This file photo taken in September 2022, released by the Danish Defence Command, shows the gas leak at the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as it is seen from the Danish Defence’s F-16 rejection response off the Danish Baltic island of Bornholm, south of Dueodde. AFP
New Delhi: The Pulitzer winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has termed the Nord Stream bombing, which he recently reported was done by the US, the ‘dumbest’ acts from Washington in years.
Just a few days ago, Hersh had reported that US planted the bombs on the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic sea, which carried Russian gas to Germany, during the Baltops joint military drill in June last year.
The Nord Stream pipeline was blown apart in a series of explosions after few months in August.
In an interview with Democracy Now, on Wednesday, he said “I think the consequences politically for us (the US) are enormous,”
He said the long term effect of the sabotage would be “horrific” for Europe, adding that the act “cut into the notion that they can depend totally on America, even in a crisis.”
The US “always wanted to isolate Russia” to prevent it from selling oil and gas to the European Union, he noted.
The US, he underlined, saw energy alternatives for Europe as a “threat”, and the Biden administration feared that Europe would “walk away” from the war in Ukraine if it felt the need for Russian fuel carried by the pipeline, which was under sanctions.
The fear of losing European support in the Ukraine conflict made the US to take out the only option Europe had should it want to restart buying fuel from Russia, Hersh argued.
“What [Biden] did is he said, ‘I’m in a big war with Ukraine. It’s not looking good. I want to be sure I get German and West European support,’ so he took away that option,” he said.
The decision to take out the pipeline, which Europe needed to relieve to its people paying around four and four times for gas and electricity, effectively meant telling the European partners that they are “second rate”, he argued.
“I know people that are paying five times as much now for electricity. People are paying three or four times more for gas. There’s not enough of it. It’s very expensive,” he said.
“The President of the United States would rather see Germany freeze than [see] Germany possibly stop supporting Ukraine,” he wrote on in a separate SubStack post on Wednesday.
Europe is now forced to seek fuel from other sources, including the United States itself.
“And I think it’s going to undercut NATO, which I always found to be supremely useless,” he added in the interview.
The White House has denied Hersh’s claim as “complete nonsense”, but he has stuck with his unnamed source. He has said that his information is accurate.
More revelations on the Nord Stream to follow
Taking to his SubStack page on Wednesday he further slammed the US mainstream media for looking the other way on his expose.
Hersh singled out the New York Times and Washington Post for resfusing to “run a word” on the story and ignoring Russia and China’s calls for an international investigation into the Nord Stream blasts.
He said that he would carry on his expose on how the US blew up the fuel lines without considering the adverse effect it would have Europe in the winters.
“There may be more to learn about Joe Biden’s decision to prevent the German government from having second thoughts about the lack of cheap gas this winter,” he wrote,
“Stay tuned, we are only on first base…” he added.
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