failure

Israeli analysts call Netanyahu ‘liar,’ ‘humiliated’ by Trump after US-Iran deal

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem on December 9, 2024 [MAYA ALLERUZZO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]

Israeli analysts sharply criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, describing him as a “failure” and a “liar,” while noting that US President Donald Trump “humiliated” him by excluding him from an agreement with Iran to end their military conflict, Anadolu reports.

On Monday evening, Netanyahu acknowledged that he was unaware of the details of the memorandum of understanding reached between Washington and Tehran to end the war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on Feb. 28.

Netanyahu claimed he had saved Israelis from “nuclear annihilation” by launching the war against Iran and acknowledged differences of opinion with Trump, saying such disagreements “exist in the best of families.”

While Trump said Monday that the US and Iran had already signed the agreement and that the Strait of Hormuz “will be fully reopened by Friday,” Tehran has said only that the memorandum is scheduled to be signed in Swtizerland on June 19.

Observers say the prior electronic signing of the deal appears to have enabled an immediate temporary ceasefire and the lifting of a US naval blockade on Iran, while the Friday ceremony is expected to formalize the agreement and launch a 60-day period of technical negotiations.

‘Architect of failure’

Haaretz columnist Yossi Verter launched a scathing attack on Netanyahu in an article headlined: “Without shame, the architect of failure claimed he saved Israel from collective death. It was another lie among many.”

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands at the height of what any objective expert would define as a colossal strategic failure for the State of Israel and all he has to tell its citizens is: ‘Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, not as long as I am prime minister’,” he wrote.

Netanyahu “has been saying that for 30 years. Yet in the same breath, at his press conference on Monday, Netanyahu claimed Israel had been a hair’s breadth away from ‘mass death’ – a catastrophe he supposedly prevented,” he added.

Tel Aviv and Washington accuse Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons that threaten Israel and US allies in the region. Iran, however, maintains that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, says it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons and insists it poses no threat to other states.

READ: Switzerland confirms US-Iran memorandum signing set for Friday at Burgenstock

Israel, which occupies Palestinian territory as well as land in Lebanon and Syria, is widely believed to be the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear arsenal, although it has never officially acknowledged possessing one and is not subject to safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Verter said previous boasts by Netanyahu about “historic achievements for generations” and claims that Iran’s nuclear project had been pushed back by decades “seemed to have dissolved into the sour fog that has descended on Israel.”

“Gone, too, are the lofty goals that accompanied every confrontation with Iran: toppling the regime, or at least creating the conditions for its downfall; eliminating the nuclear and ballistic threats; severing Tehran’s ties to its proxy organizations,” he added.

Netanyahu “has no idea what is contained in the memorandum of understanding the US and Iran digitally signed behind his back. The Iranians know. The Pakistanis know. Presumably the Qataris know. Netanyahu, it seems, does not,” the columnist said.

He added that Netanyahu “sought to minimize the crisis in his relationship with Trump, whom he notably refrained from showering with his usual praise,” saying “True. But in the best families, disagreements are not usually accompanied by the daily insults, humiliations and public snubs coming from an increasingly impatient American president.”

Verter further accused Netanyahu of making a mix of half-truths, exaggerations and manipulations that dominated the event like “we destroyed the Iranian navy.”

He also challenged Netanyahu’s assertion that Israel prevented Hezbollah’s Radwan Force from invading Israel, calling it “an utter lie.”

Verter said Netanyahu claimed that the Israeli and American air forces inflicted cumulative damage on Iran worth “hundreds of billions of dollars – some estimate a trillion.”

He concluded that Netanyahu’s press conference “projected defeat,” adding that even when he declared that he would “run and win” Israel’s next election, he sounded somewhat skeptical himself.

‘His show is over’

Maariv columnist Ben Caspit wrote an article titled: “Netanyahu’s show is over: Trump threw him under the bus.”

Caspit questioned Netanyahu’s repeated warnings that Israel had “escaped certain death”, asking who had placed the country in such a position in the first place.

He argued that invoking the threat of “annihilation” was intended to obscure responsibility for Israel’s failures regarding Iran.

“Once again, Israel was left outside the picture,” he added.

Netanyahu has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2024 over accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s genocidal war, which has killed more than 73,000 people and injured over 173,000 others since October 2023.

Caspit noted that Netanyahu did not mention Trump by name during his press conference, even during the question-and-answer session.

“He also admitted he knew nothing about the agreement that was signed electronically without his knowledge,” Caspit wrote. “It is reminiscent of another agreement signed in 2015.”

“Netanyahu always ends up in the same position,” he continued. “He is pushed aside, thrown under the bus, and left standing in the hallway like a scolded child waiting for a verdict that was delivered in his absence.”

Questioning Netanyahu’s claims of success, Caspit wrote: “Yesterday he boasted that ‘we inflicted severe damage on Iran’s economy.’ Fine—but so what? They could soon become an even greater economic power than before.”

He added that Iran could ultimately “impose fees on transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” while sanctions may be lifted and hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen assets released.

“So what value is the damage we inflicted if it can be repaired so quickly?” Caspit asked.

“Without shame, the architect of failure claimed he had saved Israel from annihilation. That was just another lie among many.”

READ: US-Iran deal may be seen as ‘betrayal’ in Israel, ex-premier Olmert says

‘Greatest humiliation’

In a separate analysis published by Walla news portal, commentator Barak Seri argued that Netanyahu’s sense of triumph “turned within a single day into his greatest concern and greatest humiliation.”

Seri noted that Netanyahu had not addressed the Israeli media since March despite the wars involving Iran and Hezbollah and missile attacks that caused casualties and widespread damage in Israel, choosing instead to speak almost exclusively to foreign outlets, particularly American media.

“But last night he decided to speak,” Seri wrote. “The reason was the dismal outcome of the agreement with Iran and the bitter sense of anxiety prevailing in Israel, including among his own supporters.”

He added that senior Israeli officials viewed the deal as “bad and dangerous for Israel,” describing it as “a real disaster” that was reached without Israel’s interests being taken into account.

Seri argued that “none of the war’s objectives were achieved” — not eliminating Iran’s nuclear threat, not removing the ballistic missile threat, not creating conditions for regime change, and not addressing Tehran’s continued support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Mocking one of the outcomes touted by supporters of the US-Iran agreement, he wrote: “The Strait of Hormuz has been opened. What a great achievement — it was open before the war.”

“Trump’s harsh and humiliating reversal against Netanyahu and Israel, accompanied by reports of difficult conversations, insults and threats, quickly leaked to the media,” Seri said. “Trump subjected Netanyahu to a genuine public humiliation.”

The US is a main ally to Israel and generally provides Tel Aviv with military, financial and political support.

Israel has occupied Palestinian territory and areas in Lebanon and Syria for decades and rejects withdrawal from those territories as well as the establishment of an independent Palestinian state envisioned in relevant UN resolutions.

BLOG: The international community is fast losing its diplomatic relevance

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Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel's genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism "without qualification". Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/

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Continue ReadingIsraeli analysts call Netanyahu ‘liar,’ ‘humiliated’ by Trump after US-Iran deal

Morning Star Editorial:: Another set of meaningless milestones: Starmer’s desperate relaunch falls flat

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This article was originally posted 6/12/24 but was deleted, probably my mistake.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-another-set-of-meaningless-milestones-starmers-desperate-relaunch-falls-flat

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer gives a speech in Buckinghamshire as he set out his Government’s “plan for change” promising a shift away from Whitehall’s “declinist mentality”, December 5, 2024

GOVERNMENTS are never officially “relaunched” because the term is a tacit admission that something has misfired or gone badly wrong.

Nevertheless, relaunches do happen. The last one in British politics was Rishi Sunak’s bizarre and fruitless attempt to present himself as a change agent, challenging the “30-year consensus” at the Tory Party conference in 2023.

But seldom, if ever, has a government had to relaunch itself just five months after its election. The speech by Keir Starmer in a tent in Buckinghamshire is, therefore, a measure of how far his administration has fallen and how fast.

Yet a host of evidence points to Labour’s failure. Starting from an anaemic election result of less than 34 per cent, it is now polling in the mid-twenties.

And the Prime Minister’s personal figures have slumped from a plus 20 positive rating to minus 30 or thereabouts.

It is a political fiasco for the ages and one that only the Tories and Reform UK, both under hard-right leadership, look set to benefit from.

Starmer’s response is encapsulated in the six milestones unveiled today.

These six milestones follow the five missions and the six commitments launched before the general election, which, of course, succeeded the 10 pledges in Starmer’s number-salad of forgettable, or reneged on, policy promises.

This is leadership in the style of a corporate management seminar as if announcing a plan were equivalent to achieving anything. And the increasing velocity with which each initiative follows its unfulfilled predecessor indicates that we are now at the point at which football fans would strike up the familiar chant of “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

… |

Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-another-set-of-meaningless-milestones-starmers-desperate-relaunch-falls-flat

Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial:: Another set of meaningless milestones: Starmer’s desperate relaunch falls flat

Inside Big Oil’s Business as Usual: Failure on Climate and Profits from War

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Original article by Stella Levantesi republished from DeSmog.

A new report shows oil majors fall short of meeting Paris Agreement targets while fueling global military conflicts.

Oil majors are not on track to hit Paris Agreement climate targets that limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, a new report reveals.

Eight fossil fuel giants – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Eni, Equinor, and ConocoPhillips – are on course to use 30 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget for that 1.5°C goal, according to the Big Oil Reality Check report by nonprofit Oil Change International (OCI).

Combined, the oil and gas companies’ extraction plans are consistent with a temperature rise of over 2.4°C, the report found.That level of warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will reduce food security, risk irreversible loss of ecosystems, and increase heat waves, rainfall, and extreme weather events.

“We analyzed the climate promises and plans of the largest eight international oil and gas companies that are owned in North America and Europe. What would it take for an oil and gas producer to align their production with limiting warming to 1.5?” David Tong, global industry campaign manager at OCI and co-author of the report, told DeSmog. 

“If an oil and gas company were serious about transitioning its business model, the first step would be ending all new production and then setting a Paris-aligned phaseout plan,” he added.

‘No New Fossil’ Standard

A recent paper by academics at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, published in Science in May, calls for stopping fossil fuel expansion and building a “No New Fossil” global norm. According to the authors, this would make it “easier to phase down fossil fuels” and achieve the Paris Agreement climate goals.

No new fossil fuel projects would be needed in a 1.5°C world, they wrote, because the “existing fossil fuel capital stock” is sufficient to meet energy demand. The authors also note that preventing new fossil fuel projects is, in general, more feasible than closing existing projects from an economic, political, and legal viewpoint.

In the face of continuing global pressure to stop fossil fuel expansion, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, Eni, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies have goals to increase oil and gas production within the next three years or beyond, the OCI report finds. While Shell does not quantify a target, the company plans to keep oil production steady while growing gas production in the near future, OCI said.

“None of those companies came anywhere close to alignment [with climate goals],” said Tong. “Six of the eight companies we analyzed have explicit plans to increase their oil and gas production in this critical decade when we need to be cutting our reliance on fossil fuels, cutting oil, gas, and oil production.”

Plateauing oil and expanding gas production, like some of these companies plan to do, is “grossly insufficient” compared with the action that’s needed, Tong added. Even commitments to make businesses more efficient aren’t going to cut it alone, he said.

“It’s like a cigarette company claiming that it will solve lung cancer by producing cigarettes more efficiently,” he noted. “That’s not just not a credible claim. It’s a promise to become a more efficient climate breaker.”

Big Oil and War

According to the OCI report, all the oil majors fail to meet basic criteria for just transition plans for workers and communities where they operate. 

“A number of these companies also face significant ongoing, unresolved allegations of human rights … and Indigenous people’s rights violations,” Tong told me.

A March 2024 investigation, commissioned by OCI and conducted by DataDesk, revealed that ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP, Shell, and Eni are “complicit in facilitating the supply of crude oil to Israel.” These findings are particularly noteworthy in the context of “Israel’s mounting evidence of war crimes” against Palestinians in Gaza, the OCI states in its new report. 

Diesel and gasoline for tanks and other military vehicles are supplied by Israel’s refineries, which rely on regular imports of crude oil by these companies and, since October 2023, supplies mainly from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan/Russia, Gabon, and Brazil, the research has found. 

The fossil fuel industry is “fueling war and military conflicts” in many regions of the world, said Svitlana Romanko, a prominent Ukrainian activist and founder and director of Razom We Stand, a Ukrainian organization campaigning to ban all imports of fossil fuels from Russia. 

According to Romanko, the OCI Big Oil Reality Check report “reinforces the importance of moving away from fossil fuels and investing into distributed renewable energy.”

A new analysis by a group of climate experts estimates that the first two years of Russia’s war on Ukraine resulted in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to around 175 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. The estimated global cost of this warming in extreme weather impacts: $32 billion. 

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia earned over 681 billion euros in revenue from fossil fuel exports. European Union countries purchased fossil fuels from Russia for more than 195 billion euros.

Big Oil, as well as Russia, is profiting from the war, Romanko said. After the invasion, BP, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies raked in $219 billion, more than double their profits compared to the previous year.

“Most [governments] subsidize fossil fuels, and these subsidies are accounting for trillions of U.S. dollars annually,” Romanko said. “This is a big part of fossil fuel profits, and the more fossil fuels are subsidized, [the] less investments are made available for renewable energies.”

She pointed out that the partnership between TotalEnergies and Russia’s largest private gas producer, Novatek, was also “instrumental” in helping Russia get access to technologies and engineering services to launch Novatek’s Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2 projects.

Romanko notes that fossil fuel infrastructure can also constitute a liability for military attacks and quickly become a target.

“Centralized infrastructure endangers energy supply and overall safety of the supply,” she said. In Ukraine, a massive effort to install solar power plants in schools and hospitals helped decentralize this key resource, Romanko explained. “Decentralized energy supply is essential to building true energy independence,” she added. “And this is the future.”

Pressure for Accountability

Some of the eight oil majors in OCI’s report have faced more international and national scrutiny than others. Such pressure can facilitate accountability, but that’s less likely when the fossil fuel company is closely intertwined with the institutional, political, and economic life of its country. 

A BP gas station sign. Credit: Mike Mozart (CC BY 2.0)

“We need to look at what has succeeded in putting so much pressure on companies like Shell and BP,” OCI’s Tong said. 

One factor: when communities in a company’s home country work closely in partnership with communities in fossil fuel-producing countries. Tong said that positive results also happen when campaigners use a range of strategies to expose producers, from nonviolent direct action to op-eds, research, and court action.

“This is particularly challenging with Eni, TotalEnergies, and Equinor in different ways because of the close interactions that each of the companies have with their home states,” he added.

Public, political, and legal pressure for accountability must also be coupled with industry regulation, according to Tong.

“We concluded that there is no evidence that the oil and gas sector will voluntarily transition to renewable energy, or voluntarily act to align their production with what’s needed for the Paris Agreement,” Tong said. Instead, governments must no longer license new production sites. 

The strong right-wing result in the latest EU Parliament elections could also affect Big Oil’s energy transition. 

“The more the links between the state and big polluters are overt, the more people get out in the streets and protest,” Tong said.

What is safe to say is that Big Oil’s business as usual will increase climate change effects.

“Floods, hurricanes, extreme weather events, and the millions of human lives affected and lost – this damage to nature, to human lives and to life on earth will only mount,” Romanko said. “What will be lost in a few more years will also mount if fossil fuel companies are allowed to continue with business as usual.”

Original article by Stella Levantesi republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingInside Big Oil’s Business as Usual: Failure on Climate and Profits from War