The CIA and State Department have reportedly tried to pressure governments into kicking out the contractors
The Biden administration has attempted to pressure African nations into expelling the Wagner private military company, with the firm’s presence in Sudan and Libya “at the top of every meeting” between American and Egyptian officials, the Associated Press reported.
CIA Director William Burns focused on the group during recent trips to Egypt and Libya, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed Wagner with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi during a jaunt to Cairo last month, the news agency reported on Saturday.
“Wagner obsesses [the American officials],” said an Egyptian senior government official. “It is at the top of every meeting.”
Egypt is a key conduit for American policy, with the Biden administration going as far as using Cairo to pass messages to Moscow, rather than communicating through direct channels. According to the report, the Egyptians reached out to their Sudanese and Libyan counterparts to relay Washington’s displeasure with Wagner.
Abbas Kamel, the director of Egypt’s Intelligence Directorate Agency, urged the head of Sudan’s ruling sovereign council, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan to address Wagner’s “use of Sudan as a base” for operations in Central Africa, a Sudanese official said. Burns himself visited Libya to speak to the country’s competing governments, discussing Wagner with Libyan National Army (LNA) commander Khalifa Haftar, the report claimed.
Egypt reportedly asked that Haftar not station Wagner soldiers near its borders, while the US demanded that Wagner fighters be removed from their posts safeguarding Libyan oil facilities.
Founded in 2014, Wagner has mainly operated as a security contractor in Africa and the Middle East. The precise details of its deployments are not made public, although Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has confirmed that his forces fought in Libya. He denied involvement in Sudan when asked by American journalists last year, saying at the time that he was “not aware of any evidence that the Wagner Group exists,” and that he had personally donated humanitarian aid to the conflict-stricken country.
“Who arranged wars and revolutions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Mozambique, Central Africa, and so on?” he told RT last month. “Some of these countries later turned to the Wagner PMC, which put an end to these wars with an iron fist.”
The US declared the Wagner Group a “transnational criminal organization” last month, after Wagner forces notched up a series of victories against the Ukrainian military in Donbass.
Despite Washington’s apparent “obsession” with the group, “there is no evidence yet that the Biden administration’s pressure has yielded results in either Sudan or Libya,” the AP report noted.
Mohsen Rezaee, a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, has said preconditions include reparations and security guarantees
For the ongoing conflict between Iran and the US to conclude, the latter must withdraw its military forces from the Persian Gulf, according to a member of the advisory board of Iran’s supreme leader.
Mohsen Rezaee, a retired major general and former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), added that Tehran would also seek full restitution for the damage done and ironclad security guarantees from Washington.
In an interview with Iran’s SNN TV broadcaster published on Saturday, the member of the Expediency Discernment Council said that the “presence of the US in the Persian Gulf has been the main cause of insecurity over the past 50 years.”
“The end of the war is also in our hands,” Rezaee claimed, naming the “US withdrawal from the Persian Gulf” among the key prerequisites. Additionally, Iran expects to receive reparations from the ...
The spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters has accused the United States and Israel of deploying a rebranded copy of Iran’s Shahed-136 drone, designated “Lucas,” to carry out attacks on civilian infrastructure in regional countries as part of a deliberate false-flag operation aimed at framing the Islamic Republic.
In an official statement released today, the spokesman explained that after suffering military setbacks on the battlefield and failing to build political coalitions against Iran, the enemy has resorted to deception.
The statement specifically warned that the objective of these operations is to “create doubt and accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran” while sowing discord between Tehran and its neighbors, thereby undermining the legitimacy of Iran’s defensive actions.
The spokesman pointed to a series of “suspicious attacks” in recent days on facilities in friendly neighboring countries, including Turkey, Kuwait, and Iraq, which Western media outlets and hostile ...
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has announced the execution of the 51st wave of Operation True Promise 4, launching missile strikes against US military installations across the region in retaliation for ongoing American-Israeli aggression against the country.
The IRGC announced the latest wave was carried out using a combination of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel missiles against US terrorist army forces at the Al Kharj Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
According to the IRGC statement, Al Kharj base served as the "origin of aggressions against the Islamic homeland," functioning as the staging ground for US F-35 and F-16 fighter jets involved in attacks on Iran.
The base also houses fuel supply aircraft and serves as the main hub for American AWACS surveillance planes.
Concurrently, the spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters confirmed that the fiftieth wave of the operation struck multiple US terrorist army bases.
They include the Al Dhafra Air Base and Fujairah in the UAE, Jufair in ...
