Growing suspicions suggest Biden administration sabotaged Nord Stream pipelines

Suspicions are growing among media pundits, political commentators and even foreign officials that the Biden administration is behind Tuesday's mysterious sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline system. 

The Swedish Maritime Authority reported Tuesday that underwater explosions caused two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and one leak in the Nord Stream 2, sending bubbling methane to the surface of the Baltic Sea, according to Reuters.  

The 760-mile Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which has carried natural gas from Russia to Germany since 2011, was shut down last month by Russian President Vladimir Putin in retaliation for European sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine. The pipeline cost Russia billions of dollars to construct and has remained under Russian control. 

Russia-owned Nord Stream 2, a project which began in 2018, was blocked by Germany just prior to the Russia-Ukraine war. 

According to Asia Times, repairs “will take some time even if priority is given to the first Nord Stream pipeline, making it unlikely that it can be returned to service before winter, even if there is a change in the political situation.” 

Some speculate Russia sabotaged its own pipelines to frame the US; some say Ukraine wanted to generate another dose of world sympathy. Some say Germany, who was not receiving natural gas anyway, decided to hit back. A senior Ukrainian official has blamed Russia for the “a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards E.U.” 

And many are placing blame at the feet of the Biden administration, partly in light of a report in which the CIA notified Germany and some other European nations only weeks ago of such an attack. 

But mainly, the Biden administration is being accused of sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines because it promised to bring an end to it. 

"If Russia invades . . . then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2," Biden said during a February joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "We will bring an end to it." 

When a reporter asked him how the US would end the pipeline, Biden ominously answered, "I promise you, we will be able to do it." 

In January, State Department official Victoria Nuland vowed that “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” 

Both remarks came before Germany decided to end the Nord Stream 2 project on February 22, 2022. 

The remarks take on more gravitas considering that Joe Biden has never met a pipeline he liked. On his first day in the White House, Biden ended the Keystone XL pipeline between the United States and Canada. 

"If you are Vladimir Putin you would have to be a suicidal moron to blow up your own energy pipeline—that's one thing you would never do," said Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a segment Tuesday. "Natural gas pipelines are the main source of your power and wealth. And most critically, your leverage over other countries." 

"As natural gas pours into the Baltic Sea and into the atmosphere. . . . Could the Biden administration really do something like this?" Carlson added. "We can't say for sure," he continued. "We don't know for sure. . . . we can tell you that close allies of the Biden White House believe they certainly did do it." 

Carlson also cited a tweet from former Polish defense minister and current MEP Radek Sikorski, saying, “Thank you USA” next to a photo of the leak. 

The cable news superstar then suggested that the Biden administration may even be goading Putin. 

“If we actually blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, why wouldn’t Russia sever undersea internet cables?” Carlson wondered, noting that such a move could wreck the western banking system. “Have the people behind this, the geniuses like Victoria Nuland, considered the effects? Maybe they have. Maybe that was the point.” 

Such a move would fulfill another Biden prophesy that Russia will implement a cyberattack against the United States. 

“The more Putin’s back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ. . . . one of the tools he’s most likely to use in my view, in our view, is cyberattacks,” Biden said in March. “The magnitude of Russia’s cyber capacity is fairly consequential and it’s coming.”  

Last year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) conducted a simulation similar to its COVID-19 predictive exercise, this time of a computer virus that could sweep the world wide web, which would then need to be “sterilized” by shutting the internet down and the power grid it controls.  

According to a WEF video, “The only way to stop the exponential propagation of a COVID-like cyber threat is to fully disconnect the millions of vulnerable devices from one another and from the Internet.  All of this in a matter of days.”