- The UK Military Industrial Complex comes over all moral... Archived Message
Posted by Raskolnikov
on May 29, 2019, 6:30 am
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...when it comes to paying their debts to "official enemies". Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has rejected a plea from the Foreign Office to hand over £400m owed by the UK government to Iran from a 30-year-old British tank sale, saying it is not prepared to give the money to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Guardian understands. Ministerial sources say the successive defence secretaries Sir Michael Fallon and Gavin Williamson have opposed releasing the payment, saying they are not prepared to hand over the money because they claim it will end up in the hands of Iranian forces determined to pursue what they see as a malign military agenda in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Really? I can't even begin to take the piss out of how hypocritical that line is. Staggering. The IRGC is the military wing of the Iranian government. It has been declared a terrorist organisation by the US, but not by the UK. So it's the Iranian equivalent of the MOD? Not so threatening or terrorist sounding when you write it that way, eh fraudian? The case is important because if the money were transferred, as an international arbitration court has ruled it should be, it is more likely that the jailed British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe would be released. It seems they are shoe-horning this in to make it seem like the Iranians are asking for a ransom, and there are several references to such in the rest of the article. The dispute is over a 1970s defence deal between the Iranian defence ministry and a now near-defunct UK government defence trading service, International Military Services. IMS signed contracts in 1971 to sell more than 1,500 Chieftain tanks and armoured vehicles to the Shah of Iran. The contracts were cancelled after the shah was deposed in the 1979 revolution but Iran had already paid for the undelivered tanks and demanded its money back. Semms pretty clear cut that they stiffed the Iranians but almost fifty years later? No refund and now they dig it up and try to present it as the Iranians ransoming a British prisoner. Just more fraudian agitprop on behalf of their masters. https://www.dumptheguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/28/mod-and-foreign-office-clash-over-400m-debt-linked-to-zaghari-ratcliffe-release |
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