‘Red Line Crossed’: Threat Of War By Russia, Iran Fabricated By Media?

MAINSTREAM MEDIA PROMOTES WAR THREAT BY RUSSIA AND IRAN IF “RED LINE CROSSED,” STORY REFERENCES DUBIOUS “JOINT COMMAND CENTER.”

Numerous U.S. corporate media outlets, headed by Reuters, have over the past 24 hours been reporting a major threat of warfare and connecting it to Russia, Iran, and Syria, in what appears to be a major escalation of hostilities in the wake of the U.S. air strikes on Thursday. The only problem is that the “joint command center” the reports are relying on for the statement, doesn’t appear to exist.

Pointed out by Adam Garrie at TheDuran.com, mainstream media outlets, Reuters, The Independent, ABC News, and the Express to name a few, along with Infowars.com and ZeroHedge, cite “Ilam al Harbi” as the media source that is reporting the following statement:

“What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well.”

A google search of “Ilam al Harbi” shows result of this story and numerous references by a Yemen Press website. However, this major threat of war apparently reported by “Ilam al Harbi” doesn’t appear on those search results. The origin of this “crossing of red lines” statement can only be found on an Al-Masdar News article, which has published an Arabic-written document claiming it’s from “the military operation rooms of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and other allies.”

Whilst there is a joint intelligence-sharing cooperation agreement between Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah in the effort to fight ISIL, it is never referred to as a “joint command center” and is not involved in making public political statements. There is no media statement about the threat from the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation as one would expect, particularly given it made a recent statement by its spokesman on the U.S. air strikes on Friday.

Despite the statement being difficult to verify, Reuters opens its article by stating:

“A joint command center made up of the forces of Russia, Iran and militias supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

It also quotes from the Al-Masdar News statement with no question of its veracity and reports on a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani, as if it’s relevant to the same statement.

We Are Change will seek to monitor the veracity of this story over the coming days, but it currently appears that U.S. corporate media has at best, published a story without thoroughly checking the sources. At worst, it is regurgitating its own fake news in a wartime environment, as it did with WMDs in Iraq, increasing the possibility of war between nations.