Thoughts

Iran Wants a Larger Bribe

Ships that transit the Red Sea carry roughly 8 million barrels of crude oil a day. The Bab Al-Mandab, the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, is only 18 miles wide at its narrowest point.  It is a critical and easily blocked chokepoint.

This waterway has been closed as the result of the actions of the Houthis, who are puppets of Tehran, armed, trained, and directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). They attacked Israeli vessels. Then, they expanded to attacking vessels they claimed were headed for Israel. Their attacks have broadened and include commercial shipping in general. A Norwegian tanker was hit by a cruise missile earlier this week. Two more commercial vessels were struck by Houthi missiles earlier today.

Zodiac Maritime and Eastern Pacific Shipping were advised by the companies insuring their vessels that they needed to stop transiting the Red Sea and begin to send their ships all the way around Africa as an alternative. Israelis own those companies. The concern is no longer limited to simply Israeli vessels. The world shipping community now understands anyone moving in the waters of the Red Sea will be attacked.

Following the attack on the Norwegian tanker, at least one attempted attack was launched on a container ship belonging to Maersk Lines, a Danish company.

“The current situation puts seafarer lives at risk and is unsustainable for global trade,” said Maersk in an official statement following the attempted attack. The global shipping industry cannot solve it on its own, we call on political action to ensure a swift de-escalation.” Maersk added that henceforth, its tankers would avoid the Red Sea altogether. Much of this has to do with skyrocketing insurance rates.

The Biden regime has made no effective response to any of the Iranian-directed actions by the Houthis. U.S. naval vessels have shot down some Houthi drones fired in the direction of Israel. No attacks have been launched against the Houthi forces on shore that are firing on commercial vessels. Those forces continue to operate with impunity.

The U.S. has made noises about putting together some sort of coalition naval force presumably to escort ships in the Red Sea. The lack of enthusiasm for lining up behind the Biden White House is palpable. Australia is reported to have declined to join the party.

Iran makes no secret of its intentions. Iran’s Defense Minister Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani warned that if Washington did create such a coalition, it would face “extraordinary problems.” He noted that the Red Sea was, in his words, “our region” and warned, “Nobody can make a move in a region where we have predominance.”

Pedo Joe’s special envoy lost his security clearance because he was sharing classified information with the Iranians. The world knows that Joe and his crime family were bought and paid for by Beijing years ago. Everyone remembers the scenes of American forces fleeing Kabul. The entire Middle East knows that there have been upwards of 70 attacks on U.S. forces by Iranian surrogates in the last month and that we have done nothing of consequence in response.

It was different back when President Trump led America, and everybody knows it.

Obama had a special relationship with Iran that Valerie Jarrett facilitated. The question of whether the US should favor the Persians or Arabs is an old one that goes back many years. Obama chose Iran.

FBI Activity

Sharyl Attkisson’s husband is a retired FBI Special Agent. I see his hand in some of this and it speaks to his integrity as well as hers.

I have a lot of respect for Sharyl’s integrity. She and I spoke during the Fast and Furious gun-running matter some years ago. This recent post about FBI personnel movement prior to the Bureau’s spying campaign against President Trump was interesting to me. Maybe it will be to you.

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Just a passing note: Charles McGonigal, head of the FBI’s New York Counterintelligence Division, was indicted and convicted this year on charges of money laundering, making false statements in mandatory disclosures to the FBI, violating U.S. sanctions on Russia, and other counts for allegedly working with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who had allegedly tasked McGonigal with investigating a Deripaska rival. He was separately indicted for allegedly accepting payments amounting to more than US$225,000 from a former Albanian intelligence employee and acting to advance that person’s interests.

He pled guilty and was sentenced to do 85% of his four-year term. I have heard he’s doing his time at Black Canyon, Arizona. I haven’t cared enough to verify that.

I have contacts in Bulgaria who shared much of what the FBI was doing there back when they did it. They weren’t privileged to the sticky love triangle(s), which made them dodecahedrons by the time they were done, which tripped McGonigal up. Your dick will betray you if you let it.

While McGonigal was working against President Trump, he carried on an extramarital affair with Allison Guerriero, who lived in New York, where he worked. He left his family behind in Virginia while all this went on.

He bragged about his scamming with the Albanian PM, Edi Rama, and Kosovo PM, Ramush Haradinaj. He told her about the money he raked in, and she pointed the finger at him when he dumped her for another mistress.

Some uncharitable people will tell you that he got what was coming to him when he connived to help wiretap President Trump’s campaign illegally. I’ll leave those determinations to the reader. He wasn’t prosecuted in connection with the felonious wiretaps that he helped facilitate.