At Russia’s Valdai Club meeting – the east’s answer to Davos – intellectuals and influencers gathered to frame West Asia’s current and future developments.
Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore and Bangkok. He is the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties.
The 12th “Middle East Conference” at the Valdai Club in Moscow offered a more than welcome cornucopia of views on interconnected troubles and tribulations affecting the region.
But first, an important word on terminology – as only one of Valdai’s guests took the trouble to stress. This is not the “Middle East” – a reductionist, Orientalist notion devised by old colonials: at The Cradle we emphasize the region must be correctly described as West Asia.
Some of the region’s trials and tribulations have been mapped by the official Valdai report, The Middle East and The Future of Polycentric World. But the intellectual and political clout of those in attendance can provide valuable anecdotal insights too. Here are a few of the major strands participants highlighted on regional developments, current and future:
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov set the stage by stressing that Kremlin policy encourages the formation of an “inclusive regional security system.” That’s exactly what the Americans refused to discuss with the Russians in December 2021, then applied to Europe and the post-Soviet space. The result was a proxy war.
Kayhan Barzegar of Islamic Azad University in Iran qualified the two major strategic developments affecting West Asia: a possible US retreat and a message to regional allies: “You cannot count on our security guarantees.”
Every vector – from rivalry in the South Caucasus to the Israeli normalization with the Persian Gulf – is subordinated to this logic, notes Barzegar, with quite a few Arab actors finally understanding that there now exists a margin of maneuver to choose between the western or the non-western bloc.
Barzegar does not identify Iran-Russia ties as a strategic alliance, but rather a geopolitical, economic bloc based on technology and regional supply chains – a “new algorithm in politics” – ranging from weapons deals to nuclear and energy cooperation, driven by Moscow’s revived southern and eastward orientations. And as far as Iran-western relations go, Barzegar still believes the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, is not dead. A least not yet.
‘Nobody knows what these rules are’
Egyptian Ramzy Ramzy, until 2019 the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, considers the reactivation of relations between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE with Syria as the most important realignment underway in the region. Not to mention prospects for a Damascus-Ankara reconciliation. “Why is this happening? Because of the regional security system’s dissatisfaction with the present,” Ramzy explains.
Yet even if the US may be drifting away, “neither Russia nor China are willing to take up a leadership role,” he says. At the same time, Syria “cannot be allowed to fall prey to outside interventions. The earthquake at least accelerated these rapprochements.”
Bouthaina Shaaban, a special advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is a remarkable woman, fiery and candid. Her presence at Valdai was nothing short of electric. She stressed how “since the US war in Vietnam, we lost what we witnessed as free media. The free press has died.” At the same time “the colonial west changed its methods,” subcontracting wars and relying on local fifth columnists.
Shaaban volunteered the best short definition anywhere of the “rules-based international order”: “Nobody knows what these rules are, and what this order is.”
She re-emphasized that in this post-globalization period that is ushering in regional blocs, the usual western meddlers prefer to use non-state actors – as in Syria and Iran – “mandating locals to do what the US would like to do.”
A crucial example is the US al-Tanf military base that occupies sovereign Syrian territory on two critical borders. Shaaban calls the establishment of this base as “strategic, for the US to prevent regional cooperation, at the Iraq, Jordan, and Syria crossroads.” Washington knows full well what it is doing: unhampered trade and transportation at the Syria-Iraq border is a major lifeline for the Syrian economy.
Reminding everyone once again that “all political issues are connected to Palestine,” Shaaban also offered a healthy dose of gloomy realism: “The eastern bloc has not been able to match the western narrative.”
A ‘double-layered proxy war’
Cagri Erhan, rector of Altinbas University in Turkey, offered a quite handy definition of a Hegemon: the one who controls the lingua franca, the currency, the legal setting, and the trade routes.
Erhan qualifies the current western hegemonic state of play as “double-layered proxy war” against, of course, Russia and China. The Russians have been defined by the US as an “open enemy” – a major threat. And when it comes to West Asia, proxy war still rules: “So the US is not retreating,” says Erhan. Washington will always consider using the area “strategically against emerging powers.”
Then what about the foreign policy priorities of key West Asian and North African actors?
Algerian political journalist Akram Kharief, editor of the online MenaDefense, insists Russia should get closer to Algeria, “which is still in the French sphere of influence,” and be wary of how the Americans are trying to portray Moscow as “a new imperial threat to Africa.”
Professor Hasan Unal of Maltepe University in Turkiye made it quite clear how Ankara finally “got rid of its Middle East [West Asian] entanglements,” when it was previously “turning against everybody.”
Mid-sized powers such as Turkiye, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are now stepping to the forefront of the region’s political stage. Unal notes how “Turkiye and the US don’t see eye to eye on any issue important to Ankara.” Which certainly explains the strengthening of Turkish-Russian ties – and their mutual interest in introducing “multi-faceted solutions” to the region’s problems.
For one, Russia is actively mediating Turkiye-Syria rapprochement. Unal confirmed that the Syrian and Turkish foreign ministers will soon meet in person – in Moscow – which will represent the highest-ranking direct engagement between the two nations since the onset of the Syrian war. And that will pave the way for a tripartite summit between Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Note that the big regional reconciliations are being held – once again – either in, or with the participation of Moscow, which can rightfully be described as the capital of the 21st century multipolar world.
When it comes to Cyprus, Unal notes how “Russia would not be interested in a unified state that would be EU and NATO territory.” So it’s time for “creative ideas: as Turkey is changing its Syria policy, Russia should change its Cyprus policy.”
Dr. Gong Jiong, from the Israeli campus of China’s University of International Business and Economics, came up with a catchy neologism: the “coalition of the unwilling” – describing how “almost the whole Global South is not supporting sanctions on Russia,” and certainly none of the players in West Asia.
Gong noted that as much as China-Russia trade is rising fast – partly as a direct consequence of western sanctions – the Americans would have to think twice about China-hit sanctions. Russia-China trade stands at $200 billion a year, after all, while US-China trade is a whopping $700 billion per annum.
The pressure on the “neutrality camp” won’t relent anyway. What is needed by the world’s “silent majority,” as Gong defines it, is “an alliance.” He describes the 12-point Chinese peace plan for Ukraine as “a set of principles” – Beijing’s base for serious negotiations: “This is the first step.”
There will be no new Yalta
What the Valdai debates made crystal clear, once again, is how Russia is the only actor capable of approaching every player across West Asia, and be listened to carefully and respectfully.
It was left to Anwar Abdul-Hadi, director of the political department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the latter’s official envoy to Damascus, to arguably sum up what led to the current global geopolitical predicament: “A new Yalta or a new world war? They [the west] chose war.”
And still, as new geopolitical and geoeconomic fault lines keep emerging, it is as though West Asia is anticipating something “big” coming ahead. That feeling was palpable in the air at Valdai.
To paraphrase Yeats, and updating him to the young, turbulent 21st century, “what rough beast, its hour come out at last, slouches towards the cradle [of civilization] to be born?
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian cautioned the United States that the window of opportunity for an agreement on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal will not remain open forever, urging Washington to adopt a constructive approach to salvage the accord.
In an interview with CNN aired on Wednesday, Amir Abdollahian said Iran has informed the US through mediators that the parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are “on the path to reach an accord,” but warned that this might change if the US side hangs back.
“Our relationship with the IAEA is on its correct, natural path, and we have said this to the US side through mediators that we are on the path to reach an accord but if the Iranian Parliament adopts a new law, then we’ll have to abide by the parliamentary act,” he said.
“So, the window for an accord is still open but this window will not remain open forever,” the top Iranian diplomat added.
Amir Abdollahian also made clear that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been and is the most committed of all the parties involved in the diplomatic endeavors to restore the JCPOA, which was abandoned by the United States in 2018.
“The party that left the JCPOA was [former US president Donald] Trump and the United States,” he said. “The United States should not adopt a deceptive behavior and instead should return to the JCPOA and adopt a constructive approach.”
“The US party has been sending us positive messages through diplomatic channels but in its media remarks, they made very deceptive remarks that are totally different, and really, as the Iranian foreign minister, sometimes I have serious doubts,” he added.
He also noted that even though the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi sees some flaws and shortcomings in the JCPOA, it has decided to continue with the dialogue in order to restore the multilateral accord, provided that all the parties come back to the negotiating table and do their utmost to reach an agreement.
Iran showed to the world the peaceful nature of its nuclear program by signing the JCPOA with six world states — namely the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China. But, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2018 and its subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the deal in limbo.
Elsewhere in his interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Amir Abdollahian criticized the United States for playing the blame game and accusing Iran of not having the “necessary resolve.”
“I will tell you expressively that in the past few years, we saw that the US officials were unable to make a decision because of their own internal problems and the pressures they are under. They are still unable to make a courageous decision to return to the JCPOA,” he said.
The Iranian foreign minister added that the country has shown its initiative on many occasions and “the fact is that we are still on the path of dialogue and we still want to reach an accord.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (L) and European Union foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian has censured the European Union’s new round of sanctions on the Islamic Republic, saying the 27-member bloc is sticking to former US president Donald Trump’s “ineffectual” policy of sanctions against Tehran.
In a telephone conversation with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday, Amir-Abdollahian slammed Brussels’ “overused and obsolete” policy regarding Iran.
Last month, the EU slapped new sanctions on a number of Iranian officials and organizations over an alleged crackdown on riots across the country. Some EU member states and the European Parliament have even pushed for the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) to be listed as a “terrorist organization.”
“The behavior of the European Union in recent months is the continuation of Trump’s ineffective Iran policy. It further proves the continuation of dual and unrealistic standards combined with the exploitation of human rights concepts,” Amir-Abdollahian said.
He also lashed out at certain European countries for backing anti-Iran groups that sponsor terrorism.
Touching on the interactions between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concerning the issues related to safeguards agreements, the foreign minister said Tehran is planning for a visit by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and that joint initiatives are on the agenda.
“If the agency acts with a technical and non-political perspective, it is possible to reach a framework to resolve the issue,” he added.
Iran and the IAEA are currently in a dispute triggered by the agency’s Israeli-influenced accusations, which were leveled against Tehran’s peaceful nuclear activities just as the Islamic Republic and other parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal appeared close to an agreement on reviving the deal.
Iran says an agreement on the revival of the nuclear deal hinges on the settlement of safeguards issues between Tehran and the IAEA, and that without settling those issues, resurrecting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) makes no sense.
The negotiations to salvage the JCPOA have been at a standstill since August 2022 due to Washington’s insistence on its hard-nosed position of not removing all the sanctions that were imposed on the Islamic Republic by the Trump administration.
Tonight on telephone with @JosepBorrellF discussed Iran-EU ties, JCPOA, Iran-IAEA cooperation and Ukraine developments. Emphasized that I.R.Iran relies upon its people and this was proven once again on February 11th (national day) this year.
— H.Amirabdollahian امیرعبداللهیان (@Amirabdolahian) February 19, 2023
‘Iran always seeks peace in Ukraine’ Referring to the Ukraine war, Amir-Abdollahian said the Islamic Republic has always stressed the need for a ceasefire and diplomatic strategies to resolve the conflict. Iran, he added, believes that respect for other countries’ territorial integrity guarantees sustainable peace, including in Ukraine, and it has spared no efforts to push for truce and peace. Borrell, for his part, referred to Europe’s support for Kiev and voiced pessimism about the prospects of reaching a ceasefire in the coming weeks or even months. He also expressed hope for the progress made in the cooperation between Iran and the IAEA, underlining the need for keeping up the talks.
The Balkans presents a crucial junction for Tehran as an access point to Western Europe and an avenue for advancing its regional political and economic interests.
The Balkan region is strategically important for western countries as a geographic bloc through which they can increase their influence in former Soviet Eastern European states, including Russia.
In the 20th century, the Balkans was was a theater of conflict between powerful European states, and sparked the First World War when Archduke of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914.
Further afield, Iran today views the Balkans as a gateway to the west and its markets. Iranian officials and experts consider the region to be the “eastern world in the west” due to similarities in culture, religion, and discourse.
As an example, the Persian New Year – Nowruz – is celebrated in both Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The Persian language was popular in some areas of the Balkans in ancient times, and over 1,700 Persian words are still used in the Bosnian language today.
Iran began its modern day influence in the Balkans at the onset of the Bosnian war in 1992. Tehran actively intervened to reduce the carnage on both sides, and filled a vacuum by sending military trainers, intelligence officers, food, money, and humanitarian assistance to Bosnians struggling against their heavily armed adversaries.
Iran’s gateway to Europe
Post-war, and in more recent years, the Balkan states have made efforts to integrate into the European economy. Some, such as Bulgaria and Croatia, are already members of the EU, while others, such as Albania, Kosovo, BiH, and Serbia, are seeking to join. In this sense, the Islamic Republic of Iran sees the Balkans as a potential opportunity to increase exports to Europe.
In 2020, Iran exported approximately $16 million worth of goods to Serbia, making it Iran’s 37th largest trading partner. Serbia, in turn, exported $7 million worth of goods to Iran. Despite having plenty of room for growth, the volume of economic exchanges between the two countries has increased by 50 percent in the past year.
This illustrates the commitment of both nations to enhance their economic interactions. According to an announcement by Iran’s Ambassador to Belgrade Rashid Hassanpour, 15 cooperation documents are being prepared for signing during the upcoming visit of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to Tehran. And Serbia’s First Lady Tamara Vucic was in Tehran just last month to attend the International Congress for Women of Influence.
Among the Balkan countries, Serbia has the most robust economic exchanges with Iran. Due to the war in Ukraine and the disruption of Russian oil to Europe, Serbia is looking to import oil and chemical fertilizers from Iran and export its wheat there in return.
In July 2022, over 80 Serbian and Iranian businessmen, representatives from business associations, and government officials gathered in Belgrade for a business forum that marked the potential start of strengthened economic relations between the two countries. As a result of these established ties – and despite being a candidate for EU membership – Serbia has not joined the EU’s sanctions against Iran.
BiH also has trade relations with Iran. During Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s visit on 6 December 2022, he announced a 53 percent growth in trade between the two countries in the past nine months.
During the trip, both sides prioritized cooperation in tourism, metals, wood, mining, and agriculture, and decisions were made to establish direct flights between the two countries.
Lacking an economic strategy
However, Iran’s economic relations with the Balkans face challenges. The Islamic Republic is a revolutionary country where ideology plays a strong role, and its economic interactions are not always based on strategic considerations. Tehran lacks a comprehensive strategy of economic diplomacy to match the economic priorities in each region, based on their specific needs.
An example of this lack of strategy can be seen in the case of Syria. Turkiye views the government of Bashar al-Assad as illegitimate and has occupied northern Syria and conducted four military operations there without the approval of Damascus.
However, Turkiye was able to export $2.11 billion to Syria in 2021, while Iran, which has supported the Syrian government during the 11-year conflict, does not export more than $300 million to Syria – seven times less than Turkiye.
In the case of the Balkans, the hindrance of Iranian exports has been evident in its own delayed implementation of its Air Service Agreement with Serbia, for instance. The Iranian parliament approved the agreement in 2022, four years after its initial drafting, while the Serbian parliament approved it back in 2020.
Foreign pressures are also a significant challenge for Iran’s business dealings. Despite Serbia agreeing to visa-free entry for Iranians in October 2017, this decision was cancelled just a year later, under pressure from the EU.
The scrapping of the visa-free policy makes it difficult for Iranian businessmen to freely enter Serbia, hindering trade between the two countries. Until Iran can address its financial and banking issues, it cannot hope to increase trade with the Balkan countries.
Iran’s financial and banking challenges, including US sanctions on its economy, restrictions on currency entry, sanctions on its Central Bank, and the the disconnection of Iranian banks from the global financial system, make trade with Balkan states a risky business proposition.
Soft power and transnational networks
Religion plays a fundamental and influential role in Balkan societies, where populations view themselves as more religious than in other parts of Europe. In a 2018 survey of people, the most religious countries in the Balkans were determined to be the following:
Macedonia with 88 percent, then Kosovo at 83 percent, Romania at 77 percent, and Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Greece all with 70-72 percent of their population. After that is BiH at 65 percent, Bulgaria at 52 percent, and Albania, where only 39 percent admitted a prominent role of religion in their lives.
As a foundational ideology, Shia Islam is very important for the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, the two elements of “religion” and “ideology” have formed the basis of the legitimacy of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. This is evident in the 11th article of the constitution, which emphasizes the importance of religion in Iranian society.
Iran hopes to exert its cultural-religious influence into political influence in the Balkans. Given its limitations, it achieves this objective by using soft power through transnational networks and civil societies in the region. Currently, Iran is pursuing its goals in the following three ways:
First, by exerting its cultural influence through religious and cultural institutions and foundations that cater to Muslim communities, such as heterodox communities including the Bekhtasis and Alevis (Kizilbash).
One of the most influential of these is the Ibn Sina Institute, established in Sarajevo, BiH in 1996. This institution’s goal is to compile and translate Islamic and academic books and has established many connections with the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarajevo.
Through cultural activities, the institution aims to spread the official discourse of the Islamic Republic in the Balkan region and internationally on political developments in West Asia.
Second, Tehran seeks to promote its culture through cultural aid and festivals. Iran has set up different websites in local Balkan languages to disseminate information about Iranian culture and art. Bosnian Radio, for instance, belongs to Iran’s state broadcaster, Balkan Sahar TV, which helps instruction in the Persian language.
Iran also provides financial aid to institutions such as the OAK private language training institute in BiH and holds festivals for Iranian films, such as the Iranian Cinema Week, which is funded by the Iranian Ministry of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Third, by supporting the Shia community, including converts. The Islamic Republic tries to mobilize the influence of these Muslims to establish a network of communication and – with the help of their notable members – entrusts them with the management of Iranian institutions in order to reduce negative perceptions of Iran.
One of these notables is Amar Imamovic, a Bosnian Shia convert who manages the Spiritual Heritage Foundation (Fodacije “Baština dhuhonosti”) of Iran in the city of Mostar. The purpose of this institution is to promote spiritual values, to revive the Bosnian Islamic spiritual heritage, to publish books, and promote the works of Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai (1903-1981), a celebrated Iranian Shia theosophist.
Obstacles to projecting soft power
Although Iran has been able to establish some degree of religious and cultural influence in the Balkans, it faces numerous challenges and competitors in maintaining these relationships – in a region marked by ethnic diversity, extremism, and foreign intervention.
For example, some pro-western individuals are skeptical of Iran’s activities, and there are criticisms from influential figures, such as Dr Jamaludin Latić, a professor at the University of Sarajevo’s Faculty of Islamic Sciences and a prominent Bosnian writer who has criticized Dr. Hafizović’s connections with Iran.
Iran’s activities in the region also face competition from other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, which compete for religious influence in the Balkans. Saudi Arabia, with its vast oil wealth, has been particularly successful in promoting Wahhabi beliefs through its numerous charitable foundations and has been able to establish a significant presence in the region.
The launch of Saudi religious activities coincided with the war in Bosnia, during which Riyadh sent tens of millions of dollars to the region. In 1992, the Saudi Government created the High Saudi Committee for Aid to BiH, allegedly the largest single Muslim donor to BiH, and provided funds through several Islamic charities.
They include the Muslim World League, the Al Haramain Foundation, the International Islamic Relief Organization, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the Saudi Arabian Red Crescent Society, the Islamic Waqf Organization, and the Makkah Humanitarian Organization.
These are only a few of the as many as 245 charitable foundations that have financed the spread of conservative and extremist versions of Islam in the region.
This presents a threat to Iran’s Shia-oriented activities as many Wahhabi scholars considering Shias to be infidels. Despite Iran’s efforts over the past three decades, most Balkan countries remain interested in joining NATO and the EU, and they are likely to prioritize their relationships with the west over those with Iran.
Another part of Iran’s problems is caused by political problems and contradictions. Albania hosts the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), which is proscribed as a terrorist group in Iran, and was delisted from the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 2012. This group was based in Iraq during the rule of Saddam Hussein, and after his overthrow, relocated to Albania with US support. Tirana officially accepted more than 2,000 MEK members into the Manëz area in 2016.
The Iranian government has lodged protests with Albania over the MEK, which has caused conflict and differences between the two nations. In the latest political development, on September 7, 2022, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama severed diplomatic ties with Iran over allegations that Iran was involved in a cyber-attack on Albania’s digital infrastructure. The incident interrupted Iran’s cultural and religious activities in Albania, which had provided the infrastructure of its soft power at great cost and over a long period.
If Iran wants to exert influence in the Balkans, it needs to understand that the path to influence in the region runs through Western Europe these days, and not necessarily via Moscow. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – or Iran nuclear deal – could be a way for Iran to strengthen its cooperation with Europe and, in turn, its relationship with the Balkans. But even this could change depending on the outcome of the current war in Ukraine.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Raisi’s visit to Beijing, the first for an Iranian president in 20 years, represents Tehran’s wholesale ‘Pivot to the East’ and China’s recognition of Iran’s centrality to its BRI plans.
The visit of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Beijing and his face-to- face meeting with counterpart Xi Jinping is a groundbreaking affair in more ways than one.
Raisi, the first Iranian president to officially visit China in 20 years, led an ultra high-level political and economic delegation, which included the new Central Bank governor and the Ministers of Economy, Oil, Foreign Affairs, and Trade.
The fact that Raisi and Xi jointly supervised the signing of 20 bilateral cooperation agreements ranging from agriculture, trade, tourism and environmental protection to health, disaster relief, culture and sports, is not even the major take away.
This week’s ceremonial sealing of the Iran-China comprehensive strategic partnership marks a key evolution in the multipolarity sphere: two Sovereigns – both also linked by strategic partnerships with Russia – imprinting to their domestic audiences and also to the Global South their vision of a more equitable, fair and sustainable 21st century which completely bypasses western dictates.
Beijing and Tehran first established their comprehensive strategic partnership when Xi visited Iran in 2016 – only one year after the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iranian nuclear deal.
In 2021, Beijing and Tehran signed a 25-year cooperation deal which translated the comprehensive partnership into practical economic and cultural developments in several fields, especially energy, trade and infrastructure. By then, not only Iran (for decades) but also China were being targeted by unilateral US sanctions.
Here is a relatively independent analysis of the challenges and prospects of the 25-year deal. And here is an enlightening perspective from neighboring Pakistan, also a strategic partner of China.
Iran: gotta modernize everything
Beijing and Tehran are already actively cooperating in the construction of selected lines of Tehran’s subway, the Tehran-Isfahan high-speed railway, and of course joint energy projects. Chinese tech giant Huawei is set to help Tehran to build a framework for a 5G telecom network.
Raisi and Xi, predictably, stressed increased joint coordination at the UN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of which Iran is the newest member, as well as a new drive along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
While there was no explicit mention of it, underlying all these initiatives is the de-dollarization of trade – in the framework of the SCO but also the multipolar BRICS group of states. Iran is set to become one of the new members of BRICS+, a giant step to be decided in their upcoming summit in South Africa next August.
There are estimates in Tehran that Iran-China annual trade may reach over $70 billion in the mid-term, which will amount to triple the current figures.
When it comes to infrastructure building, Iran is a key BRI partner. The geostrategy of course is hard to match: a 2,250 km coastline encompassing the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Sea of Oman and the Caspian Sea – and huge land borders with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Every think tank in China sees how Iran is irreplaceable, not only in terms of BRI land corridors, but also the Maritime Silk Road.
Chabahar Port may be a prime Iran-India affair, as part of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) – thus directly linked to the Indian vision of a Silk Road, extending to Central Asia.
But Chinese port developers do have other ideas, focused on alternative ports along the Persian Gulf and in the Caspian Sea. That will boost shipping connections to Central Asia (Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan), Russia and the Caucasus (Azerbaijan).
And that makes perfect sense when one combines port terminal development with the modernization of Iran’s railways – all the way to high-speed rail.
An even more revolutionary development would be China coordinating the BRI connection of an Iranian corridor with the already in progress 3,200 km-long China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), from Kashgar in Xinjiang to Gwadar port in the Indian Ocean.
That seemed perfectly plausible when Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was still in power, before being ousted by a lawfare coup. The key of the whole enterprise is to build badly needed infrastructure in Balochistan, on both sides of the border. On the Pakistani side, that would go a long way to smash CIA-fed “insurgents” of the Balochistan Liberation Army kind, get rid of unemployment, and put trade in charge of economic development.
Afghanistan of course enters the equation – in the form of a China-Afghan-Iran corridor linked to CPEC. Since September 2021, Beijing has explained to the Taliban, in detail, how they may profit from an infrastructure corridor – complete with railway, highway and pipeline – from Xinjiang, across the Wakhan corridor in eastern Afghanistan, through the Hindu Kush, all the way to Iran.
The core of multipolarity
Iran is perfectly positioned for a Chinese-propelled boom in high-speed cargo rail, connecting Iran to most of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan).
That means, in practice, cool connectivity with a major logistics cluster: the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Khorgos, only 330 km from Almaty on the Kazakh-China border, and only four hours from Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital.
If China pulls that off, it would be a sort of BRI Holy Grail, interconnecting China and Iran via Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Nothing less than several corridors in one.
All that is about to happen as the Islamic Revolution in Iran celebrates its 44th year.
What is already happening now, geopolitically, and fully recognized by China, might be defined as the full rejection of an absurdity: the collective west treating Iran as a pariah or at best a subjugated neo-colony.
With the diverse strands of the Resistance embedded in the Islamic Revolution finally consolidated, it looks like history is finally propelling Iran as one of the key poles of the most complex process at work in the 21st century: Eurasia integration.
So 44 years after the Islamic Revolution, Iran enjoys strategic partnerships with the three top BRICS: China, Russia and India.
Likely to become one of the first new members of BRICS+, Iran is the first West Asian state to become a full member of the SCO, and is clinching a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
Iran is a major strategic partner of both BRI, led by China, and the INSTC, alongside Russia and India.
With the JCPOA all but dead, and all western “promises” lying in the dust, Tehran is consolidating its pivot back to the East at breakneck speed.
What Raisi and Xi sealed in Beijing heralds Chinese pre-eminence all across West Asia – keenly perceived in Beijing as a natural consequence of recognizing and honoring Iran’s regional centrality.
Iran’s “Look East” strategy could not be more compatible with BRI – as an array of BRI projects will accelerate Iran’s economic development and consolidate its inescapable role when it comes to trade corridors and as an energy provider.
During the 1980s Tehran was ruled by a “Neither East nor West” strategy – faithful to the tenets of the Islamic Revolution. That has now evolved, pragmatically, into “Look East.” Tehran did try to “Look West” in good faith, but what the US government did with the JCPOA – from its murder to “maximum pressure” to its aborted resuscitation – was quite a historical lesson.
What Raisi and Xi have just demonstrated in Beijing is the Sovereign way forward. The three leaders of Eurasia integration – China, Russia and Iran – are fast on their way to consolidate the core of multipolarity.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
The national flags of China and Iran fly in Tiananmen Square during Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi’s visit to Beijing, China, February 14, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)
The key takeaway of President Ebrahim Raeisi’s state visit to Beijing goes way beyond the signing of 20 bilateral cooperation agreements.
This is a crucial inflexion point in an absorbing, complex, decades-long, ongoing historical process: Eurasia integration.
Little wonder that President Raeisi, welcomed by a standing ovation at Peking University before receiving an honorary academic title, stressed “a new world order is forming and taking the place of the older one”, characterized by “real multilateralism, maximum synergy, solidarity and dissociation from unilateralisms”.
And the epicenter of the new world order, he asserted, is Asia.
It was quite heartening to see the Iranian president eulogizing the Ancient Silk Road, not only in terms of trade but also as a “cultural bond” and “connecting different societies together throughout history”.
Raeisi could have been talking about Sassanid Persia, whose empire ranged from Mesopotamia to Central Asia, and was the great intermediary Silk Road trading power for centuries between China and Europe.
It’s as if he was corroborating Chinese President Xi Jinping’s famed notion of “people to people exchanges” applied to the New Silk Roads.
And then President Raeisi jump cut to the inescapable historical connection: he addressed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which Iran is a key partner.
All that spells out Iran’s full reconnection with Asia – after those arguably wasted years of trying an entente cordiale with the collective West. That was symbolized by the fate of the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal: negotiated, unilaterally buried and then, last year, all but condemned all over gain.
A case can be made that after the Islamic Revolution 44 years ago, a budding “pivot to the East” always lurked behind the official government strategy of “Neither East nor West”.
Starting in the 1990s that happened to progressively enter in full synch with China’s official “Open Door” policy.
After the start of the millennium, Beijing and Tehran have been getting even deeper in synch. BRI, the major geopolitical and geoeconomic breakthrough, was proposed in 2013, in Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
Then, in 2016, President Xi visited Iran, in West Asia, leading to the signing of several memoranda of understanding (MOU), and recently the wide-ranging 25-year comprehensive strategic agreement – consolidating Iran as a key BRI actor.
Accelerating all key vectors
In practice, Raeisi’s visit to Beijing was framed to accelerate all manner of vectors in Iran-China economic cooperation – from crucial investments in the energy sector (oil, gas, petrochemical industry, pipelines) to banking, with Beijing engaged in advancing modernizing reforms in Iran’s banking sector and Chinese banks opening branches across Iran.
Chinese companies may be about to enter the emerging Iranian commercial and private real estate markets, and will be investing in advanced technology, robotics and AI across the industrial spectrum.
Sophisticated strategies to bypass harsh, unilateral US sanctions will be a major focus every step of the way in Iran-China relations. Barter is certainly part of the picture when it comes to trading Iranian oil/gas contracts for Chinese industrial and infrastructure deals.
It’s quite possible that Iran’s sovereign wealth fund – the National Development Fund of Iran – with holdings at estimated $90 billion, may be able to finance strategic industrial and infrastructure projects.
Other international financial partners may come in the form of the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) and the NDB – the BRICS bank, as soon as Iran is accepted as a member of BRICS+: that may be decided this coming August at the summit in South Africa.
The heart of the matter of the strategic partnership is energy. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) pulled out of a deal to develop Phase 11 of Iran’s South Pars gas field, adjacent to Qatar’s section.
Yet CNPC can always come back for other projects. Phase 11 is currently being developed by the Iranian energy company Petropars.
Energy deals – oil, gas, petrochemical industry, renewables – will boom across what I dubbed Pipelineistan in the early 2000s.
Chinese companies will certainly be part of new oil and gas pipelines connecting to the existing Iranian pipeline networks and configuring new pipeline corridors.
Already established Pipelineistan includes the Central Asia-China pipeline, which connects to China’s West-East pipeline grid, nearly 7,000 km from Turkmenistan to the eastern China seaboard; and the Tabriz-Ankara pipeline (2,577 km, from northwest Iran to the Turkish capital).
Then there’s one of the great sagas of Pipelineistan: the IP (Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline, previously known as the Peace Pipeline, from South Pars to Karachi.
The Americans did everything in the book – and off the books – to stall it, delay it or even kill it. But IP refused to die; and the China-Iran strategic partnership could finally make it happen.
A new geostrategic architecture
Arguably, the central node of the China-Iran strategic partnership is the configuration of a complex geostrategic economic architecture: connecting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship of BRI, to a two-pronged Iran-centered corridor.
This will take the form of a China-Afghanistan-Iran corridor and a China-Central Asia-Iran corridor, thus forming what we may call a geostrategic China-Iran Economic Corridor.
Beijing and Tehran, now on overdrive and with no time to lose, may face all manner of challenges – and threats – from the Hegemon; but their 25-year strategic deal does honor historically powerful trading/ merchant civilizations now equipped with substantial manufacturing/ industrial bases and with a serious tradition in advanced scientific innovation.
The serious possibility of China-Iran finally configuring what will be a brand new, expanded strategic economic space, from East Asia to West Asia, central to 21st century multipolarity, is a geopolitical tour de force.
Not only that will completely nullify the US sanction obsession; it will direct Iran’s next stages of much needed economic development to the East, and it will boost the whole geoeconomic space from China to Iran and everyone in between.
This whole process – already happening – is in many aspects a direct consequence of the Empire’s “until the last Ukrainian” proxy war against Russia.
Ukraine as cannon fodder is rooted in Mackinder’s heartland theory: world control belongs to the nation that controls the Eurasian land mass.
This was behind World War I, where Germany knocking out Russia created fear among the Anglo-Saxons that should Germany knock out France it would control the Eurasian land mass.
WWII was conceived against Germany and Japan forming an axis to control Europe, Russia and China.
The present, potential WWIII was conceived by the Hegemon to break a friendly alliance between Germany, Russia and China – with Iran as a privileged West Asia partner.
Everything we are witnessing at this stage spells out the US trying to break up Eurasia integration.
So it’s no wonder that the three top existential “threats” to the American oligarchy which dictates the “rules-based international order” are The Three Sovereigns: China, Russia and Iran.
Does that matter? Not really. We have just seen that while the dogs (of war) bark, the Iran-China strategic caravan rolls on.
Pepe Escobar is a Eurasia-wide geopolitical analyst and author. His latest book is Raging Twenties.
(The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
Posted on February 12, 2023 by uprootedpalestinians
February 11 2023
Forty-four years on from the Islamic Revolution, Iran boasts a more diversified economy, advances in technology, and major development milestones – despite decades of western sanctions aimed at hindering such progress.
Iran’s economy underwent significant changes after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Prior to the revolution, Iran had a mixed economy with a strong private sector and heavy reliance on oil exports. After the revolution, the government nationalized many industries and implemented an economic system based on central planning and state control.
According to the World Bank, Iran’s economy is dominated by the hydrocarbon sector, agriculture, and services sectors. Although there have been some liberalization efforts, most privatizations have resulted in ownership being transferred from the government to large conglomerates, with the actual private sector playing a smaller role in small and medium-sized enterprises.
Main Sectors
Pre-revolutionary Iran’s economy was primarily comprised of four main sectors, with the oil and mining sector being the largest, accounting for 75 percent of the GDP. The services sector, industry, and agriculture followed with 13 percent, 9 percent, and 2 percent of the GDP respectively.
Over time, Iran has transformed into a diverse economy, with the services sector now being the primary driver, (+57 percent of the GDP). This is followed by the industry and mining sector (19.5 percent), agriculture (10.7 percent), petroleum (approximately 8 percent), and construction with 4.3 percent as of the end of the last Iranian calendar year, 1400, on 20 March, 2022, according to data from the Central Bank of Iran.
Oil, Gas, and Petrochemicals
Iran’s oil sector has faced numerous challenges since the revolution, including western sanctions and the destruction of facilities during the devastating eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. While Iran saw its highest crude oil production of 6 million barrels per day (bpd) in 1974, the oil industry has never reached this volume in the past 44 years.
The highest crude oil production recorded after the revolution was 3.8 million bpd in 2018, before the US unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.
As part of its policy to reduce crude oil export, Iran has significantly increased the number of its petrochemical plants to not only reduce or totally eliminate its local demands for strategic goods such as gasoline or urea, but to also maximize its foreign currency income by exporting a variety of petrochemical goods which reached $24 billion in the last Iranian year (March 2021-22).
Despite the downturns in crude oil production, Iran has significantly increased its gas production in several major gas fields such as the South Pars, becoming the third largest gas producer after the US and Russia in 2021 by producing 256.7 billion cubic meter of natural gas. While most of Iran’s natural gas production is consumed by the country’s residential, industrial, and power plants, it continues to export a portion of it to neighboring countries such as Iraq and Turkey.
Agriculture
Agriculture has also undergone significant changes since the revolution, with the government placing importance on food security through self-sufficiency. Although production has increased, the sector has faced challenges, including drought, mismanagement, and lack of needed investment to modernize the industry, which have led to a decline in productivity.
Pursuing a self-sufficiency policy for strategic products such as wheat has long been sought as the state’s policy to reduce its dependency. The sector remains an important source of employment and income for rural communities and small farmers, although its share has been decreasing in recent years.
Services
The services sector, including finance, retail, and tourism, has seen the greatest expansion and growth in post-revolutionary Iran. Although recent anti-government protests and government restrictions on the internet have impacted businesses in the sector, the sector has benefited from advancements in technology, which has enabled businesses to reach a wider customer base and enhance their services in both urban and rural areas.
The country’s scientific and technological advancements, combined with its young and highly educated workforce, has made the services sector the main contributor to the GDP and the primary source of job opportunities.
Industry & Mining
In recent decades, Iran has developed a wide range of industries including petrochemicals, automotive, mining, and manufacturing. The country now produces minerals like iron ore, copper, and gold, and the manufacturing sector has grown to produce goods like textiles, food products, steel, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods.
These are just some of the main technological and industrial advances that Iran has achieved over the past decades either by expanding and modernizing the previously existing industries in the pre-revolution era or by creating them from scratch
Employment
According to the latest data by Iran’s Statistic’s Center, the largest sector of employment in Iran is the service sector, with 51.3 percent of the country’s workforce, followed by the industry sector with 34.6 percent, and the agriculture sector with 14.3 percent.
The current unemployment rate in Iran is 8.2 percent, the lowest it has been in 17 years, although high unemployment rates still persist among the youth (27 percent) and women (29.5 percent).
Iran’s ‘high human development’
The overall advancements in Iran’s economy have contributed significantly to the improvement of its ranking in the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI). Iran’s HDI improved from 0.601 in 1990 to 0.774 in 2021, putting it at 76th place among countries ranked by HDI – in the top tier of states that have achieved the high human development category, and ahead of China, India, and Brazil.
According to the UNDP, the country has made substantial progress in the three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living.
The challenges ahead
Despite 44 years of transformation, Iran’s economy faces a number of persistent challenges that threaten its growth and stability. Sanctions and political tensions with the west continue to limit Iran’s access to the international financial system and hinder its ability to trade, something officials in Tehran describe as “economic warfare.”
Additionally, mismanagement by the government, dependence on oil exports, high inflation rates, high unemployment, and limited foreign investment present major obstacles to the country’s economic progress. Although Iran has a large and well-educated workforce, it needs investment in key sectors such as technology, infrastructure, and manufacturing to unlock its full potential.
However, political, legal, and operational uncertainties, as well as capital flight, are also hindering investment and growth. According to the World Bank’s MENA Economic Update report, Iran’s real GDP was projected to grow by 2.9 percent in 2022 and 2.2 percent in 2023, a downward revision from previous forecasts. As long as sanctions and tensions with the west remain high, the outlook for Iran’s economy will remain uncertain and its growth will likely be limited.
Bleak but not hopeless
Despite its progress over the past 44 years, Iran remains a vastly underutilized market, missing out on opportunities and international investment worth billions that has led to its absence in the global supply chain despite its vast industrial, manufacturing, and scientific advances.
The economy is still grappling with high inflation, a plummeting currency, corruption, and limited access to global markets. The poverty rate which had exceeded 25 percent in the 1970s, dropped to below 10 percent in 2014, but has been on the rise again in the aftermath of major economic downturns and intensified sanctions since 2018, reaching as high as 27.6 percent in 2019. As such, the country’s ailing economy has become a major source of discontent among its youthful population.
While the situation in Iran’s economy may appear bleak, it is important to note that it has not yet reached a breaking point. The country is backed by a large, educated population, strong universities, and innovative startups that provide resilience and flexibility in the face of change, as seen repeatedly over the past decades.
The situation may continue as long as the sanctions and tensions with the West – especially in the aftermath of the Ukraine war and Iran’s strategy of the look to the East – remains high, keeping the Iranian economy ticking with limited growth much lower than its full capacity.
While Tehran continues to proactively pursue trade and economic growth with its neighbors and alternative partners outside the western-led global financial system – such as through accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), its upcoming free trade agreement with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and its application to join the Global South’s BRICS+ expanded format – it remains to be seen to what extend these measures will assist the Islamic Republic to make up for its current economic constraints.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
The Doomsday Clock, set by the US-based magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has been moved to 90 seconds to midnight.
That’s the closest ever to total nuclear doom, the global catastrophe.
The Clock had been set at 100 seconds since 2020. The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board and a group of sponsors – which includes 10 Nobel laureates – have focused on “Russia’s war on Ukraine” (their terminology) as the main reason.
Yet they did not bother to explain non-stop American rhetoric (the US is the only nation that adopts “first strike” in a nuclear confrontation) and the fact that this is a US proxy war against Russia with Ukraine used as cannon fodder.
The Bulletin also attributes malignant designs to China, Iran and North Korea, while mentioning, only in passing, that “the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between Russia and the United States, New START, stands in jeopardy”.
“Unless the two parties resume negotiations and find a basis for further reductions, the treaty will expire in February 2026.”
As it stands, the prospects of a US-Russia negotiation on New START are less than zero.
Now cue to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov making it very clear that war against Russia is not hybrid anymore, it’s “almost” real.
“Almost” in fact means “90 seconds.”
So why is this all happening?
The Mother of All Intel Failures
Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke has concisely explained how Russian resilience – much in the spirit of Iranian resilience past four decades – completely smashed the assumptions of Anglo-American intelligence.
Talk about the Mother of All Intel Failures – in fact even more astonishing than the non-existent Iraqi WMDs (in the run-up to Shock and Awe in 2003, anyone with a brain knew Baghdad had discontinued its weapons program already in the 1990s.)
Now the collective West “committed the entire weight of its financial resources to crushing Russia (…) in every conceivable way – via financial, cultural and psychological war, and with real military war as the follow-through.”
And yet Russia held its ground. And now reality-based developments prevail over fiction. The Global South “is peeling away into a separate economic model, no longer dependent on the dollar for its trading needs.”
And the accelerated collapse of the US dollar increasingly plunges the Empire into a real existential crisis.
All that hangs over a South Vietnam scenario evolving in Ukraine after a rash government-led political and military purge. The coke comedian – whose only role is to beg non-stop for bags of cash and loads of weapons – is being progressively sidelined by the Americans (beware of traveling CIA directors).
The game in Kiev, according to Russian sources, seems to be that the Americans are taking over the Brits as handlers of the whole operation.
The coke comedian remains – for now – as a sock puppet while military control over what is left of Ukraine is entirely NATO’s.
Well, it already was – but now, formally, Ukraine is the world’s first de facto NATO member without being an actual member, enjoying less than zero national sovereignty, and complete with NATO-Nazi Storm troopers weaponized with American and German tanks in the name of “democracy”.
The meeting last week of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group – totally controlled by the US – at the US Air Force base in Ramstein solidified a sort of tawdry remix of Operation Barbarossa.
Here we go again, with German Panzers sent to Ukraine to fight Russia.
Yet the tank coalition seems to have tanked even before it starts. Germany will send 14, Portugal 2, Belgium 0 (sorry, don’t have them). Then there’s Lithuania, whose Defense Minister observed, “Yes, we don’t have tanks, but we have an opinion about tanks.”
No one ever accused German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of being brighter than a light bulb. She finally gave the game away, at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg:
“The crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe because we are fighting a war against Russia.”
So Baerbock agrees with Lavrov. Just don’t ask her what Doomsday Clock means. Or what happened after Operation Barbarossa failed.
The NATO-EU “garden”
The EU-NATO combo takes matters to a whole new level. The EU essentially has been reduced to the status of P.R. arm of NATO.
The NATO-EU joint mission consists in using all economic, political and military means to make sure the “jungle” always behaves according to the “rules-based international order” and accepts to be plundered ad infinitum by the “blooming garden”.
Looking at The Big Picture, absolutely nothing changed in the US military/intel apparatus since 9/11: it’s a bipartisan thing, and it means Full Spectrum Dominance of both the US and NATO. No dissent whatsoever is allowed. And no thinking outside the box.
Plan A is subdivided into two sections.
1. Military intervention in a hollowed-out proxy state shell (see Afghanistan and Ukraine).
2. Inevitable, humiliating military defeat (see Afghanistan and soon Ukraine). Variations include building a wasteland and calling it “peace” (Libya) and extended proxy war leading to future humiliating expulsion (Syria).
There’s no Plan B.
Or is there? 90 seconds to midnight?
Obsessed by Mackinder, the Empire fought for control of the Eurasian landmass in World War I and World War II because that represented control of the world.
Later, Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski had warned: “Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition between Russia, China and Iran.”
Jump cut to the Raging Twenties when the US forced the end of Russian natural gas exports to Germany (and the EU) via Nord Stream 1 and 2.
Once again, Mackinderian opposition to a grand alliance on the Eurasian landmass consisting of Germany, Russia and China.
The Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con psychos in charge of US foreign policy could even absorb a strategic alliance between Russia and China – as painful as it may be. But never Russia, China and Germany.
With the collapse of the JCPOA, Iran is now being re-targeted with maximum hostility. Yet were Tehran to play hardball, the US Navy or military could never keep the Strait of Hormuz open – by the admission of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Oil price in this case would rise to possibly thousands of dollars a barrel according to Goldman Sachs oil derivative experts – and that would crash the entire world economy.
This is arguably the foremost NATO Achilles Heel. Almost without firing a shot a Russia-Iran alliance could smash NATO to bits and bring down assorted EU governments as socio-economic chaos runs rampant across the collective West.
Meanwhile, to quote Dylan, darkness keeps dawning at the break of noon. Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con psychos will keep pushing the Doomsday Clock closer and closer to midnight.
Pepe Escobar is a Eurasia-wide geopolitical analyst and author. His latest book is Raging Twenties.
(The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
Between the riots in Iran, the war in Ukraine, and the talks to revive the JCPOA, Iran has certainly had a busy year. Perhaps it would be good for us to look over the year from an eagle’s eye view so that we can get a feel of how 2023 might play out in Iran.
Between riots, drones, and diplomats, 2023 looks like it’s going to be one heck of a year, both for Iran, and the world.
This was certainly a busy year for the world. We left 2021 pondering on the prospects of a possible JCPOA revival (though to be fair, I did say it was highly unlikely it would happen at the time), looking forward to the winter Olympics, and thinking about what would unfold in the newest episodes of Boris Johnson and the party bunch.
But here we are now, amid a war in Ukraine, fully-backed and stoked by NATO, a continued escalation of tensions with China, a cost-of-living crisis in the West (alongside an energy crisis), full-on riots that quickly turned into armed attacks on security forces in Iran, and the death of Barbara Walters.
This has certainly been a whirlwind of a year, so perhaps looking into how things progressed, at least as far as Iran is concerned, could help us get a feel for how 2023 might unwind?
Perhaps the easiest place to start would be the beginning. Looking back into the early days of 2022, one main idea was being repeated in Iranian diplomatic circles on all levels for several months: We are very close to reaching a deal, but the move necessitates a serious, realistic decision by the US.
Really, you’d think the US would’ve been able to make a decision by now. But it isn’t about a sovereign decision so much as it was hoping for a repeat of 2015. Meaning a deal that it can go into and leave at will.
One of the main reasons the Vienna Talks took so long really goes back to a simple principle. Iran had seen firsthand the consequences of US deception: The US signed the JCPOA, did not implement it, and suffered no consequences, then left it unilaterally and still suffered no consequences, and then sanctioned Iran through its maximum pressure campaign and still, suffered no consequences.
Meanwhile, the EU stood idly by, twiddling its fingers, also failing to abide by its side of the bargain, calling on Iran to implement the deal in full.
So now, the matter was simple, if the US needed to return to the deal, the Iranians needed to make sure that there would be no loopholes that Washington could use to leave the deal without consequences, and moreover, if that were to happen, then Iran also needed to make sure it could easily go back to where things were before the deal, in terms of the nuclear program.
As far as the US was concerned, there were two main issues driving it to drag its feet…The first was the fact that no loopholes meant that it would become more difficult to leave the deal, as it had been hoping for what Alastair Crooke called “A Pop-in, Pop-out JCPOA”, a doggie door if you will.
The second was due to political circumstances: Biden had been afraid of how the outcome of the Midterm elections might play out, and so was working the two sides by making headway in the talks (which explains the recurring statements that a deal was close to being reached) while also looking out for his administration’s and Democrats’ numbers in the Midterms, so it wouldn’t look like they were being weak on Iran, which the GOP could then exploit to boost its Midterm numbers.
One unforeseen event was the riots in Iran. Although they were stoked by the West – primarily the US, which is trying to push for regime change –if it hadn’t been for the riots, the US would have probably agreed to go back to the deal once the Midterms were done.
But why would the US go back to the deal if it considers it so binding? The reasoning’s pretty straightforward, and also has to do with geopolitical shifts. The disruption of global energy supplies following Western sanctions on Russia has the West scrambling to look for alternatives to Russian gas and oil, and the EU is pushing for Iran to be brought back to the global energy market, while the US is still dragging its feet, ostensibly hoping at the moment for regime change through the Iran riots.
Iran riots
Ah yes, the Iran riots, which the West rather impetuously calls protests. It’s funny how when some people take to the streets armed with weapons to use against security forces and civilians, they’re called peaceful protests by Western mainstream media who go out of their way to challenge any narrative that brings any evidence showing the violent intent of the rioters to light.
Can it get any clearer than the interview that famed war hawk and mustache aficionado John Bolton had with BBC Persian’s Rana Rahimpour?
Bolton, of all people, went out of his way to show that the rioters were being armed by weapons being smuggled from Iraqi Kurdistan, while the BBC Persian host, Rana Rahimpour, of all people, went out of her way to change subjects while also ‘correcting’ Bolton that there was no evidence to the rioters being armed, which led to Bolton replying that they indeed were, as videos on social media clearly showed (You can find the 8-minute video of the interview here, the part I’m referring starts at 5:16. However, it’s in Farsi, so you may want to get your Iranian friend to translate it for you over some Chelo Kebab and Doogh).
Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton said on UK state owned BBC Persian that the Iranian opposition is armed. The BBC Persian host tried to refute him & change the topic.
Meanwhile, the terrorists shoot at the armed forces & send footage to US state owned Persian TV! pic.twitter.com/TWa7Iy4euY— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) November 9, 2022
By the way, this was the same Rana Rahimpour who just a few days earlier had an audio leaked from a conversation with her mother, saying that some media outlets (namely the Saudi-funded Iran International) were clearly working toward an end goal of weakening and dividing Iran.
Or how about the blatant way in which none other than famed media personality, broom-riding extraordinaire, and lover of gingerbread houses, the US-paid, VOA-employed, and friendly neighborhood spider woman Masih Alinejad was pushing for more riots in Iran, and constantly calling for even more sanctions against her own country, whose people were suffering because of the US-imposed sanctions.
The #CIA-backed instigator, #MasihAlinejad, is making a lot of money in exchange for inciting violence in #Iran and even using victims’ mothers to provoke more riots in the country. pic.twitter.com/k4svccmz96— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) November 20, 2022
Perhaps it’s telling that the same countries that have sanctioned Iran for its ‘crackdown’ on ‘protestors’ had earlier resorted to more forceful measures in their crackdown on actual, unarmed protestors in their countries. It may be useful for us to remember Canada and its crackdown on anti-vaccine mandate protestors, which went as far as to freeze their bank accounts. How about Freedom Convoy protestors? Or how about the French police’s violence against protestors and racism against minorities? Or how about Australian police shooting anti-lockdown protestors?
It’s understandable from the Western point of view of course: You see Iranians are so ‘repressed by their government’ that they’re not allowed to leave their homes once they finish working, and by ‘protesting’ they’re actually running and getting their fair share of exercise; but Europeans get enough exercise as it is, so police aren’t actually using violence! They’re sparring with them because they’re so physically fit and need the challenge!
But seriously, let’s keep in mind that the West cannot expect the riots to end and for Iran to go back to how things were before pre-riots. Germany, France, the UK, Saudi Arabia, “Israel”, and the US all stoked the riots, overtly supporting them. Although Iran is very pragmatic, it also possesses a very good collective memory, and diplomatic relations and economic opportunities won’t mean that it will forego hostile actions taken against it.
Of course, that’s not to forget the impact that the war on Ukraine left on Western-Iranian relations, which further cemented Iran’s pivot to the Global South.
The war in Ukraine
Although at the start of the war in Ukraine, relations between Iran and the West went unaffected, they devolved as the war progressed on account of Western accusations that Iran had sent Russia drones for use against Ukraine. The problem for the West wasn’t that Iran denied supply of the drones for use during the war; as far as they were concerned, they were dead set on implicating Iran against Ukraine, regardless of the circumstances, rather it was that the drones were very effective in a battleground the West was using to test out its own arsenal.
Just to be clear, Iran’s stance on the war in Ukraine is still unchanged. It’s only natural that Tehran would want to further its ties with Moscow as part of its strategy to deepen its ties with the Global South and push for a new world order of multilateralism. That doesn’t mean that it ever supported the war in Ukraine, as in fact it said it was against the war, favoring a diplomatic resolution, but made it clear NATO was the party who instigated the war through its attempts to expand eastward.
To put things in perspective, Iran’s ties with Russia will only grow in the future, regardless of the war in Ukraine. The focus on Iran and the Global South creating international and regional institutions to counter US hegemony is only set to increase amid NATO’s policy to create new coalitions and alliances in Central Asia and the Asia Pacific. Moreover, the war in Ukraine served to stretch the US’ forces around the world even thinner, as it continues to make overtures against China in the Asia Pacific, while also announcing support for “Israel” and the normalization process in West Asia, in a bid to create an anti-Iran coalition. This is perhaps best evidenced during a recent June 24, 2022, policy speech made by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Hudson Institute:
“Moving past our current geo-strategic focus, the United States must help in building of the three lighthouses for liberty. These beacons should be centered on nations that have great strife: Ukraine, ‘Israel’, and Taiwan. They can be the hubs of new security architecture that links alliances of free nations globally, reinforcing the strengths of each member state, in time, linking these three bastions with NATO, as well as the new and expanded security framework for the Indo-Pacific will form a global alliance for freedom. This will benefit America.”
Although it might be a bit difficult to hear someone who used the words ‘lie, cheat, and steal’ in the same context as a mugger would talk about “lighthouses for liberty”, this person — by a rather strange twist of fate and improbable circumstances, without a doubt due to a great disturbance in the force brought on by the birth of the antichrist — was a decision-maker in the former US administration, and apparently what he says has some measure of weight.
Maybe it is also telling, in this regard, that Pentagon upgraded its security ties with “Israel”, making it a full military partner, meaning that “Israel” has been transferred to CENTCOM, in a development that hasn’t happened in the US military establishment since 1948 (go figure, Pompeo might have been right!).
The Pentagon announcement made it clear that both were preparing for a potential war against Iran by both elevating “Israel’s” position and paving the way for a regional alliance against Iran.
“The easing of tensions between ‘Israel’ and its Arab neighbors subsequent to the ‘Abraham Accords’ has provided a strategic opportunity for the United States to align key partners against shared threats in the Middle East. ‘Israel’ is a leading strategic partner for the United States, and this will open up additional opportunities for cooperation with our US Central Command partners while maintaining strong cooperation between ‘Israel’ and our European allies,”.
Ok, so where does this leave us next year?
If we ever thought 2022 would be uneventful, then brace yourselves for next year! Russian, Iranian military cooperation is still in its early stages, as is a cooperation between Iran and Asian powers that would prefer a multilateral world order. It is without a doubt that we will see an increase in tensions around the globe, but West Asia hinges on the provocations of a very important actor: The Israeli occupation.
How the Israeli occupation’s incoming government, the most extremist to date, chooses to deal with Palestine and the Resistance Factions will leave a great impact on the region as a whole.
Sure, we can opine on whether or not the JCPOA might be revived, because it’s still comatose, regardless of what the Americans say in the media; but the most significant variable, and certainly the hottest flashpoint as of the beginning of this new year in West Asia, is Palestine. If the Palestinian Resistance continues its victory streak and manages to pacify the Israeli occupation, then it is assured that “Tel Aviv” will seek to increase its regional power through alliances, while continuing to work for the next few years: Biding time until it overhauls its airforce, waiting for a change in the US administration that places “Israel” higher up on its list of priorities, and attempting to destabilize Iran’s domestic through intelligence, while at the same time attempting to drag the US into a regional war that it is wholeheartedly against.
As for the riots in Iran, they’re not completely over, yes they’ve fizzled out to a large extent, but it wouldn’t be farfetched to expect that Iran may have some changes in store on the domestic scene. That’s not to say the hijab law will be removed because of pressure from the riots, that is a resounding no, but what’s going to change is how the law is enforced.
Aside from the riots, a more interesting development for Iran was certainly the unfolding of Merkel’s confessions on the Minsk agreements. The whole point behind the color revolution that happened in Ukraine and the subsequent Minsk agreements was not appeasing Russia, inasmuch as it was about buying time for Ukraine and disarming Russia. This was the same trap that the Iranian team fell into during the 2015 JCPOA when it agreed to restrict its arms exports for years (five years for heavy arms, and eight for ballistic missiles). Though thankfully, Iran never stopped expanding its drone and ballistic missile program, although it would have been in a more advanced position now had it not agreed to that at the time.
This time, Iran will go into the talks with Merkel and the Minsk accords in mind, and an eye out for Western attempts to disarm it or pull the rug from under its feet.
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US President Joe Biden confirms that the Iran deal “is dead”, but then tells people that they will not announce it.
President Joe Biden. Dec. 16, 2022. (AP)
President Biden declared on the sidelines of a Nov. 4 election rally that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is “dead,” according to a new video that surfaced on social media late Monday, but stressed the United States won’t announce it.
This counts as the Biden administration’s strongest confirmation that there’s no path forward for the Iran deal, which leaves key questions about the future of the JCPOA.
The US envoy for Iran Rob Malley, in late October, said that the administration is not going to “waste time” on trying to revive the Iran nuclear deal at this time considering that the US finds the Iran riots as a more important development, in addition to Iranian support for Russia in Ukraine, and Iran’s positions on its nuclear program.
Biden made the statement in a brief exchange with a woman who was present at an election rally in Oceanside, California. She requested that Biden declare the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the official name for the Iran deal, to be null and void.
The president responded that he would not “for a lot of reasons.” But then he added: “It is dead, but we are not going to announce it. Long story.”
The woman then said that the current Iranian government “doesn’t represent the people.” In response, he said, “I know they don’t represent you. But they will have a nuclear weapon that they’ll represent.”
“We don’t see a deal coming together anytime soon,” the spokesperson said, pointing at the Iran riots and alleged support for Russia vis-a-vis the war in Ukraine, “Our focus is on practical ways to confront them in these areas.”
Yesterday, National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said that the prospects for the JCPOA deal to be renewed are nowhere near sight, citing reasons related to the alleged crackdowns on protesters in Iran.
“We simply don’t see a deal coming together anytime soon while Iran continues to kill its own citizens, and selling UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles or drones] to Russia,” Kirby said during a press briefing. “Now we don’t anticipate any progress anytime in the near future. That’s just not our focus.”
This comes in the backdrop of a statement issued by US President Joe Biden at a political rally in California in early November in which he said that the Iran deal was “dead” and that the issue of reviving it was a matter of a “long story”.
Commenting on these statements, Kirby said what Biden said was “very much in line” with the White House’s position on the nuclear deal.
As efforts were underway to revive the nuclear agreement, the US decided to stall the negotiations on the grounds that Iran is allegedly exercising measures of repression on protesters.
But Iranian authorities found that networks of protesters were in fact financed by several western countries to fulfill imperialist aspirations of implementing regime change in the country.
Senior officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, and the EU launched the second Baghdad Conference for Cooperation and Partnership in the Jordanian capital Amman on 20 December.
Organized by France and Iraq, the summit stated aim is to “provide a forum for discussing the region’s problems.”
Ahead of the conference’s start, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani held a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and nuclear talks coordinator Enrique Mora to discuss the dormant process to revive the Iran nuclear deal.
Following the meeting, Borrell said in a tweet that he urged the Iranian diplomats to “immediately halt military support for Russia and internal repression.”
“Stressed need to immediately stop military support to Russia and internal repression in Iran. Agreed we must keep communication open and restore JCPOA on basis of Vienna negotiations,” the EU official said.
Necessary meeting w Iranian FM @Amirabdolahian in Jordan amidst deteriorating Iran-EU relations Stressed need to immediately stop military support to Russia and internal repression in Iran Agreed we must keep communication open and restore #JCPOA on basis of Vienna negotiations
For his part, the Iranian foreign minister condemned western countries for supporting “rioters” and imposing illegal unilateral sanctions against Iran under the pretext of protecting human rights.
Amir-Abdollahian also voiced readiness to resolve any misunderstanding in direct negotiations with Ukraine, and called on the remaining JCPOA signatories to avoid politicizing the talks further and to adopt a “constructive and realistic approach to make necessary decisions for an agreement.”
Talks to restore the 2015 nuclear deal have been at a stalemate since September, when anti-government protests took hold in Iran. At the time, western nations accused the Islamic Republic of raising “unreasonable demands” in relation to a UN investigation into Iranian nuclear sites.
In the days leading up to the summit, reports spoke about a new possible meeting between Iranian and Saudi officials. However, there has been no official word on whether Amir-Abdollahian will meet with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud.
Since 2021, Iraq has hosted five meetings between Saudi and Iranian officials, the last of which was in April, but these contacts have not yielded any breakthroughs in relations.
Another notable leader attending the summit is French President Emmanuel Macron, who analysts believe is using the opportunity to keep a strong presence in West Asia, where western influence continues to wane.
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Iran’s parliament has just approved the accession of the Islamic Republic to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), previously enshrined at the Samarkand summit last September, marking the culmination of a process that lasted no less than 15 years.
Iran has already applied to become a member of the expanding BRICS+, which before 2025 will be inevitably configured as the alternative Global South G20 that really matters.
Iran is already part of the Quad that really matters – alongside BRICS members Russia, China and India. Iran is deepening its strategic partnership with both China and Russia and increasing bilateral cooperation with India.
Iran is a key Chinese partner in the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is set to clinch a free trade agreement with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and is a key node of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), alongside Russia and India.
All of the above configures the lightning-fast emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a West Asia and Eurasia big power, with vast reach across the Global South.
That has left the whole set of imperial “policies” towards Tehran lying in the dust.
So it’s no wonder that previously accumulated strands of Iranophobia – fed by the Empire over four decades — have recently metastasized into yet another color revolution offensive, fully supported and disseminated by Anglo-American media.
The playbook is always the same. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei actually came up with a concise definition. The problem is not bands of oblivious rioters and/or mercenaries: “the main confrontation”, he said, is with “global hegemony.”
Ayatollah Khamenei was somewhat echoed by American intellectual and author Noam Chomsky, who has remarked how an array of US sanctions over four decades have severely harmed the Iranian economy and “caused enormous suffering.”
Using Kurds as expendable assets
The latest color revolution overdrive overlaps with the manipulation of Kurds in both Syria and Iraq. From the imperial perspective, the proxy war in Syria, which is far from over, not only works as an additional front in the fight against Russia but also allows the instrumentalization of highly dependent Kurds against both Iran and Turkey.
Iran is currently being attacked according to a perverse variation of the scheme applied to Syria in 2011. A sort of “permanent protest” situation has been imposed across vast swathes of northwestern Iran.
What changed in mid-November is that armed gangs started to apply terrorist tactics in several towns close to the Iraqi border, and were even believed to be weaponized enough to take control of some of the towns.
Tehran inevitably had to send IRGC troops to contain the situation and beef up border security. They engaged in operations similar to what has been done before in Dara’a, in the Syrian southwest.
This military intervention was effective. But in a few latitudes, terror gangs continue to attack government infrastructure and even civilian property. The key fact is that Tehran prefers not to repress these unruly demonstrations using deadly force.
The really critical issue is not the protests per se: it’s the transfer of weapons by the Kurds from Iraq to Iran to bolster the color revolution scenario.
Tehran has issued a de facto ultimatum to Baghdad: get your act together with the Kurds, and make them understand the red lines.
As it stands, Iran is massively employing Fateh ballistic missiles and Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 kamikaze drones against selected Kurdish terrorist bases in northern Iraq.
It’s debatable whether that will be enough to control the situation. What is clear is that the “Kurdish card”, if not tamed, could be easily played by the usual suspects in other Iranian provinces, considering the solid financial, military and informational support offered by Iraqi Kurds to Iranian Kurds.
Turkey is facing a relatively similar problem with the Syrian Kurds instrumentalized by the US.
In northern Syria, they are mostly armed gangs posing as “Kurds”. So it’s quite possible that these Kurdish armed gangs, essentially played by Washington as useful idiots, may end up being decimated, simultaneously, in the short to medium term, by both Ankara and Tehran.
If all fails, pray for regime change
A geopolitical game-changer which was unthinkable until recently may soon be on the cards: a high-level meeting between TurkishPresident Recep Erdogan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad (remember the decade-long refrain “Assad must go”?) in Russia, with mediation by none other than Russian president Vladimir Putin.
What would it take for Kurds to understand no state – be it Iran, Syria or Turkey – will offer them land for their own nation? Parameters could eventually change in case Iraqis in Baghdad finally manage to expel the US.
Before we get there, the fact is Iran has already turned West Asian geopolitics upside down – via its smart cruise missiles, extremely effective kamikaze drones, electronic warfare and even state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles.
Empire “planners” never saw this coming: a Russia-Iran strategic partnership that not only makes total sense geo-economically, but is also a military force multiplier.
Moreover, that is inscribed in the looming Big Picture on which the expanded BRICS+ is focusing: Eurasia (and beyond) integration via multimodal economic corridors such as the INTSC, pipelines and high-speed rail.
The Empire’s Plan A, on Iran, was a mere nuclear deal (JCPOA), devised by the Barack Obama administration as nothing but a crude containment scheme.
Trump actually blew it all up – and there’s nothing left: a JCPOA revival, which has been – in theory – attempted for months in Vienna, was always a non-starter because the Americans themselves don’t know anymore what they want from it.
So what’s left as Plan B for the Straussian neocon/neoliberal psychos in charge of US foreign policy is to hurl all manner of fall guys – from Kurds to the toxic MEK – into the Iran cauldron and, amplified 24/7 by hysterical mainstream media, pray for regime change.
Well, that’s not going to happen. Tehran just needs to wait, exercise restraint, and observe how so much color revolution virtue signaling will eventually fizzle out.
Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst and author, focused on Eurasia integration. His latest book is Raging Twenties.
(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
Arresting Mossad agents, dismantling terrorist networks, confiscating ammunition and weapons, these are some of what Iranian intelligence has revealed since the outbreak of the riots in the country.
The Israeli eye… a scheme to strike stability in Iran, the interactions of the Jerusalem process, and the fall of normalization in the streets of Qatar
Among all of the events shaping post-civil war US economic development, one of the most prominent was the establishment of Standard Oil by John D. Rockefeller in 1870. Working with other US industrialists, along with domestic and international financial and banking interests, including the Rothschild’s London banking cartel, Standard oil decedents have dominated the fossil fuel industry and shaped US economic and social development and foreign policy to the present day.
Introduction
The current world security architecture arose following WWII, which established the US as the dominant global power. Since that time, US global supremacy has rested on unrivaled military and economic power, control of world’s energy reserves (primarily in the Middle East), and maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency [1]. There has been much current discussion about promoting ‘green’ policies, including sustainable development and increasing the use of renewable energy sources, clearly articulated during the UN Conference on Environment and Development (aka ‘Rio Conference’; ‘Earth Summit’), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Jun 3-14, 1992) [2], and Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN on Sept 23, 2019 [3], where she accused world leaders of failing younger generations by not taking more aggressive actions to stop climate change. Despite this push for Green policies, fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) are still the dominant source of energy, currently supply over 80% of the world’s energy [4]. In addition, the dollar (aka ‘petrodollar’) is the primary reserve currency held by foreign central banks [5] and main currency used for commercial energy transactions [6] [7].
In 1863 John D. Rockefeller joined Maurice B. Clark and Samuel Andrews in an oil-refining business in Cleveland, Ohio, which was subsequently expanded and incorporated as Standard Oil of Ohio in 1870. Rockefeller was a shrewd and aggressive industrialist, acquiring additional refining capacity by “buying up and squeezing out of rivals by every device at hand—legal or illegal’ and as a result, Standard Oil would soon control over 90% of American oil refining capacity. Facing increasing resistance from the business community and the Ohio legislature, Rockefeller incorporated the Standard Oil Trust in New Jersey in 1982. This Trust consisted of seven subsidiaries- Standard Oil of Kentucky, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New York, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard Oil of Indiana, The Standard Oil Co (Ohio) and The Ohio Oil Company. In Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911), the US Supreme Court found the Standard Oil Trust guilty of engaging in anti-competitive practices, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, breaking the company up into 34 separate entities, some of which the Rockefellers held major stakes [8] [9]. Ironically, decades after the Standard Oil Trust was ‘broken up’, these separate firms would subsequently merge into Chevron [10], ExxonMobil [11], British Petroleum (BP) [12] and Marathon [13], which are currently among the top 10 global energy companies [14]. The Rockefellers reach was vast- David Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (1970-1985) and Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank (1969–1981) [15] [16].
The geographic location of the US, circa 8000 km (5000 miles) from major war theaters in Europe and 9700 km (6000 miles) in Japan shielded the US from the massive devastation that took place in Europe and Asia during WWII. As a result, many large US corporations were able to profit handsomely by supplying the War Department with fuel, aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, armaments and ammunition to equip American soldiers and allied forces. Some of these firms were working both sides of the conflict, supplying Nazi Germany with financial backing and war material; some of these firms include Alcoa, Brown Brothers Harriman, Coca-Cola, Dupont, Kodak, Chase Bank, Dow Chemical, Ford, IBM, General Electric, General Motors, Woolworth, Random House and Standard Oil [17]. Prescott Bush, father of George HW Bush (41st President) and grandfather of George W. Bush’s (43st President), was a partner of A. Harriman & Co Investment bank and later served as Senator from Connecticut (1952-1963). Prescott Bush was directly involved with companies that profited from their commercial involvement with Nazi Germany [18] [19]. It should be pointed out the WWII is the most expensive war in American history, costing taxpayers more than $4 trillion, adjusted for inflation [20].
To the victor go the spoils
The US emerged from WWII as the world’s foremost military and economic power, the dollar was anointed the status of world reserve currency at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) and established as the primary currency used for energy transactions following the meeting between US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, aboard the USS Quincy, in the Suez Canal on Valentine’s Day, 1945 [21].
Post-WWII US economic development saw the continued rise of the American economy which translated into robust corporate profits and better living standards for many working people. In 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act (aka National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956) described as the ‘Greatest Public Works Project in History’, allocating $25 billion (circa $274 billion in inflation- adjusted dollars) from taxpayers to develop a 41,000-mile system of interstate highways that Eisenhower promised would eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.” [22] [23]. The Highway act would enrich the ‘pro-highway coalition of energy companies, automobile manufactures, truckers, bus operators, tiremakers, insurance companies, auto clubs, etc. It directly led to increased use of private automobiles for transportation and the systematic dismantling of energy- efficient public transportation, creation of suburbs, shopping centers, ‘strip malls’, and proliferation of McDonald’s and other ‘fast-food’ outlets, which have led to the current health crisis in the US- increased obesity, type II diabetes and related health problems [24] [25]. In addition, some of these highways were literally built through urban neighborhoods and frequently minority communities [26] [27], such as the Cypress Freeway in Oakland, CA, I95 in Chester, PA and the Cross Bronx Expressway in NYC [28] [29].
As a result, the functioning of the American economy and society has become very dependent on fossil fuel consumption (for more detail see [30]).
1. Energy consumption & generation– the US has 4.25% of world’s population (339 million people) but consumes ~17% of the world’s energy and has the highest per capita energy consumption and is the largest total energy consumer. In 2021, approximately 60% of US electricity was generated from fossil fuels- coal, natural gas and oil [31].
2. Suburban development– as described above, passage of the Highway act of 1956 [22], accelerated the development of low-density housing suburbs, which were only accessible by automobiles using fossil fuel.
3. Transportation– The average American relies on energy-inefficient automobiles and jet airplanes for transportation. Most US cities lack a comprehensive, energy-efficient public transportation system. Indeed, the US does not have 1 mile of high-speed rail lines. By contrast, China has 40,000 km (24,855 mi), Spain has 3,100 km (1,926 mi) and Japan has 2,830 km (1758 mi) of high-speed rail.
4. American agriculture is very energy-intensive, requiring 15 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food. The average food commodity transits 1500 miles from production to consumption point- e.g., California-grown produce, shipped to the US east coast, usually via diesel fueled trucks.
5. Information technology– US society is heavily reliant on information flow. This system encompasses local computers, the internet and fiber optic cables serving as data pipelines, computer server farms and “cloud” storage facilities, all of which consume lots of electricity.
6. Military– The Pentagon is the largest single consumer of fossil fuel and polluter in the world. To give this some perspective, on average, the US military consumes 12,600,000 gallons (48,000,000 L) of fuel per day. One F-16 fighter jet consumes over 20K gallons of Kerosene per hour (333 gal/min) [32].
American capitalism is dependent on fossil fuel consumption to function and serves as the lubricant for American power projection around the world. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have approximately 57% and 41% of proven oil and natural gas reserves, respectively (see Table 1 and [33]). Thus, it is not surprising that the US ruling elite have a major interest in this region and the energy reserves therein [34]. US attempts to control oil in the MENA region has been carried out in several ways. This has involved setting up client regimes in countries with vast energy deposits, such as the Gulf monarchies in the Persian Gulf (Figure 1), attacking and/or invading countries who attempt to follow an independent energy policy, such as Iraq and Libya or issuing frequent verbal threats, seizing assets and imposing economic sanctions on countries that the US has been unable to achieve regime change or are capable of defending themselves, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran [35] and Venezuela.
As part of this effort, the US has set up military bases in multiple ME countries including Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Turkey (Türkiye), UAE and Syria (See Figure 1 and Table 2) [36]. Due to its geographic location, Israel is crucial to US foreign policy goals. The ‘state’ of Israel/Zionist project was the creation of British imperialism (Balfour Declaration, 1918) [37], was driven, at least in part, by the desire of the British ruling elite to establish a reliable (read non-Muslim) proxy force that would assist the UK in controlling the region and its abundant hydrocarbon reserves [38]. The US emerged from WWII as the world’s leading military and economic power and assumed the role of Israel’s benefactor, providing $152 billion since 1949; $3.8 billion in 2020 [39] [40]. While Israel does not host a formal US base, she is a de facto appendage of the Pentagon, is fully integrated into NATO and serves as a reliable and well-armed US proxy in the region [41] [42], ranking 18th in global military power [43]. Israel conducts regular attacks on Syria [44] and estimated to have a stockpile of circa 90 nuclear weapons (likely a low estimate).
This effort has become all the more urgent as: the Russia-China-Iran axis has attained economic and military parity with the West, Iran is now a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) [45], has applied for membership to the BRICS [46] and recently announced that it has developed a hypersonic missile, that is ‘capable of penetrating all defense systems’ [47]. One would infer that Iran received technical help developing this weapon system. As Iran’s ties with Russia and China continue solidifying, they are becoming increasingly ambivalent about rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA; aka Iran nuclear deal) [46], which was negotiated during the Obama Administration [48]. Trump unilaterally exited the JCPOA in 2018, stating ‘We cannot prevent an Iranian bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement’ [49].
We hear a lot about ‘Green’ energy, the ‘Green new deal’, reducing our ‘carbon footprint’ and ‘sustainable development’, policies which are being promoted by a wide range of extremely committed environmental and conservation groups such as the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Clean Air Council in the US and many international organizations and prominent politicians. ‘Green’ polices have been promoted by US Vice President Kamala Harris, encouraging Americans to purchase [expensive] electric cars and endorsed by the paper of record (NYT) and other corporate media outlets. Any policy that reduces the production of ‘greenhouse’ gasses, such as CO2, is certainly a noble and worthwhile objective, that should be supported. Unfortunately, most of these groups, at least in the US, where I live, are missing the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’. This includes:
1. The entire structure of American society has been built around fossil fuel consumption. This includes the use of automobiles and jet airplanes for transportation. The profits of very powerful corporate interests, including energy corporations, automobile manufactures and their suppliers, banks and insurance companies and law firms to name a few, are highly dependent on fossil fuel consumption and ‘greenhouse’ gas production. They are not about to give this up without a big fight, including going to war.
2. The military is a key pillar of a [declining] American empire, with the Pentagon serving as the ‘enforcer’ of US global power, but is also the largest of consumer of fossil fuels and largest polluter in the world [32]. The Pentagon is supported by all factions of the ruling elite, readily apparent from the near-unanimous bipartisan support for every military appropriation in Congress (appropriation for 2023 is $773 billion). Not surprisingly, most environmental groups, which are dependent on funding from corporate-backed foundations, such as the Ford Foundation, Home Depot Foundation, etc. [50] are not going to ‘bite the hand’ that feeds them. Likewise, US corporate media is controlled by 6 large corporations whose class interests reflect those of the petrochemical companies and other large corporations [51] [52] [53]. Any reporter who steps out of line- i.e., criticizes the functioning of the US empire, including fossil fuel consumption, is immediately reprimanded and/or fired. 1) Reporter Emily Wilder was fired from AP because she had posted pro-Palestinian material on social media [54]. 2) In 1996, investigative reporter Gary Webb published a series of articles entitled ‘Dark Alliance’ in the San Jose Mercury News, linking the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles with the Nicaraguan Contra rebels and the CIA. Not surprisingly, Webb’s story was met with outrage by MSM outlets such as the LA Times and Washington Post. Webb committed suicide in 2004 [55].
Concluding remarks
The survival of the American Empire is highly dependent on fossil fuel consumption and control of global energy reserves. This dependency has created irresolvable problems and led to a chaotic and at times, contradictory foreign policy. While there has been a lot of ‘whining’ about energy prices in the US and EU, the oil industry is reaping record profits. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter levied a “windfall” profits tax on the American oil industry in response to increasing gas prices and corporate profits [56]. While these taxes have had mixed results, no doubt a result of aggressive industry lobbying, there has been little discussion of taxing high corporate profits at the present time. Indeed, petrochemical industry profits were barely addressed in the recent US ‘midterm’ elections, as many candidates receive campaign contributions from energy companies. Fossil fuels still dominate US foreign policy. This can be seen from the enduring presence of military bases throughout the ME and maintaining generous financial support for Israel and the ruling families of Gulf Monarchies [57]. At the same time, these ruling families have watched the US/UK/NATO ferment coups in Iran (1953) [58] [59] and steal resources, invade and/or destroy Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen; impose crippling economic sanctions and/or confiscate the assets of countries deemed a threat to US global power such as Iran, Venezuela and Russia and sabotage energy infrastructure (see below). Not surprisingly, KSA and other Gulf Monarchies have been reaching out to Russia and China; multiple reports indicate that KSA is ‘eager’ to join the BRICS Bloc [60]. No doubt, this was a motivation for President Biden’s trip to KSA in July of this year, meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) at Al-Salam Palace in the Red Sea port of Jeddah. On Nov 18, the State Department recommended that MBS be granted ‘legal immunity’ for the brutal assassination of Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on Oct 2, 2018 [62] [63]. It should be noted that while campaigning for President, then candidate Joe Biden stated: he would “cancel the blank check” the Trump administration had given Saudi Arabia during its war in Yemen and during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that “America’s priorities in the Middle East should be set in Washington, not Riyadh” and advocated making Saudi Arabia an international “pariah” for butchering Jamal Khashoggi [61]. Rhetoric notwithstanding, Biden’s polices towards the MENA region are largely a continuation of those of Trump and the ruling elite they represent. Biden has not rejoined the JCPOA and has continued Trump’s bellicose position towards the Islamic Republic of Iran. The US continues supporting Israel, the US Embassy in Israel remains in Jerusalem (Al-Quds in Arabic), which is not Israeli land and thus, a blatant violation of International law [64], US troops remain in Iraq and Syria while the Pentagon continues assisting KSA in their genocidal war on Yemen [65]. Trump continues his financial dealings with KSA, recently signing a $1.6 billion deal with a Saudi real estate developer [66]. It will be interesting to see how the US reacts when KSA joins BRICS [67].
On Sept 26, 2022, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany, under the Baltic Sea were blown up [68] [69]. Shortly after the explosions, erstwhile British Prime Minister Liz Truss allegedly sent a message to US Sec of State Anthony Blinken stating ‘it’s done’ [70]. While the actual perpetrators of this attack have not been identified, it is likely that the US at a very minimum was aware of this action, as pointed out by Professor Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University) during a Bloomberg interview [71]. The end result is that Germany and other countries in the EU will no longer have access to cheap and plentiful Russian energy, but will now be forced to purchase much more expensive liquified natural gas from the US or other countries. It should also be noted that nearly 8 decades following the conclusion of WWII, the Pentagon maintains circa 900 foreign military bases worldwide [72] [73]. Europe is still occupied by circa 100K troops [74], 35K in Germany alone [75]. Thus, Germany is not really a US ‘ally’ but rather a subordinate. This begs the question; will Germany and other countries in the EU continue serving as de facto US vassals or begin following a more independent foreign policy? One could argue their very survival as functional states depends on this.
9. John D. Rockefeller and the Oil Industry- John D. Rockefeller changed the oil industry forever with his company Standard Oil. but that was by no means the only interesting thing about him. By Burton W. Folsom Foundation for Economic Education Sat Oct 1, 1988; https://fee.org/articles/john-d-rockefeller-and-the-oil-industry/
18. How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power- Rumors of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today’s president By Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell The Guardian Sat Sep 25, 2004; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
35. Missiles of Iran- Iran possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East, with thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, some capable of striking as far as Israel and southeast Europe. CSIS Aug 10, 2021; https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/iran/
48. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) at a Glance. Kelsey Davenport, Director of Nonproliferation Policy, Arms Control Association Mar, 2022;
52. These 6 corporations control 90% of the media outlets in America- The illusion of choice and objectivity. By Nickie Louise Tech Startups Sept 18, 2020;
61. Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia is the right thing to do, even if it feels wrong
The U.S. president has rightly come to the conclusion that a strategy of isolating the crown prince isn’t feasible. By Daniel R. DePetris NBC News July 15, 2022;
68. Who Attacked Nord Stream 2? Maybe it was Russia, though that doesn’t make much sense. There are better candidates. By Doug Bandow Cato Institute Oct 14,
69. A journey to the site of the Nord Stream explosions- Prosecutors in Sweden say explosions on a gas pipeline between Russia and Europe were the result of sabotage. The explosions in the Baltic Sea targeted pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Europe. Russia denies any involvement. Before the announcement, Katya Adler travelled to the site, and was separately told by Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg that the west could go to war if Russia attacked infrastructure providing critical energy supplies. By Katya Adler BBC News Nov 18, 2022; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63636181
70. ‘It’s done’: Putin fumes after Liz Truss ‘message’ to Blinken over Nord Stream attack ‘revealed’ Hindustan Times Nov 4, 2022; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxzBqghRs5k
The remarks of the French President that the alleged “revolution” in Iran will have an impact on the Iranian nuclear talks corroborate the Iranian accusations of French meddling in the country.
French President Emmanuel Macron (AFP)
During an interview for France Inter radio on Monday, November 14, the French President estimated that the current alleged “revolution” in Iran has an impact on the nuclear deal negotiations. The interview was recorded Friday with Elysée, after Emmanuel Macron’s meeting with four members of delegations of Iranian regime-change mouthpieces, as described by Fars news, including a Washington-based journalist, Masih Alinejad.
Macron commented on the Western-induced hysteria surrounding the Iranian riots, saying that the “revolution changes a lot of things,” adding that “the regime is weakened by Iran’s internal situation and the demands that are hard to obtain.”
He called for international sanctions against Iranian officials saying, “I am in favor of a strong diplomatic reaction and sanctions on the figures of the regime who have a responsibility” in what he called “the repression of this revolution,” in an interview for France Inter radio.
Macron described the crackdown as “unprecedented,” adding, “We don’t rule out any option,” he said, noting that Iran’s government was already the target of numerous sanctions.
He repeatedly used the word “revolution” to describe what was happening in Iran, while accusing the government of “cracking down” on the western-instigated riots.
Was it a mere coincidence that when he welcomed pro-Western Iranians who are strong advocates of regime change in Iran he brought up the issue of the so-called “revolution” having an impact on Iran’s nuclear talks? Or does it stand as clear proof of the real intentions of the west, particularly France in this case?
As a matter of fact, one can only say that the French President has actually confessed to interference in Iran’s affairs, albeit indirectly and unintentionally, having brought up the impact of the riots on the nuclear talks, which only confirms the Iranian accusations of Western interference in the country.
But how is it so? The answer lies in Iran’s statements via different officials all along, from day one.
Western meddling in Iran
The Assistant Commander of the IRGC for Political Affairs, Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, confirmed on November 11 that one of the enemy’s goals in destabilizing the country and trying to repeat the Syrian scenario in Iran is to influence the nuclear negotiations and obtain some concessions.
During a speech at a symposium entitled “From protests to riots,” Javani said all the “enemies have united to confront the government in Iran.”
In the same context, Iranian Army Commander, Maj. Gen. Seyyed Abdolrahim Mousavi, considered on November 7 that the riots in Iran were part of the US plan to disrupt the negotiations on the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Mass riots began in Iran in mid-September in connection with the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Iranian authorities have accused Western countries of fueling the riots, and European diplomats were given a note of protest in connection with anti-Iranian media reports and calls to overthrow the country’s government.
“The recent unrest in Iran was part of US efforts to disrupt the negotiations in Vienna [on the JCPOA],” Mousavi was quoted as saying by Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.
Foreign intelligence services behind riots
Foreign intelligence was never absent from the Iranian arena ever since the riots started.
Earlier, a spokesperson for the Iranian Parliament’s presiding board, Nizamuddin Mousavi, stated that the Minister of Interior submitted a report on recent developments in the investigation into Mahsa Amini’s death.
On September 23, the Iranian Minister of Interior Ahmad Vahidi confirmed that “reports, evidence, and medical examinations confirm that Amini was not beaten,” which refutes western media claims that the Iranian woman was brutally beaten while in morality police custody.
Mousavi said that “there are individuals linked to foreign organizations, intelligence services, and terrorist groups that had a hand in fomenting the recent riots.” He pointed out that “estimates indicate that some 45,000 people formed networks across the country, some of whom have been arrested.”
Referring to the recent riots, Vahidi considered that the enemy harnessed all its energies, including the media, in order to undermine national unity but suffered defeat in the face of the vigilance and insight of the coherent Iranian people that were able to thwart this scheme.
It is noteworthy that in late October, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC’s intelligence wing revealed that intelligence obtained by Tehran indicates that the CIA and allied intelligence services planned a conspiracy against the Islamic Republic.
“The conspiracy’s goal is to commit a crime against the Iranian people and the territorial integrity of Iran,” the statement underlined.
“The main perpetrators were the CIA, the British and Saudi intelligence services, the Israeli Mossad, and the intelligence services of other countries,” it read, indicating that “the planning and the execution of the majority of the riots were carried out by the Mossad in collaboration with terrorist organizations.”
French nationals confess to unrest in Iran
It is worth noting that Iran released a video on October 6 of two French citizens, Cecile Kohler and Jacque Paris, arrested for espionage in Tehran. The two are unionists with France’s National Federation of Education, Culture, and Vocational Training.
In the clips, Kohler confessed to being an “intelligence and operation agent of French foreign security service.” The two French nationals infiltrated into Iran as tourists on April 28 but turned out to be spies for Western intelligence agencies.
According to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, the duo attempted to foment instability and social disorder earlier in June when some teachers took to the streets in peaceful protests to demand fair wages and better working conditions.
Macron’s ‘double standards’ exposed through social media
Some wrote on social media platforms against Macron’s anti-Iran statements, highlighting the French President’s double standards. Some reminded him of France’s colonial past, stating that Iran will teach him a lesson this time, while others slammed him for undertaking the mission of defending what he called a “revolution” to describe riots in a country while turning a blind eye to the crimes and slavery practices of Qatar.
Alors que la 🇫🇷est au bord de l'explosion #Macron se permet de donner des leçons à l'Iran. En effet, pas un mot sur le Qatar et ses crimes ses pratiques esclavagiste. La 🇫🇷 devient un autre islam, venu de celui qui a enlevé le sourire aux 🇫🇷 tartufferie, foutaises et incompétence
Translation: While France is on the verge of exploding, Macron allows himself to give Iran lessons, while not saying a word about Qatar and its crimes and slavery practices.
La france n'a décidemment pas retenu la leçon de ses nombreuses ingérences dans la politique interne des autres pays apparemment. L'iran va vous apprendre ça
Translation: France decided not to learn from its past interferences in the internal affairs of other countries. Iran will teach it that.
Now, what about the French protests, and how did Macron handle them? The President demonstrated utmost hypocrisy by criticizing Iran while his people were prevented from merely expressing themselves during the recent French protests.
Macron confidently defended the Iranian riots as a “revolution”, while designating the French protests as riots. He criticized the Iranian government’s “violent suppression” while allowing his security forces to crack down on protests against the deteriorating livelihood in France.
Moreover, 100 injuries were reported in clashes between environmentalists and French police at a protest on October 31 against the building of a sizable water reservoir for farm irrigation in western France, according to the authorities. About 60 gendarmes and 30 demonstrators were injured in the protest, which the authorities tried to suppress in the Sainte-Solin area.
Regimi fasciti, la Russia? Noooo la Francia: 🇫🇷⚡French police use tear gas and plastic bullets on protesting schoolchildren
On October 11, the police forcefully suppressed a protest by high school students at the Lycee Joliot curie school in Nanterre and arrested 14 students. pic.twitter.com/CbpGQn3gbW
Additionally, tens of thousands of French people took to the streets last month in protest of the government’s performance, Macron’s economic plans for the country, and the rising costs of living. The protests were predominantly led by the country’s leftist coalition.
So, technically, when people protest for their most basic rights in a European country, they are attacked and beaten under the pretext of putting an end to riots.
In stark contrast, the actual riots taking place in Iran, coupled with vandalism, violence, murders, and arson, which are in fact instigated by the very natural death of Mahsa Amini, are hailed as acts of “democracy” that ought to be protected by all means necessary, even if that leads to the violation of a country’s sovereignty and interference in its internal affairs through collaborators and proxies, such as the terrorist groups MEK and ISIS.
The aim behind all that is going on in the Islamic Republic of Iran is terrorizing and fomenting unrest in the West Asian country after all the development and progress it has achieved at all levels. Rising as a key influential player in the region, all eyes, whether friends’ or foes’, remain focused on the Islamic Republic either to build or to tear down bridges.
Two guys are hanging out in a cozy room in Tehran with a tantalizing new map of the world in the background.
Nothing to see here? On the contrary. These two Eurasian security giants are no less than the – unusually relaxed – Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
And why are they so relaxed? Because the future prospects revolving around the main theme of their conversation – the Russia-Iran strategic partnership – could not be more exciting.
This was a very serious business affair: an official visit, at the invitation of Shamkhani.
Patrushev was in Tehran on the exact same day that Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu – following a recommendation from General Sergey Surovikin, the overall commander of the Special Military Operation – ordered a Russian retreat from Kherson.
Patrushev knew it for days – so he had no problem to step on a plane to take care of business in Tehran. After all, the Kherson drama is part of the Patrushev negotiations with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Ukraine, which have been going on for weeks, with Saudi Arabia as eventual go-between.
Besides Ukraine, the two discussed “information security, as well as measures to counter interference in the internal affairs of both countries by western special services,” according to a report by Russia’s TASS news agency.
Both countries, as we know, are particular targets of western information warfare and sabotage, with Iran currently the focus of one of these no-holds-barred, foreign-backed, destabilization campaign.
Patrushev was officially received by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who went straight to the point: “The cooperation of independent countries is the strongest response to the sanctions and destabilization policies of the US and its allies.”
Patrushev, for his part, assured Raisi that for the Russian Federation, strategic relations with Iran are essential for Russian national security.
So that goes way beyond Geranium-2 kamikaze drones – the Russian cousins of the Shahed-136 – wreaking havoc in the Ukrainian battlefield. Which, by the way, elicited a direct mention later on by Shamkhani: “Iran welcomes a peaceful settlement in Ukraine and is in favor of peace based on dialogue between Moscow and Kiev.”
Patrushev and Shamkhani of course discussed security issues and the proverbial “cooperation in the international arena.” But what may be more significant is that the Russian delegation included officials from several key economic agencies.
There were no leaks – but that suggests serious economic connectivity remains at the heart of the strategic partnership between the two top sanctioned nations in Eurasia.
Key in the discussions was the Iranian focus on fast expansion of bilateral trade in national currencies – ruble and rial. That happens to be at the center of the drive by both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS towards multipolarity. Iran is now a full SCO member – the only West Asian nation to be part of the Asian strategic behemoth – and will apply to become part of BRICS+.
Have swap, will travel
The Patrushev-Shamkhani get together happened ahead of the signing, next month, of a whopping $40 billion energy deal with Gazprom, as previously announced by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari.
The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has already clinched an initial $6.5 billion deal. All that revolves around the development of two gas deposits and six oilfields; swaps in natural gas and oil products; LNG projects; and building more gas pipelines.
Last month, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak announced a swap of 5 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of gas, to be finished by the end of 2022. And he confirmed that “the amount of Russian investment in Iran’s oil fields will increase.”
Barter of course is ideal for Moscow and Tehran to jointly bypass interminably problematic sanctions and payment settlement issues – linked to the western financial system. On top of it, Russia and Iran are able to invest in direct trade links via the Caspian Sea.
At the recent Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, Raisi forcefully proposed that a successful “new Asia” must necessarily develop an endogenous model for independent states.
As an SCO member, and playing a very important role, alongside Russia and India, in the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), Raisi is positioning Iran in a key vector of multilateralism.
Since Tehran entered the SCO, cooperation with both Russia and China, predictably, is on overdrive. Patrushev’s visit is part of that process. Tehran is leaving behind decades of Iranophobia and every possible declination of American “maximum pressure” – from sanctions to attempts at color revolution – to dynamically connect across Eurasia.
BRI, SCO, INSTC
Iran is a key Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner for China’s grand infrastructure project to connect Eurasia via road, sea, and train. In parallel, the multimodal Russian-led INSTC is essential to promote trade between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia – at the same time solidifying Russia’s presence in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region.
Iran and India have committed to offer part of Chabahar port in Iran to Central Asian nations, complete with access to exclusive economic zones.
At the recent SCO summit in Samarkand, both Russia and China made it quite clear – especially for the collective west – that Iran is no longer going to be treated as a pariah state.
So it is no wonder Iran that is entering a new business era with all members of the SCO under the sign of an emerging financial order being designed mostly by Russia, China and India. As far as strategic partnerships go, the ties between Russia and India (President Narendra Modi called it an unbreakable friendship) is as strong as those between Russia and China. And when it comes to Russia, that’s what Iran is aiming at.
The Patrushev-Shamkhani strategic meeting will hurl western hysteria to unseen levels – as it completely smashes Iranophobia and Russophobia in one fell swoop. Iran as a close ally is an unparalleled strategic asset for Russia in the drive towards multipolarity.
Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) are already negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in parallel to those swaps involving Russian oil. The west’s reliance on the SWIFT banking messaging system hardly makes any difference to Russia and Iran. The Global South is watching it closely, especially in Iran’s neighborhood where oil is commonly traded in US dollars.
It is starting to become clear to anyone in the west with an IQ above room temperature that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal), in the end, does not matter anymore. Iran’s future is directly connected to the success of three of the BRICS: Russia, China and India. Iran itself may soon become a BRICS+ member.
There’s more: Iran is even becoming a role model for the Persian Gulf: witness the lengthy queue of regional states aspiring toward gaining SCO membership. The Trumpian “Abraham Accords?” What’s that? BRICS/SCO/BRI is the only way to go in West Asia today.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
As I’m writing this, I, together with many other Iranians are filled with outrage. The almost daily terrorist attacks in Iran are trouble to say the least. Today, November 3, another outrageous terrorist attack took place in the city of Karaj, northern Iran. Terrorists attacked civilians and police officers on the Qazvin-Karaj highway in the morning. In a video released on social media, one of the terrorists can clearly be seen executing a wounded police officer. This is how the tragic Syrian war began, and this is what Washington has planned for Iran.
For the past two months, Washington, the Zionists and their Western client states have launched a massive psychological operation against the Islamic Republic, with tens of thousands of online trolls and their army of “journalists” who spread fake news and disinformation every minute, every day. The amount of fake news spread during this psyop is ridiculous. Some trolls/bots even claimed that the Halloween disaster in South Korea was Tehran’s fault.
Saudi-owned “Iran International”, BBC Persian, ManotoTV and other disgraceful outlets have, from their London and Los Angeles offices been spewing lies and fake news around the clock, while also openly encouraging violence in Iran. These lies have been repeated by western media and both Iranian and non-Iranian celebrities around the world. This is a massive psychological operation that is arguably only second to the one going on against Russia concurrently.
Immediately after accusing the Islamic Republic of beating Mahsa Amini to death, the western countries announced that they’d be imposing new sanctions on Tehran, despite having announced their eagerness to revive JCPOA only a week earlier. What happened? Ostensibly the reason given for these sanctions are “repressive measures and violation of human rights and international law”.
By now, only the idiots of the world actually believe that “human rights” is the reason behind western sanctions anywhere in the world. If “human rights” or “women’s rights” were the issues they had with Iran, then how come the Saudi kingdom is spared from these sanctions, where women need Mahrams (male guardian) to go anywhere outside their home, where they chop up journalists in their embassies abroad, and behead people in public in the “chop chop square” in Riyadh?
This is about western interference in Iran and how it ended with the Islamic Revolution. It´s about a country that they had absolute control over, and then suddenly lost it all. This is what their hostility is about. It is not unique for Iran. We see the same hostility towards any independent country such as Russia and China for example. It´s not about “regimes” or ideologies either. If that was the case, then they wouldn´t have overthrown the democratically elected Mossadegh in 1953 in favour of the dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
In his most recent speech, Ayatollah Khamenei correctly identified the root for the long conflict between the US and Iran: “They say the reason the Americans stood against the Iranian people was the move you made in the embassy,” he said. “That is, ‘you attacked our embassy and a dispute emerged between us [which led to] a fight and an enmity.’ They lie. This is not the case.”
“Mosaddegh’s government was a national government. His problem with the Westerners was only the issue of oil. He neither was a Hojatoleslam (top Islamic cleric) nor did he promote Islam. The issue was just related to oil, which was in the hands of the British. He said that the oil should be in our hands. This was his only crime.”
“They arrested Mosaddegh and his entourage and everyone [else],” he said. “Some were executed later, and some were imprisoned for many years.”
“Our dispute with the Americans started that day. Now, American politicians are hypocritically and shamelessly saying that ‘we support the Iranian nation,’”
To the imperialists in Washington, there´s no greater affront than a country that stands independently, securing the interests of its people and its future. This is intolerable! Even worse, when a backward and “uncivilized” country such as Iran dares to challenge US hegemony, such audacity must be met with the most vicious and cruellest animosity. Ever since the Islamic Revolution, the US has imposed “draconian sanctions”, conducted numerous terrorist attacks and assassinations, imposed an 8 year long war on the country, and launched several coup/regime change operations. They have over the past 43 years, both through direct and indirect channels offered Tehran bribes to abandon the struggle and support for the Palestinian cause, end the hostility towards Washington´s dear Zionist regime and abandon the struggle for a multi-polar world.
All of these efforts to destroy the Islamic Republic´s resolve have failed. And they will continue to fail. Why? Because they do not understand, and they won´t ever understand. Ever since the days of Jimmy Carter and his embarrassing New Year´s speech in Tehran in 1977 where he declared Iran to be “an island of stability”, meaning that Washington felt absolutely safe in their control over the country, to John Bolton´s pathetic speech in front of Iranian terrorist supporters in 2018 where he expressed his hope to “celebrate in Tehran” before the end of the year, they have failed time and time again to correctly analyse the Iranian people and nation.
In a great speech, Ayatollah Khamenei talks about these repeated miscalculations:
Today, we see the same type of miscalculation as the one that Ayatollah Khamenei speaks about in the video above. They thought that they could launch a “feminist revolution” in Iran, believing in their own lies that the Islamic Republic has no supporters, and will collapse under the pressure of riots and strikes. The Islamic Republic responded by mobilizing its supporters and this was the result:
Here are the ”liberal feminist rioters”:
And here are the supporters of the Islamic Republic:
Clearly, the few thousand “protestors”, of which a minority of them were actual terrorists/subversives, were overwhelmed by the massive amount of people who have come out in support of the Islamic Republic. But of course, they won´t show any of this in the Western media. Instead they have dozens of “analysts” who speculate on how quickly the Islamic Republic can fall and how Ayatollah Khamenei is “already dead and has been replaced by a body double”.
Seeing how they failed to cause any trouble for the Islamic Republic through “protests”, they resorted to riots, separatism and terrorist attacks instead. Kurdish terrorists, Baluchi terrorists, Arab and Azeri terrorists, all seeking to partition Iran. ISIS seeking to genocide Iranian Shias, and monarchists seeking to “immediately re-establish ties with Israel and the United States, and take a historically correct stance against Russia´s war in Ukraine”, as the self-styled “crown prince” of Iran said last month. These are the people Washington has mobilized for a “free Iran”. If the Islamic Republic were to fall, these people would partition the country into at least five different pieces, and start killing each other in a free-for all Battle Royale. Thankfully, security forces in Iran are arresting numerous rioters and terrorists on a daily basis who often start crying on camera, confessing to their crimes and who they received money and weapons from. Not a single one of them have stood their ground and defended their despicable actions. Big surprise!
What do they know about fighting for a cause? What do they know about bravery and sacrifice? What do they know about brotherhood? Nothing! They are opportunists who, like their ex-pat friends in the West, would sell their own mothers for money and power. Just like in Syria, they have no leaders, no honour and no dignity. They are being used as tools by Washington, only to be thrown under the bus when the Americans are done with them. This is how the Americans treat their “allies”.
On the contrary, The Islamic Republic was deeply embroiled in chaos and war with Saddam when it sent the first men to Lebanon to assist in the creation of Hezbollah in response to Israel´s invasion in 1982.
IRGC Quds force personnel arrive in Lebanon 1982.
Since those days, everything Iran has achieved, it has shared with its brothers in the region. Why? Because only united, can this region kick the barbaric Anglo-Zionists out. It was in anticipation for days such as this that Iran built an impressive missile arsenal, formed, and supported multiple armed militia groups in different countries in the region and have now reached out to great powers such as Russia and China to form a strong alliance against the Empire. In their arrogance and racist view, they thought that the Islamic Republic was resting on a rotten foundation such as the ones that their allied regimes in the Persian Gulf are resting on. Did Washington expect the Islamic Republic to go down so easily? Did they think that Syria, Hezbollah, Hashd Al-Shaabi, Ansarullah and other allies in the region would just idly stand by and watch while the strongest member of the Resistance alliance is being destroyed? Did they think that the Islamic Republic built an arsenal of hundreds of thousands of missiles just to collapse under the pressure of petty thugs and crude terrorist attacks?
Like I mentioned in my previous article, Iran is not Libya or Iraq during Saddam Hussein who stood alone in face of a NATO onslaught. Iran is both powerful on its own, and has powerful allies. Tehran is not alone in facing the evil empire and today, not just regional allies but great powers such as Russia and China have major stakes in Iran. Any foreign intervention, or bombing campaign against Iran will be met with missiles raining on Israel and US bases across the entire West Asia. If they want to test the Islamic Republic´s capabilities, then they must be ready to make very big sacrifices, because the era of hit and run attacks is over.
The westerners didn’t understand why Iranians were angry at them in 1979 and why they overthrew a “modern king” in favour of a “backward Islamic theocracy”. Many westerners still cannot understand how the Islamic Republic can be so popular among the Iranian people, and often just refuse to believe it. Why would they understand? They don’t know how 200 years of humiliation and subservience to others feel. They don´t know how it feels to have elected a prime minister, only to see him overthrown by foreigners who returned an unpopular dictator to the throne. They don´t know how it feels to have their country´s natural resources plundered by foreigners for decades.
Throughout the years since the Revolution, the Islamic Republic and its allies have given a lot martyrs for the cause of liberating West Asia from the Zionist empire. From the war against Saddam´s Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of young men were martyred, to the wars against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, these martyrs were inspired and driven by Imam Hussein´s immortal struggle against oppression. This is the ideology on which the Islamic Republic was formed and still rests on. They do not fear the US and its fabled “military might”. They do not fear American “super duper” bombs and missiles. They fear only God and consider fighting against oppression a religious duty, just like Imam Hussein did 1400 years ago. This is what the westerners do not understand when they try to intimidate Iran and its allies.
43 years since the embassy takeover on November 4 1979, they still do not understand that the Islamic Republic is a result of their own cruelty and injustice against Iran, and it has come back to haunt them. If they haven´t understood by now why the Islamic Republic continues to grow stronger, despite all their attempts to destroy the country from both the outside and inside, then they will never understand.
Viktor Mikhin The next summit of the League of Arab States (LAS), whose participation has been confirmed by the heads of state of numerous Arab countries, will be held in Algiers in early November. On the agenda, of course, are primarily issues related to the reconciliation of a number of Arab countries and their consolidation in the face of various external threats. However, the Arab media and even politicians are already saying that no breakthroughs can be expected from the summit, as the Arab League has lost its once-authoritative status in recent years.
Arab leaders have held two consecutive high-level meetings in 2019. In the spring, they met in Tunisia at the annual Arab Summit. In May, they met again in Mecca at the invitation of Riyadh for an extraordinary Arab summit. At issue was Saudi Arabia’s and other Persian Gulf Arab countries’ concern about Iran’s regional policies and opposition to Tehran’s plans to increase its activities in a number of countries in the Arab world. The 31st ordinary Arab summit is now scheduled to be held in Algiers on November 1, with a concluding session on November 2. The Algerian government wanted the summit to take place on the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1954 Algerian Revolution, which led to Algeria’s independence from France in July 1962.
Some fears are related to domestic political developments in Algeria, while others stem from Algeria’s relations with other Arab countries, which are not without nuances of disagreement over the choice of a common Arab and regional policy. This concerns the events in Libya, the position on the problems in North and East Africa, including the situation in Western Sahara, and the position on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
Syria is another major stumbling block given Algeria’s determination to rejoin the Arab League system after being expelled from it in 2011. At the time, this was done under the far-fetched pretext of the alleged use of force by President Bashar al-Assad to quell discontent among some segments of the population. Afterward, incidentally, it was found that the Persian Gulf countries and the West, led by the United States, had a hand in stirring up passions there. Then the situation turned into an endless civil war in which foreign fighters actively participated on the side of the Syrian opposition, generously paid by the same Persian Gulf Arabs.
It is worth remembering that the world and Arab countries look distinctive today than they did in 2019 when the last Arab summit was held. The world has changed since then, and not only the Covid-19 pandemic, but also a host of other Arab, Middle Eastern, and international events have changed the overall context in which the Algiers Summit will take place. Three major international developments are expected to influence discussions at the Arab Summit.
The first, in chronological order, is the change of government in the United States. After four years of foreign policy by former US President Donald Trump, who tried to move away from old problems that had plagued previous administrations, current US President Joe Biden has returned to an interventionist US foreign policy based on forming new military alliances while strengthening existing ones, such as NATO. The second major event was the war in Ukraine, which was prepared and unleashed by the West under the leadership of the United States to bleed and damage Russia. The third is the growing US-China tension over Taiwan, also initiated by the United States. These three events have had and continue to have a direct impact on the Arab world, and they are clearly not favorable to the Arabs. This concerns both the issue of food security and the high energy prices affecting Arab states that are not oil producers, such as Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, Morocco, and some others.
From a regional perspective, there have also been fundamental changes in the Arab country’s relations with Israel, Turkey, and Iran, which will undoubtedly impact the work and conclusions of the Arab Summit. For example, building on Trump’s diplomacy, Israel signed the so-called “Abraham Accords” with four Arab countries in the second half of 2020. The previous Trump administration spoke of the Arab-Israeli normalization process as being deliberately separated from the Palestinian issue, to the detriment of the Palestinians and the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. While the Biden administration advocated for a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine from day one, it refrained from using its influence with the Israelis to resume peace talks with the Palestinians that ended in April 2014.
While Trump in May 2018 roughly withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a nuclear agreement between Iran and a group of 5+1 countries, and pursued a strategy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, the Biden administration has worked assiduously to join the JCPOA under a formula known as “control over control.” This means that the United States will join the agreement if Iran is the first to meet all of its obligations. But if the “control over control” formula is implemented, followed by the lifting of some sanctions, the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, will be very concerned about what the Iranian government will spend the billions of dollars that will flow to Iran as a result of the resumption of oil sales. Will Tehran spend the money on developing the Iranian economy, or will it fund pro-Iranian regimes in the Arab world? If the latter, how will the US respond, and will Washington be able to side with the Saudis?
Turkey will also have to face a fierce controversy, as many Arabs see positive developments in Turkish-Arab relations despite the reassessment of Turkey’s strategy in the Middle East, Libya, or the Eastern Mediterranean. Ankara has now significantly tightened its policy in the Arab world, reminding left and right of its “right” as heir to the Ottoman Empire. This presupposes, Erdoğan says, Turkey’s leadership role in the created joint Arab Union. But here there will be clear opposition from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, given Erdoğan’s recent flirtations with Iran, which is the main enemy of Persian Gulf Arabs.
The Algiers summit also comes after the end of the boycott of Qatar by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain and the resumption of diplomatic relations between these countries. One of the most positive results of this intra-Arab reconciliation was the official visits of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to Qatar and the official visit of the ruler of Qatar to Egypt last July. Clearly, this much-needed reconciliation will have a positive impact on the Arab Summit discussions and decisions, both politically and economically. At the same time, the Arabs are taking into account the huge gas reserves in Qatar and its ability to export gas to the Arab states.
In addition, special attention is being paid to the situation in Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Tunisia. The Arab world is interested in helping these countries manage them successfully. The financial issue will be one of the main topics of the summit, and here the Persian Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, are likely to have a weighty say. In any case, this summit will provide Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud with an excellent opportunity to strengthen and expand his authority in the Arab League and throughout the Arab world.
As for the situation in Libya, Arab leaders are expected to call on Libyan political factions to resolve the ongoing crisis in their country by holding free and fair elections. Experts warn that this must happen as soon as possible to prevent Libya from reverting to the violence that nearly tore the country apart three years ago.
The next summit of Arab states in Algiers should prove that the Arab world is united and seeks only Arab solutions to Arab problems. And this requires the unity of all countries in the region. Will the ambitious Arab leaders be able to speak with one voice, or will everyone pull the covers over themselves? — the upcoming Arab League summit will clearly show this.
We live in one of the most important moments in history. Perhaps this moment is even more important than the end of the Cold War. Similar to those events more than 30 years ago, major geopolitical shifts are currently taking place today. If the end of the cold war saw the rise of the Western Bloc to dominance, then the start of this new Cold War has seen the return of a new Eastern Bloc, ready to assert its rightful place in the world.
The era of Western interventions, regime change operations and hit and run tactics is almost at an end. Today, countries such as China, Russia and Iran are challenging the US militarily, economically and politically. Many of the former international equations that were true only a few years ago are changing with great speed, especially after the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.
If we consider the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry as the first part of changing the structures of the world, then the key part that would change the entire structure is the moment when Russia decided to say enough to Washington and put their foot down, once and for all.
This has inspired defiance among the oppressed nations of the world. The conflict in Ukraine has proven that most of the countries in the world, which even the United States counted on as allies, are against the policies of the United States and in practice are not willing to go along with the policies of the United States. OPEC’s recent decision to reduce its oil production, while the United States had tried its best to force OPEC to bear the costs of its adventure in Europe, shows that a new world order is being formed. Indeed Washington did its best to pressure Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and other Persian Gulf countries to put aside their own interests in favour of Washington’s interests. We saw that not only did it not work, but it has also created a diplomatic crisis between the once so great “allies” in this region.
Several US senators and even the White House openly threatened Riyadh with consequences to their crime of not committing suicide for the sake of Washington. This could manifest itself in sudden Western public “awareness” of, and campaigns against the Saudi “human rights record” in the near future, or even worse- western backed riots such as those we’ve seen recently in Iran. So far we’ve only seen talks about “stopping arms sales” and/or “withdrawing troops from the region.”
Such a move would likely lead the Saudis to turn towards Tehran and, in extension the emerging Eastern alliance. This would lead to a major geopolitical shift in the region that would endanger Israel, and thus also raise the risk of a large conflict in the region.
Another US ally that is flirting with the East is Erdogan’s Turkey. Erdogan is many things, and one of those things is being a survivalist. His refusal to follow NATO and US policies vis-à-vis Russia shows that he is also prioritizing his own interests before Washington’s. The Eastern alliance, manifested by institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS are expanding and gaining strength, and today many countries in the world are looking for membership in these international cooperation organizations, especially after Iran’s entry into the SCO group of countries. Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two countries wielding considerable influence on smaller countries in the region are looking to join these organizations. These countries used to be allies of the West, and of course some are still their allies, but it shows that even Washington’s once so staunch allies are not satisfied with, and most importantly don’t trust the US hegemony anymore, and are looking for alternatives.
When Russia’s red line was crossed in Ukraine, Moscow made an important decision to intervene. This decision was not just about Moscow’s security, or the security of Donbass. Russian President Putin has on several occasions spoken about the ongoing paradigm shift, where the world is moving toward a multi-polar world order. Words echoed by officials in Tehran as well as the Islamic Republic is also at the forefront, together with Russia and China in the bid to end the unipolar world order. Russia’s SMO in Ukraine is of utmost importance for the oppressed countries of the world. Such an open challenge to US hegemony will strengthen the resolve of other countries, especially China and Iran, two countries facing the same enemy as Russia is currently battling.
Washington is in decline, while the Eastern Bloc is on the rise. Even the staunchest of Empire supporters cannot deny this fact. Since Washington and the collective West are in decline, they are also growing more aggressive. This has been witnessed by us all in Ukraine where the collective West have brought mankind to the brink of nuclear war. This can be seen in the aggressive policies regarding Taiwan, violating previous agreements and commitments to respecting China’s sovereignty. This was as clear as day during the recent foreign-backed riots in Iran. In sum, the US basically tried to extort Tehran into accepting a “temporary” JCPOA deal on Washington’s terms and conditions. Seeing as how Tehran would not yield on its demands for guarantees that Washington wouldn’t renege on the deal once more, they created these riots to force and pressure Tehran to accept Washington’s terms.
A desperate attempt to create a color revolution, with the help of hundreds of thousands of Twitter bots, especially since the riots quickly lost momentum thanks to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) vigilance and experience in dealing with foreign-backed plots to overthrow the Islamic Republic. The timing of the riots made it clear for Tehran that it was a desperate move to secure natural gas for the winter, especially since they destroyed Europe’s gas deliveries through NS1 and NS2. If it wasn’t clear enough at first, at least Washington did a good job in clarifying any misunderstandings when both US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley and US State Department spokesperson Ned Price claimed that the revival of the JCPOA is “not our focus right now” and that it “wasn’t even on the agenda”, as Washington was shifting focus to “supporting Iranian protesters.”
Washington’s list of allies will keep growing thinner for every new crisis that Washington creates. There is already widespread dissatisfaction among those countries that constitute the “jungle”, as Joseph Borrell, chief gardener of the EU, so creatively described it, and as we speak, that dissatisfaction is also spreading to the “garden” now. Massive protests are taking place in several EU countries, and these are just the beginning, because it’s not even winter yet! The true pain for European households will come in a month or two.
Washington is fighting on multiple fronts to preserve its hegemony, Secretary of State Blinken was pretty clear about that when he said that Americans “have to be the ones who are at the table who are helping to shape the rules, the norms, the standards by which technology is used,”
“If we’re not, if the United States isn’t there, then someone else will be, and these rules are going to get shaped in ways that don’t reflect our values and don’t reflect our interests.”
The fact that Washington is feeling this pressure makes the Empire more dangerous than ever. It can be said that any chance of saving the world today depends on whether a strong Eastern Bloc can be formed soon enough. If not, the US hegemony will pick off the independent countries one by one, just like they did in Libya.
Sure, if Washington strikes either of Russia, China or Iran militarily, they will have to be prepared for these countries to massively retaliate, unlike the situation in Libya, where Libyans were pretty defenceless on their own. Still, like I said in the beginning of this piece, the era of hit and run tactics is almost at an end. This means that Washington is still bold enough to strike Russia, China and Iran politically and financially through slander, regime change psyops and sanctions. Hence, the need for China, Russia and Iran to hasten the Eastern integration and alliance building projects in order to better be prepared to counter Washington’s long reach.
Of course, even if such an alliance can be formed, there are no guarantees that Washington’s madness wouldn’t still cause a world war that would destroy us all, but at least in such a scenario, they’d go down with the rest of us too. In the end, the leaderships and peoples of the three countries leading the new multi-polar world order would rather die than become slaves of the US hegemony.
Many important countries will soon be forced to pick sides as everything seems to be building up to a major showdown between the East and the hateful West. When and how that will happen is anyone’s guess. The only thing certain at this point is that the end of the Western era of dominance under their “rules based world order” is inevitable.
While the demarcation agreement is yet to be signed, scepticism on both sides signals conflict ahead
There is a sense of optimism in Lebanon over the possibility of signing a maritime agreement with Israel that would enable the extraction of gas from Lebanese territorial waters, which could help lead the country out of its dire financial crisis.
After the 3 October meeting that brought together Lebanese President Michel Aoun, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, and Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the Republican Palace, it was clear that everyone agreed with the “moderate” proposals presented by US envoy Amos Hochstein, head of the indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel over their common maritime border.
Deputy Speaker of Parliament Elias Abu Saab announced after the meeting that Lebanon’s “comments” on the proposals would be sent to Hochstein, and that the Lebanese government would not provide an official answer to the proposal – pending a response from the US envoy before the end of the week.
Israel for its part has reportedly given preliminary approval for the proposal which consists of a 10-page draft.
Abu Saab confirmed that Lebanon had obtained its full rights in the maritime “Qana gas field,” but he cautioned that the devils lie in the detail.
Mikati, who seems the most enthusiastic to sign the US-brokered agreement, said after leaving the presidential palace that “things are going in the right direction.” His smile was wider than ever – as though gas revenues in the billions of dollars were about to flow into the coffers of the Central Bank of Lebanon.
Gas deal ‘leaks’
So far, few details of the agreement have been revealed. Currently in circulation are ‘deliberate’ indirect leaks from the two negotiating parties to ‘beautify’ the agreement for their respective constituents. It reflects the desire of deal proponents to clinch an agreement as soon as possible, ostensibly to avoid a war on the Lebanese-Israeli border that could escalate into a regional war, and maybe more.
While the Lebanese side appears uncharacteristically united and more willing to sign, sharp divisions persist in the Israeli camp, especially between interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his ally Minister of Defense Benny Gantz, on the one hand, and the opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other.
Lapid claims, through his camp’s leaks, that Israel will retain full sovereignty over the contested Karish gas field and will receive financial compensation by relinquishing part of Lebanon’s Qana gas field – paid for by French corporation TotalEnergies, which is currently in talks of its own with Israel over potential profit sharing from exploration.
Lapid also promotes the notion that Israel made a “tactical concession in exchange for a strategic gain in stability on the northern borders.”
Netanyahu has stepped up his attacks on the prime minister and has criticized the draft agreement for making huge concessions on the ‘Land of Israel’ and for handing over its natural resources to Lebanon and Hezbollah.
This, he contends, is taking place without holding a public referendum or securing the approval of the Knesset (Parliament). He has also vowed to abolish the agreement if he comes to power following legislative elections scheduled for 1 November.
Meanwhile, everyone is awaiting the results of the mini-Israeli security cabinet meeting next Thursday, which is supposed to discuss and ratify the agreement.
The internal battle may then move to Israel’s Supreme Court to decide on the opposition’s demands to hold a referendum on the agreement, or to submit it to the Knesset for approval – or both. There are initial indications that the Supreme Court may support the opposition’s opinion.
Uri Adiri, the chief Israeli negotiator for demarcating the maritime border with Lebanon, announced his resignation in protest of Lapid’s management of the negotiations. It seems clear that the resignation came under opposition pressure, and it is not unlikely that similar resignations will take place in the coming days.
Negotiations leading to ‘normalization’
There are also criticisms on the Lebanese side in some circles, chiefly over the notion that such negotiations are a precursor to normalization with the occupation state. Abu Saab, however, has insisted that no agreement or treaty will be signed with the Israeli enemy, and that there will be no document that includes a Lebanese signature alongside an Israeli signature.
But there are several caveats worth noting:
Firstly: The final version of the US-brokered proposals has not yet been agreed upon, and therefore the possibilities of returning to square one, that is, before the ‘theoretical current agreement,’ are still present.
Secondly: The only guarantors of this agreement are the United States and France. Experiences with US guarantees are not encouraging. As we have seen with Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – likewise, the US guarantee of the Oslo Accord, signed at the White House on 13 September, 1993 – an American guarantee no longer invokes much confidence.
Thirdly: Netanyahu cannot cancel the agreement as long as it is legally approved, but he can undermine it if he wins the next legislative elections. As with the Oslo Accords – which he strongly opposed – while he could not exit the agreement, he prevented its implementation and reduced it to empty words by settling 800,000 settlers in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
Delaying the inevitable
Finally: We cannot rule out that these Israeli disputes between the government and the opposition are just political theater intended to stall, deceive the Lebanese, and plan ahead for the inevitable response by the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah.
It should be noted that the US is Israel’s strongest global ally, that Lapid is one of Israel’s most ardent supporters of the US war against Russia in Ukraine, and that the American “mediator” Amos Hochstein is Israeli-born and served in the Israeli army.
The only reliable guarantee for Lebanon, for its oil and gas resources, for its security and stability, is the Islamic resistance represented by Hezbollah and its huge arsenal of precision missiles, advanced drones, and one hundred thousand-strong army of resistance fighters.
This is the first time in the history of Israel, since its establishment, that its government has offered concessions under the threat of arms and in fear of a war that threatens its existence. This is entirely due to Hezbollah’s refusal to allow Israel to extract gas before Lebanon has secured its own rights.
The next few days could be the most dangerous for Lebanon and the region. The utmost caution must be exercised, and every word or comma in any binding agreement must be carefully scrutinized before signing.
Remember that Netanyahu is a paper tiger, and he was subjected to humiliating defeats at the hands of the resistance in the Gaza Strip, especially in the battle of Sayf al-Quds.
The resistance is the biggest winner of this agreement so far in both in its implementation – because it is the one who imposed it with missiles and drones – and in the event of its collapse – because it is ready for all possibilities, foremost of which is war.
While the Lebanese people are peaceful, and have sought hard to secure a fair and equitable agreement over their maritime borders, they may yet be forced to militarily secure their national rights to Lebanon’s natural resources.
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واصلت «إسرائيل»، أمس، بثّ رسائل تهديد تجاه الساحة اللبنانية، وتوعّدت حزب الله برد غير تناسبي على أي عملية يبادر إليها ضد المنشآت الغازية الإسرائيلية. علماً أن هذه التهديدات تتزامن مع تأكيدات ترد من تل أبيب بأن «الاتفاق مع لبنان بات أقرب من ذي قبل»، ومع التشديد على معادلة باتت هي التي تحكم عملية التفاوض الجارية عبر الوسيط الأميركي: «حقل قانا كاملاً للبنان، مقابل حقل كاريش كاملاً لإسرائيل».
لكن الواضح من الرسائل غير المتداولة إعلامياً أن العدو يسعى إلى تقديم عرض يقول فيه إنه تنازل عن كامل حقل قانا وقبل بالخط 23، لكن مع معالجة نقاط على الساحل اللبناني، بما يقود إلى فكرة مقايضة جديدة قد يكون هدفها الإعلامي تسويق العدو في الداخل الإسرائيلي بأنه عقد تسوية ولم يتنازل، وهدفها الفعلي التأثير لاحقاً على الترسيم النهائي للحدود البرية. علماً أن فكرة دفع لبنان إلى تنازل عند النقاط الساحلية من شأنه أيضاً التأثير على الخط البحري الفاصل بين المناطق الاقتصادية الخالصة لكل من الطرفين. وفي هذا السياق، ليس واضحاً لـ«إسرائيل» مدى جاهزية لبنان لقبول مثل هذا العرض، خصوصاً أن العدو، كما الأميركيين والأوروبيين، يعتقدون بأن دخول حزب الله بقوة على خط الملف، رسم دائرة حمراء منع بموجبها أي جهة لبنانية من التنازل. وأنه في هذه الحالة سيتم تأخير الاتفاق وعندها يعود الجميع إلى مربع المواجهة العسكرية المحتملة. ومع أن تل أبيب منشغلة أيضاً بالحديث عن احتمال توقيع الاتفاق النووي بين إيران وأميركا ودول الغرب، ويزور مسؤولون إسرائيليون كبار من بينهم وزير الحرب بيني غانتس واشنطن لهذا الغرض، إلا أنهم سيتطرقون حكماً إلى ملف ترسيم الحدود مع لبنان. ورغم أن لبنان لم يصدر أي مواقف جديدة بشأن الملف، كان لافتاً الكلام المُسرّب في وسائل الإعلام العبرية عن أن كيان العدو ماضٍ في أعمال التنقيب، وآخره ما نقلته القناة 13 بأن «مسؤولين أمنيين كباراً في إسرائيل أبلغوا الوسيط الأميركي أن من المقرر تشغيل منصة كاريش في نهاية أيلول مهما كانت النتائج». علماً أن هذا الكلام لا يعني شيئاً في حال كان صحيحاً ما يقوله قادة العدو عن احتمال التوصل قريباً إلى اتفاق مع لبنان. لكنهم يأخذون في الاعتبار احتمال أن يرفض لبنان العرض الجديد الذي يفترض أن يحمله هوكشتين قريباً، خصوصاً في حال أصر العدو على مقايضة ما. أمام هذه التسريبات، تبدو البلاد مكشوفة على خطر انفلات أزمة الترسيم إلى مواجهة قد تخرج عن السيطرة مع استمرار قرع طبولها من المقلب الإسرائيلي، إذ قالت صحيفة «إسرائيل هيوم» إن «إسرائيل وحزب الله يدخلان في واحدة من أكثر الفترات توتراً بينهما منذ حرب لبنان الثانية عام 2006». مع ذلك، استمرت التسريبات التي تتحدث عن قرب إنجاز الاتفاق، وفقَ ما أشارت صحيفة «معاريف» عن أنه «إذا استمرت وتيرة المباحثات بشأن ترسيم الحدود البحرية مع لبنان على شكلها الحالي، فسيتم التوقيع على اتفاق بهذا الصدد الشهر المقبل، والتسوية المتبلورة تنص على تبادل مناطق في المياه الاقتصادية موضع الخلاف». التوجه الإسرائيلي العملي هو الرضوخ بشكل يكاد يكون كاملاً للمطالب اللبنانية، كما حملها هوكشتين إلى «إسرائيل». وإن كانت تل أبيب تبحث في المقابل عما من شأنه تلطيف صورة الرضوخ عبر إيجاد رواية ثانية، تقول من خلالها إنها تخلت عن أصولها وحدّها البري، نتيجة «حسن الخيرة والسخاء»، كما يرِد في تعبيرات عبرية، وليس نتيجة تهديدات حزب الله. رغم أنها في سياق مساعيها هذه، تجازف عملياً بأن تتسبب لنفسها ما تتجنبه: المواجهة العسكرية، التي دفعتها في المقام الأول «للتنازل والسخاء». والواضح أن تل أبيب، بمعية الوسيط الأميركي، تعمل على استهلاك الوقت المُعطى لها إلى حدّه الأقصى، مع محاولة خلق ظروف وعوامل جديدة، تُمكّنها من تمديد مهلة الاستحقاق الزمني إلى منتصف أيلول، وربما أيضاً ما يزيد على ذلك، إذ كلما طالت المدة أكثر كان الرهان أكبر على إمكان تحقيق مكتسبات من الجانب اللبناني، في سياق التفاوض الذي باتت سِمته الظاهرة التأخير والمماطلة وتقطيع الوقت من ناحية إسرائيل.
التوجه الإسرائيلي العملي هو الرضوخ بشكل يكاد يكون كاملاً للمطالب اللبنانية
حتى الآن، حقّق لبنان، بفعل دخول المقاومة على معادلة الغاز، رضوخاً إسرائيلياً عبر «تنازل» العدو عن كامل المنطقة التي كانت تسمى «متنازع عليها» (ما بين الخط 1 و 23)، إضافة إلى حقل قانا كاملاً، الذي يتجاوز حده الجنوبي الخط 23. فضلاً عن معادلة حادة جداً يستعصي على «إسرائيل» أن تتجنّبها، وهي ربط حزب الله موعد تفعيل تهديداته، بعملية استخراج الغاز من «كاريش». الأمر الذي يفسر تسريبات وردت على لسان وزراء إسرائيليين، بإمكان تأجيل الاستخراج إلى «أجل غير مسمى لأسباب وعراقيل فنية خاصة بشركة إنرجيان». أما على المقلب اللبناني، فبعد ما أعلنه المكتب الإعلامي لنائب رئيس مجلس النواب الياس بو صعب عن «اتصال مطول مع الوسيط الأميركي أطلع فيه بو صعب على ما توصلت إليه آخر الاتصالات التي أجراها مع المسؤولين الإسرائيليين»، أشارت مصادر مطلعة إلى أن «هوكشتين سيعود إلى المنطقة الأسبوع المقبل»، وأن «هناك اتفاقاً على التوقف عن الكلام والتصريح حتى عودته ليتبين الخيط الأبيض من الخيط الأسود».
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 
