The Trump administration has released a range of photographic and video evidence in support of its claim that intelligence proves how Iran attacked a Japanese-owned oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz. But a Canadian military analyst and former Navy officer for nearly twenty years has called the evidence into question, highlighting unresolved anomalies in the US version of events. His reservations are backed by Japanese government sources. A number of other states - the US, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel - as well as other jihadist groups and even a rogue hardline faction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, have been flagged as potential culprits in the attacks that could pave the way for a wider war fitting into the Trump administration's new plan for 'American Energy Dominance'.

The US government says that the evidence, including fragments of an exploded weapon and a magnet from an unexploded device, indicates that limpet mines were attached to the side of the oil tankers. The statement of a US Navy explosives expert that the mines bear "a striking resemblance" to similar mines used by Iran has been widely reported.

US intelligence: an incoherent story

But the claim is challenged by the analysis of another former Naval oficer. According to Dr Gwynne Dyer who has served as a Reserve Naval Officer in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve, US Naval Reserve, and British Royal Navy Reserve for a total of 17 years, alleged US intelligence about the incident does not add up. Dr Dyer, despite believing that on balance Iran is "probably" behind the series of Gulf oil tanker attacks, concedes that "The evidence is far from conclusive."

His analysis coheres with that of the private US intelligence firm Stratfor, which notes of the spate of recent attacks that while Iran would have reason to "harass" vessels around its territory "to send a message of resolve in the face of Washington's punishing economic and military pressure.... On the other hand, it doesn't make strategic sense for Iran to target European vessels at a time when it is desperately seeking to retain the Continent's political and economic support."

Strafor suggests that other culprits might include al-Qaeda, other regional jihadist outfits that have a similar modus operandi of targeting oil tankers, or even a breakaway faction of Iran's Revolutionary Guards that is unhappy with official Iranian government diplomacy.

Occasionally, a revelatory, and profoundly alarming, article passes almost unnoticed, even when published on the front page of The New York Times.

Such was the case with reporting by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, bearing the Strangelovian title "U.S. Buries Digital Land Mines to Menace Russia's Power Grid," which appeared in the print edition on June 16. The article contained two revelations.

First, according to Sanger and Perlroth, with my ellipses duly noted, "The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia's electric power grid... Advocates of the more aggressive strategy said it was long overdue..." The operation "carries significant risk of escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow." Though under way at least since 2012, "now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense... with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before." At this point, the Times reporters add an Orwellian touch. The head of the U.S. Cyber Command characterizes the assault on Russia's grid, which affects everything from the country's water supply, medical services, and transportation to control over its nuclear weapons, as "the need to 'defend forward,'" because "they don't fear us."

Nowhere do Sanger and Perlroth seem alarmed by the implicit risks of this "defend forward" attack on the infrastructure of the other nuclear superpower. Indeed, they wonder, "Whether it would be possible to plunge Russia into darkness..." And toward the end, they quote an American lawyer and former Obama official, whose expertise on the matter is unclear, to assure readers sanguinely, "We might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response... Sometimes you have to take a bloody nose to not take a bullet in the head down the road." The "broken bones," "bloody nose," and "bullet" are, of course, metaphorical references to the potential consequences of nuclear war.

Hundreds of US defense contractor personnel will evacuate Balad Air Base in Iraq due to "potential security threats," Iraqi military sources have told the media.

Nearly 400 employees of Lockheed Martin and Sallyport Global stationed at the base north of Baghdad are due to leave the country in a two-stage process due to continuing tensions with Iran, according to Reuters. The evacuation follows last month's recall of hundreds of non-emergency diplomatic staff from the US embassy in Baghdad, which was also attributed to rising tensions with Iraq's neighbor.

US contractors working at Balad provide security, training, and other basic operations as well as assisting the Iraqi military in maintenance of its F-16 fleet. The base was subject to investigation by the US Government Accountability Office and Department of Justice over alleged mismanagement, bribery, verbal abuse, and racism by some contractors.

Militants reportedly fired three rockets into Balad Air Base on Saturday, causing no casualties but starting small brush fires which were quickly extinguished, according to Iraqi military sources. The otherwise unremarkable attack came amid a buildup of tensions between the US and Iran that culminated Thursday morning in the downing of a US surveillance drone over Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz.

President Donald Trump is losing interest in Venezuela after a bid to oust President Nicolás Maduro by US-backed opposition figures in April failed, according to The Washington Post.

In April, a US-backed bid by the Venezuelan opposition to remove Maduro failed, when senior Venezuelan government and military officials reneged on promises to switch sides and instead stood by the president.

According to US officials who spoke with The Post, Trump had viewed the prospect of a US-backed toppling of Maduro as an "easy win" at a time when other foreign-policy initiatives had stalled.

The tenth international meeting on security has just concluded in the Russian the city of Ufa. The forum has been under-reported, but it represents one of the few global examples of multilateral meetings between high-level representatives of countries that are in conflict. Hundreds of representatives from as many as 120 countries attended the meeting over three days to discuss humanitarian crises, hybrid warfare, terrorist threats and ways to recover from armed conflict.

President Putin's opening speech was read aloud by Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, which explained the forum's agenda and objectives, namely, to create a positive atmosphere that should succeed in reducing various areas of tension between countries around the globe.

"I expect your communication to be substantial and fruitful, and will help achieve our common goal of creating a reliable, flexible, indivisible and equal for all security system at the regional and global level. US exit from arms reduction treaties undermines global security. This forum has fully proved to be in demand and effective, ensuring a dialogue on countering global challenges. The meeting's agenda addresses problems requiring joint solutions and collective action, overcoming the consequences of armed conflict and humanitarian problems, as well as ensuring information security."

Surfing the cable channels the evening before my Friday a.m. blog duties, I came upon Sean Hannity at Fox News completely losing his shit in a colloquy with Geraldo Rivera about the Iran drone incident. "Bomb the crap out of them!" Mr. Hannity ranted, several times, the veins in his neck throbbing visibly on the high-def screen. I thought I was having an acid flashback to Doctor Strangelove. Geraldo himself seemed a bit nonplussed and embarrassed by Mr. Hannity's tantrum, but his attempts to calm down the raving anchorman only ramped up the hysteria. One wondered: are there any adult producers off-screen on that network?

Perhaps the Golden Golem of Greatness, our president, who is also known to follow the Cable TV news, witnessed the cringeworthy incident and realized that every other head-of-state on this nervous planet would also see it, and might infer he was doing the bidding of a crazed boob-tube performer if he actually went forward with an air strike. Earlier, he'd told reporters, "You'll soon find out," what the USA's response to the drone shoot-down would be. He should have just kept his mouth shut. Planes and ships were on their way to the bottleneck in the Persian Gulf known as the Straits of Hormuz. Before they could deliver any payloads, Mr. Trump called the whole thing off suggesting that maybe some "loose and stupid" Colonel Borat type on Iran's side had gone rogue in the incident.

It's "odd" that the UK Prime Minister comes to power after a closed-door vote within his own party and not through a nationwide election, but Moscow is ready to work with anyone who will end up in Number 10, Vladimir Putin said.

While the UK loves lecturing Russia on democracy, the peculiarities of its own political system may raise more than a few eyebrows, Putin told Rossyia-1 broadcaster on Saturday. "Take the way the first man in the country, the head of the UK's executive branch, is propelled to power," he offered.

"[Is he elected] in a nationwide vote? No, [he is elected] by his party's get-together. Truth be told, this is strange to me but this is how the [British electoral] system works."

Aside from Joe Biden's seemingly self-inflicted controversies, the campaign of the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential frontrunner is also facing questions about the messy personal life and shady business activities of the candidate's son, Hunter Biden.

The 49-year-old offspring of the former vice president made more headlines this week after the New York Post reported that an Arkansas woman says Hunter is the father of her child.

Previously this month, the son made news after he married a South African woman, whom he reportedly had only recently met, just months after splitting from Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother Beau, who died in 2015.

The EU's leaders Friday fired a Brexit warning to whoever wins the battle to become the next British prime minister, insisting the existing divorce deal will not be changed.

Hot favourite Boris Johnson faces foreign minister Jeremy Hunt in a run-off vote to decide who takes on the tricky task of piloting the country's departure from the EU.

Both say they want to renegotiate the deal that outgoing PM Theresa May struck with Brussels after two years of painful negotiation -- a deal which British lawmakers have rejected three times.

Over the past five years my work in the information space has been consciously aimed at explaining why the Russian military does and doesn't do certain things, whether it be in relation to Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, etc, and why demanding that Putin bombs everything in sight is exactly what the CIA wants so-called "pro-Russians" to say. Yet I haven't exhausted (maybe I never will exhaust it?) this topic because it is so vast and, ultimately, complex. And it is because of this seemingly insurmountable complexity that questions like "Why doesn't Russia liberate all of Ukraine", "Why doesn't Russia save Donetsk and Lugansk in the same way it saved Crimea?", "Why doesn't Russia boot America out of Syria?", etc are asked on social media.

But one statement that I haven't really addressed (until now) is "Why doesn't Russia liberate all of Idlib in one fell swoop?". Many "geniuses" like to say that Putin is in bed with the "Ottoman butcher" Erdogan and has thus "betrayed Syria", similar to how shaking hands with Netanyahu means that Putin is a Zionist and has "betrayed Syria", or even that a visit of the Saudi King to Moscow means that Putin has the blood of Yemen on his hands.