Tuesday, July 25, 2006
The hand of Russia
I'll see your Iraq and raise you Iran
"It doesn't take much imagination to realise what the Middle East would be like if the radical groups were able to operate under the cover of an Iranian nuclear umbrella."
- Joschka Fischer
Henry Kissinger stressed today on Fox News that Iran has a couple of weeks to sort out whether it will risk the ire of the US by continuing a nuclear-isation policy.
A couple of weeks.
He appeared to say it quietly, in the stock delivery style of the well-known former US Secretary of State, but there was no mistaking the earnest behind his words.
There are obvious reasons to be concerned about the likes of Ali Khameini or the satanically tonsiled Ahmadinejad getting their fingers close to a nuclear launcher.
Yet, is there more to it? What specific things might an old Cold Warrior like Kissinger be concerned about?
Two items posted on MEMRI (here and here, for the moment) put recent Iranian manoeuvring - and the Israel-Islamist conflagration - in a post-Soviet context:
No censure of Iran was implemented at the recent G8 meeting (in Russia). This was a significant victory for both the Iranian purchaser and the Russian seller of nuclear plant and technology. A look at the time-line of events relating to the Iranian nuclear adventure and leading into the G8 meeting is very illustrative of this:
At the G8 meeting, on July 15, said “local, conventional crisis” was observed in unified fashion by organization members. This provided what MEMRI sees as a micro-victory - and simultaneous macro-defeat - for US President Bush:
The newly resurgent Iran of 2006, whose leader is so bellicose in calls for the liquidation of Israel, is on course to have both long-range missiles, as well as nuclear weapons to combine with them, very soon.
Sitting comfortably behind this is the Putin regime. With the inflation of the radical Shi'ite balloon has come a place at the global poker table for the old Soviets. Isn't this, however, a dangerous game for the Russians to have staked itself (and us all) in?
They are claiming to be a legitimate mediator between the Middle East protagonists, and it's true that their leader sometimes makes noises supporting Israel's right to exist and defend itself - while doing little or nothing to liquidate the broadleft mantra they originated, the one about Zionism and racism being "two sides of the one coin", even though the new Russian regime, unlike the Soviet Union, has no pretensions to being itself other than a largely distinctive national-cultural (and even religious) entity akin to the enemies they once despised.
Russia's Persian partners take the "Zionism is racism" mantra to its thuggish and hypocritical extreme.
How much real leverage does Russia have over them? How long can it last? Does Putin - now a kind of entrenched dictator - have any real interest in bringing pressure to bear upon Iran vis-a-vis the US free market ally Israel?
For Putin, this past few days must have seemed like a kind of festive devil's coming out.
Previously written off - at least in the public arena - as historic US roadkill, his KGB-originated government is exerting control over a newly centralised Russian oil industry, even as international prices skyrocket and the western hold on supply of that market-essential substance continues to slip around Iraqi sands.
Now OPEC heavyweight Venezuela, whose loud-mouthed and anti-Semitic leader Chavez was fawned upon recently by the arms-supplying post-KGB satrapy in Belarus, is announcing that he's about to conclude an arms deal (with Russia) that will give his small Latin American country the most powerful air force in South America - as well as Kalashnikov factories to arm itself and its buddies with.
In such ways the Putin power and money quotient is presently magnified, but surely the Russian leader must foresee that, just as the US policy in Afghanistan came back to bite it on the behind, Russian sponsorship of Iran may yet head the same way.
I'm sure Kissinger was firmly aware of such things when he emphasized that Iranian deadline for discontinuing with nukes.
Faced with a ideologically bankrupt pack of hyenas with no common interest other than a bloodlust for pieces of the US lion, it is in both the US interest and the interests of all peaceful and democratic governments, that such deadline shouldn't be treated lightly.
"It doesn't take much imagination to realise what the Middle East would be like if the radical groups were able to operate under the cover of an Iranian nuclear umbrella."
- Joschka Fischer
Henry Kissinger stressed today on Fox News that Iran has a couple of weeks to sort out whether it will risk the ire of the US by continuing a nuclear-isation policy. A couple of weeks.
He appeared to say it quietly, in the stock delivery style of the well-known former US Secretary of State, but there was no mistaking the earnest behind his words.
There are obvious reasons to be concerned about the likes of Ali Khameini or the satanically tonsiled Ahmadinejad getting their fingers close to a nuclear launcher.
Yet, is there more to it? What specific things might an old Cold Warrior like Kissinger be concerned about?
Two items posted on MEMRI (here and here, for the moment) put recent Iranian manoeuvring - and the Israel-Islamist conflagration - in a post-Soviet context:
“Russia is repositioning itself vis-à-vis the U.S. as a highly influential superpower in the Middle East as well as in Europe, where it is the primary supplier of oil and natural gas.”Whipped out of 1980s Afghanistan -“by a religious Sunni popular militia armed with large quantities of sophisticated weaponry, with Saudi and American support”- the new Russia has resurrected itself, by joining the tactics they could not beat:
“Today, this same mode of warfare (as used against the Soviets in Afghanistan) is being utilized to great effect by Hizbullah, a religious Shiite popular militia which is armed with large quantities of sophisticated weaponry, with Iranian and Russian support ...Russia, which does not include Hizbullah or Hamas in its list of terrorist organizations, has persistently opposed, and continues to oppose, the imposition of sanctions on nuke-bound Iran.
“Russia has not only been the backbone of the Iranian nuclear program; it is also providing the primary diplomatic umbrella for Hizbullah and Iran's activities ... (even claiming) ... that there is no connection between Iran and Hizbullah.”
No censure of Iran was implemented at the recent G8 meeting (in Russia). This was a significant victory for both the Iranian purchaser and the Russian seller of nuclear plant and technology. A look at the time-line of events relating to the Iranian nuclear adventure and leading into the G8 meeting is very illustrative of this:
“(O)n June 6 Iran was ... presented with an ultimatum: either agree to give up uranium enrichment ... or Iran's nuclear dossier will be referred back to the U.N. Security Council ...That Hizbullah attack was the first invasion across the "blue line" - the Israel-Lebanon border outside the disputed Schebaa Farms segment - in 6 years since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
As Western pressures increased, Iran's threats … grew in their severity.
“On June 16, it was reported that a military pact had been signed between Iran and Syria, in which Iran agreed to defend Syria against Israeli attack, to fund weapons purchases from Russia, China, and the Ukraine.
(The pact, according to some sources, also provides for the transport of weaponry from Iran to Hizbullah via Syria)
“On July 2, … Hamas … which receives significant support from Iran (and from Syria), carried out (that, kidnapping) attack on Israeli soil …
(The green light for the attack almost certainly came from Syrian-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshal)
“On July 12, Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani, who is in charge of Iran's nuclear dossier, was forced to (meet) Javier Solana … In the meeting, he repeated Iran's position that it will only give its answer to the ultimatum on August 22, 2006. In response, Solana announced, on behalf of the "5+1," that the Iranian nuclear dossier would be referred back to the Security Council. Larijani then ... (met) ... with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
“On that same day - July 12 - Hizbullah carried out an attack on Israeli soil in which it kidnapped two soldiers and killed several. … and the current local, conventional crisis was ignited.
At the G8 meeting, on July 15, said “local, conventional crisis” was observed in unified fashion by organization members. This provided what MEMRI sees as a micro-victory - and simultaneous macro-defeat - for US President Bush:
“In the current crisis, Israel and the U.S. are confining themselves to the regional arena and the conventional level, whereas Iran and Russia are acting on all levels and in all arenas …Not mentioned in this MEMRI depiction is Iraq. Iraq under Saddam provided a buffer to Iranian influence as well as a steadily massive crude supply offshore. Now the US swims against the tide of heavily armed agitation there, much of it kept aflame - literally - by Iranian money, Iranian weaponry, Iranian agents (said to be operating openly and swarming across the border at will) and radical Shi'ite rhetoric.
“The G8 Summit ... was to discuss the Iranian nuclear program and the steps to be taken against Iran. On the eve of the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that "bringing excessive pressure on Iran regarding the nuclear issue would [only] lead to a dead end …
“(Russia) even defended Iran's right to defer its response until the end of August ... (and) defended ... Hamas and Hizbullah ...
“Russia thus positioned itself as the superpower which is the patron of the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah-Hamas bloc …
“On the regional level, Iran - with the help of its proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah - has already become a regional power which America's traditional allies (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and some of the Gulf states) fear but are unable to oppose. It is likely that, in the future, Iran will be joined by other Arab countries like Sudan, Yemen and Qatar, which, through its Al-Jazeera TV channel, is already increasing Iran's influence among the Muslim masses.”
The newly resurgent Iran of 2006, whose leader is so bellicose in calls for the liquidation of Israel, is on course to have both long-range missiles, as well as nuclear weapons to combine with them, very soon.
Sitting comfortably behind this is the Putin regime. With the inflation of the radical Shi'ite balloon has come a place at the global poker table for the old Soviets. Isn't this, however, a dangerous game for the Russians to have staked itself (and us all) in?
They are claiming to be a legitimate mediator between the Middle East protagonists, and it's true that their leader sometimes makes noises supporting Israel's right to exist and defend itself - while doing little or nothing to liquidate the broadleft mantra they originated, the one about Zionism and racism being "two sides of the one coin", even though the new Russian regime, unlike the Soviet Union, has no pretensions to being itself other than a largely distinctive national-cultural (and even religious) entity akin to the enemies they once despised.
Russia's Persian partners take the "Zionism is racism" mantra to its thuggish and hypocritical extreme.
How much real leverage does Russia have over them? How long can it last? Does Putin - now a kind of entrenched dictator - have any real interest in bringing pressure to bear upon Iran vis-a-vis the US free market ally Israel?
For Putin, this past few days must have seemed like a kind of festive devil's coming out.
Previously written off - at least in the public arena - as historic US roadkill, his KGB-originated government is exerting control over a newly centralised Russian oil industry, even as international prices skyrocket and the western hold on supply of that market-essential substance continues to slip around Iraqi sands.
Now OPEC heavyweight Venezuela, whose loud-mouthed and anti-Semitic leader Chavez was fawned upon recently by the arms-supplying post-KGB satrapy in Belarus, is announcing that he's about to conclude an arms deal (with Russia) that will give his small Latin American country the most powerful air force in South America - as well as Kalashnikov factories to arm itself and its buddies with.
In such ways the Putin power and money quotient is presently magnified, but surely the Russian leader must foresee that, just as the US policy in Afghanistan came back to bite it on the behind, Russian sponsorship of Iran may yet head the same way.
I'm sure Kissinger was firmly aware of such things when he emphasized that Iranian deadline for discontinuing with nukes.
Faced with a ideologically bankrupt pack of hyenas with no common interest other than a bloodlust for pieces of the US lion, it is in both the US interest and the interests of all peaceful and democratic governments, that such deadline shouldn't be treated lightly.
