Middle East Chess Game

I’ve fallen a bit behind, so this is a catch-up post. Earlier this week M. K. Bhadrakumar published an important article on the finalization of a security pact between Russia and Iran: Decoding Iran’s missile, drone strikes. The entire article is worth your time. MKB gets into the Iranian response to the terror campaign Israel and the US have long been waging against Iran, using proxies like the MEK (operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan and Azerbaijan) and Balochi groups. But the big news is the security pact. Larry Johnson gets into all these aspects in his post today (including the Balochi, US, Israel angle). As you can imagine, the implications of the security pact are quite straightforward:

RUSSIA AND IRAN AGREE TO SIGN A BILATERAL STRATEGIC PACT

MKB makes an interesting point about the pact, noting that Iran is the party that has been pushing for the pact, while Russia has taken a more go-slow approach. My read on this is that the ever cautious Putin wanted to be sure that he had the war in Ukraine well in hand before taking on this major commitment. The increasing tempo of regional warfare in the Middle East was probably the deciding factor in puttting the pact into effect. Russia is gradually shifting its stance to drawing implicit redlines. This one looks like it flows directly from the new security pact:

Megatron @Megatron_ron

Russia will no longer allow Israel to target in Syria?

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced the start of military air patrols along the disengagement line (blue) between Syria and the Occupied-Golan Heights.

From here, Israel carried out airstrikes on Syria

LJ writes this regarding the overall meaning of the pact:

This is huge. It means that Israel and the United States will face the risk of going to war with Moscow if either openly launch a military attack on Iran. This puts a new arrow in Iran’s quiver. Iran already has an array of ballistic missiles — non-nuclear — that can strike Israel and many U.S. military bases in the region. In addition, Iran has been conducting joint military exercises with Russia and China for the last four years. Taken together, these are consequential factors that Western military planners cannot ignore.

Iran ain’t Yemen. It has a modern military — army, air force and navy — and a robust air defense system, power ballistic missiles, advanced drones and a sophisticated cyber attack capability. …

I hope that Lloyd Austin, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and CJCS General Charlie Brown understand this. If they do, they will resist strongly any push from the Biden White House to strike Iran. If they do not, then the United States will make a fatal mistake that will jeopardize the safety and security of the American people.

This is also the overall context in which to understand the attack on US bases—especially the major missile attack last night on the important US airbase at Al-Asad, in Western Iraq.

- Not rockets, but tactical ballistic missiles;

- U.S. injuries confirmed;

- 15+ U.S. Patriot missiles were launched to intercept, but some missiles still got through -- meaning attack was BIG;

- #Iran-directed "Islamic Resistance in #Iraq" claimed responsibility. https://t.co/E858p7PNRz

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) January 20, 2024

The US is operating illegal bases in Syria and Iraq. Both governments have demanded that the US vacate these illegal bases, but their demands have been ignored. Iraq is becoming more insistent and is reported to be blocking the entry of additional US forces into its territory.

Now, on Thursday Alastair Crooke weighed in on the US, UK, Israel drive to escalate into a regional war, probably via a major attack on Hezbollah. Crooke’s article would have been written very shortly before the Russia - Iran pact was announced, which suggests that the pact is a response to US, UK, Israeli escalations against Iran:

Bluffs and Counter Bluffs as the War Widens

Crooke’s initial point is that the US’s claimed stance that it is trying to avoid escalation against Hezbollah is, in fact, mostly a “bluff”—perhaps a better description would be that it is a misdirection or disinformation ploy. Crooke maintains that Israel has always had a green light to escalate against Hezbollah, and that the supposed diplomatic mission of dual citizen Amos Hochstein is mostly a subterfuge for PR purposes, in aid of an Israeli justification for attacking Lebanon. On the other hand, Crooke believes that the US actually is attempting to enforce on Israel a proviso that any escalation should not be such as to draw in Iran and/or Russia. That’s a hopeful sign that the US military may understand that it is in no position to get into such a wider war. But Russia’s recent moves suggest that Russia may be appropriating escalation dominance on its own part.

The bigger bluff, however, is with regard to the Houthis in Yemen. I’ll quote an extended passage from Crooke’s article. In the days since the article was published there have been reports that the Houthis may be preparing a significant escalation—keep that in mind:

So, widening the war is ‘ok’. Biden’s aim rather is to give Israel maximum latitude to achieve its maximalist aims — tempered only by the ‘kicker’ that he doesn’t want a widened war to draw-in Iran or Russia into the frame. (Russia in respect to Syria.)

British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps on Saturday warned Iran that the world is “running out of patience”, saying that ‘the Iranian regime’ needs tell its “Houthi thugs” to call off their Red Sea attacks, and for other Iranian ‘proxies’ to “cease and desist” their actions, warning that a “limit has been truly crossed”. Shapps warned:

“We see you; we see through what you’re doing. We see how you’re doing it, particularly the Houthi rebels, and no good can come from it”.

Of course, this is pure nonsense too. It is a bluff. Houthis may be Shi’a — as are Iranians — but they are Zaidis and not the same Shi’a as Iranians — Iranians are ‘twelver’ Shi’a; whereas Houthis are ‘severners’. The fiercely independent Houthis (Ansarallah) may see eye to eye with Iran on many things, yet no one, but no one, tells them what to do.

…

Biden and Shapps’ bluster will be called by Ansarallah. They will not ‘cease and desist’. Confrontation with the US has long been an ambition for Ansarallah. The Wall Street Journal aptly describes the position into which the US and UK are cornering themselves: “The Strikes Give Houthis the Enemy They Long Sought”.

…

White House spokesman John Kirby said that the US doesn’t want war with Yemen, but won’t hesitate to take further action. The bluff here, as Larry Johnson notes, is that neither the UK nor the US have the ability for a sustained naval presence off the Yemeni coastline, where cheap drones and missiles can easily exhaust the vessels’ supply of air defence missiles.

The greater bluff in play, however, is that towards Iran. The neo-cons in the US have long yearned for military action to be taken against Iran, but Iran’s deterrence ability has transformed in the intervening years since the US hawks began calling to ‘bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’.

It’s beginning to look a bit like a game of chicken. That’s basically the view that Doug Macgregor takes:

Douglas Macgregor @DougAMacgregor

The United States Government is headed down the side of a mountain.

The only thing that may stop it is financial ruin.

Unless that happens by now and April, I believe we will be involved in a regional war that has the capacity to become global.

8:00 PM · Jan 19, 2024

The war in Ukraine is ending in catastrophic defeat for Ukraine and the United States.

Read that again. People in America go about their daily lives, but on the world’s stage we—or our Empire—face catastrophe.

The war in the Middle East is just beginning, and it will not end when the Israeli State decides to stop fighting.

Washington confronts a world it does not know or understand.

The House Republicans’ recent “Plan for Victory in Ukraine” exemplifies an acute lack of understanding.

In other words, we’re not in control of events, and Israel certainly isn’t. The inmates are in charge of Asylum America. But the Israelis, unable to come to terms with reality, double down, depending on their ownership of the US government. A bad bet. My bet is that the American public is not in favor of more and bigger war and will make that known to the fools on the Hill.

The House Republicans’ recent “Plan for Victory in Ukraine” exemplifies an acute lack of understanding.

The Russians are not fools.

They know we are not going to have a "come to Jesus moment" and figure out there is no threat from Russia.

They will not stand by and let us bomb Iran into the stone age and they are watching what we are doing in Sweden and Finland.

Washington continues to insist on pushing NATO forces to Russia’s borders, establishing new bases in northern Sweden and Finland and effectively repeating the mistake that led to war in Ukraine.

Israel’s war with Hamas has mutated into a campaign to rid Israel of its Arab population.

This development pits Israel and the United States in a showdown with the Islamic world, and potentially Russia, China, and the Global South.

U.S. military advice in Ukraine combined with the performance of U.S. material demonstrated a degree of American military weakness not seen since the outbreak of the Korean War.

5:04 PM · Jan 20, 2024