us. Certain ones would leave the island and they will have them fill a big jug with urine and I guess they were supposed to test it,” recalled Davis, who left just before the project was completed. “Some of the dosimeters that were given to us, the rad-badges – they just did not work. So we can’t say that any radiation study was done whatsoever.”

After a three-year decontamination process which began in 1977, the US government declared the southern and western islands in the atoll safe enough, allowing residents of Enewetak to return and the cleanup crew to go home. However, people who now live on the island say the dome began leaking almost immediately after the engineers left.

“The waste has always been leaking from the get-go. The cleanup of the entire atoll was not complete” before the native people were allowed to return, Abraham told RT.

Over the years, Enewetak’s population began feeling the deleterious effects of the radiation. “The radiation affects us on a daily basis. We have many illnesses in our community from cancers to weakened immune systems, and other noncommunicable diseases as well,” Abraham explained. “And they’re still struggling as well with the transgenerational effects of radiation.”

“Most of us have come up with some type of illness, whether it’s cancer… many of us have peripheral neuropathy on our feet without being diabetic,” Davis recalled, noting that many of the roughly 8,000 people involved in the decontamination process have since died. “They told us we would not be exposed to any more radiation than having maybe two or three x-rays a year, which was a total lie.”

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Two US Navy warships armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles have entered the Persian Gulf with a carrier strike group on stand-by off the coast of Oman, as Washington keeps accusing Tehran of planning to attack “American interests.”

Guided missile destroyers USS Gonzalez (DDG-66) and USS McFaul (DDG-74) transited the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday afternoon, the US Naval Institute (USNI) reported. Their sailing proceeded “without challenge” or “harassment” from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, despite boiling hot tensions between Tehran and Washington, the publication’s defense sources noted.

The two destroyers are now in close proximity to other American warships in the region sent by Washington earlier this month to tackle what the US called “heightened Iranian readiness to conduct offensive operations against US forces and our interests.” No evidence has yet been offered to back up those claims.

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) Strike Group, with strategic bombers onboard, stands ready off the coast of Oman, while amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) was off the coast of the United Arab Emirate on Thursday, USNI learned. B-52 bombers have also commenced their air operations from the US base in Qatar as Washington continues to amass its forces.

While the US continues to insist that it does not seek war with Iran, on Wednesday, the State Department ordered the evacuation of non-essential personnel from the US embassy in Baghdad and the consulate in Erbil. If the US were to launch a military attack from the sea, USNI News understands that “it would best be able to do so from outside of the Persian Gulf” to keep the American navy further out of reach of Iran’s anti-ship missiles.

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Tehran, which called US saber-rattling “psychological warfare,” says the Islamic Republic stands ready to defend itself against any act of aggression but does not consider a war with the US and its allies as “an option.”

“We are not interested in the escalation of tensions in our region, because if something goes wrong, everybody will lose, including Iran, including the US, including all the countries in the region,” Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht-e Ravanchi told American outlet National Public Radio.

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