Dangerous New Escalation
New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.
Russian-Iran Strategic Partnership
The Russian and Iranian partnership agreement is due to be signed within the next couple of weeks, with a signing date of January 17th apparently fixed (I had mistakenly said January 20th in yesterday’s post). Russia has said that the agreement will exclude any provision that might assist Iran acquire a nuclear weapon. This is a new and important disclosure which might be intended to send a signal of reassurance to Israel that Israel has no reason to fear, no reason to attack Iran and, if this is so, then that would indeed be a major contribution to regional stability.
What Does Israel Want?
But is this Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon something that Israel generally fears? Israel has for many decades now possessed hundreds of nuclear weapons, is not a signatory to the nuclear prohibition treaty, fully understands that even if Iran did make a genuine attempt to build a nuclear weapon it would take it at year to achieve this and that, even then, Iran’s one or two nuclear warheads would hardly be a deterrent against an enemy, supported by the US, that has hundreds of them and that would likely have plenty of opportunity to destroy Iran’s weapons before there was any possibility of them actually being deployed.
No, of course Israel’s hostility to Iran has virtually nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
We can speculate as to what Israel’s real fear is. I would suggest, fundamentally, that Israel is frightened by a shi’ite Islamic country of some 90 million, as against Israel’s 10 million, which is highly unlikely any time soon to “normalize” relations with Israel as have so many of the Sunni Islamic nations in the region, bribed and coerced by Washington and Tel Aviv since Clinton’s Camp David initiative, and how Saudi Arabia would likely do so once the “embarrassment” of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians (mainly Sunni) has been tidied away under the cloak of complicit Western mainstream mediaa and Israeli’s Hasbara propaganda now being geared up for a major offensive against Western humanitarian sympathies.
Israel never wants to see a repeat of the success of the Shah of Persia, inserted into power after the US/UK illegal overthrow of the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 (to preserve UK profiteering on the back of Iranian oil, and to give the US access to the same booty), became Washington’s golden boy in the Middle East and showered with almost every conceivable Western weapon. Because Israel is determined to be Number One. The Iranian Isamic revolution of 1979, was Israel’s ticket to basking in the flow of Washington approval and Washington beneficence. It never wants that to end, particularly as it has established effective levers of control over Washington.
Still Plugging for War
In his broadcast today, veteran London-based, UK-Greek analyst Alexander Mercouris picks up on a recent Axios story of how Jake Sullivan recently discussed with President Biden the US options for bombing Iran (which, of course, poses absolutely no threat whatsoever to the US), and considers it a possibility, even now, that the exiting, neocon-controlled, Biden administration will bomb Iran in its final weeks - but before January 17th - in order to forestall the possibility that the “threat” of Iran would be seen to evaporate once the Russian agreement with Iran comes into force (including as it does a mutual security dimension).
Mercouris speculates that this could actually obstruct Russia’s signing of the agreement if Iran was actually at war on January 17th (I think this is theoretically possible, but I doubt it is probable), and that a US or Israeli or joint US-Israeli attack would actually force Iran to decide to go nuclear (assuming the regime survived such an attack, which seems likely). Further, a US attack might persuade Russia that it should, after all, and despite its recent protestations to the contrary, supply Iran with every kind of weapon.
And it could also create even more difficulties for the incoming Trump administration in addition to those that the Biden cabal have already come up with.
Foremost amongst these things that the Biden cabal has already devised in their attempt to undermine Trump, yet again, is the Biden escalation of the war against Ukraine.
The Spectrum of Biden Escalation
This process of escalation has taken the form, principally of:
* green-lighting the use of medium-range missiles on targets inside the “old” Russia;
*continuing support for the illegal Zelenskiy administration;
*sending of yet more weapons to Ukraine by way of Poland’s Gdansk port, which has reportedly just received a load of over a thousand armored vehicles for dispatch to Ukraine;
*assassination of the one Russian general who was probably the most informed as to the ring of US biological warfare labs arraigned along East European borders with Russia;
*attempted fomenting of color revolution and similar anti-Russian political developments in Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldava, and further afield even, in South Korea (where the impeached President Yoon has managed to resist orders for his arrest);
*accusations, likely false, that Russian and Chinese ships have been sabotaging cables in the Baltic Sea between Estonia and Finland (possibly a pretext for the blockading of Saint Petersburg;
*sabotaging of Russian-related cargo ships and tankers suspected of being part of Russia’s shadow fleet that operates to distribute Russian oil and gas beyond the reach of Western sanctions;
*support for Ukraine’s cessation of the supply of Russian gas to Europe, which will affect, most immediately, Russian allies Slovakia and Transnistria (Transnistria is already being hit by rolling blackouts and may be forced to surrender to Moldova);
*imposing a new raft of sanctions on Russia’s remaining trade of oil and gas, whether by ship, pipeline or LNG;
*measures taken by Ukraine under pressure from the US to begin the medical testing of 18-24 year old Ukrainian males in anticipation of a decision by the RADA in early February for the formal mobilization of this age cohort that will yield a new force of 300,000 soldiers that Ukraine will have trained ready for deployment by May.
Upcoming New Invasion of Russian Territory
The most recent demonstration of this cacophany of Bidenesque warmongering is in evidence today in the form of indications of a new Ukrainian offensive in the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration in Ukraine’s use of Western missiles against targets on Russia’s northern border of Ukraine, in the Bryansk and Belgorod regions of Russia and targets along the Russian border with the Chernokiv and Sumy regions. The Russian MoD says that all missiles were shot down and no damage has resulted. There is no video evidence yet to show otherwise.
Ukraine is reported to be the source of many explosions well east of the contested city of Vovchansk, and this may indicate the most likely area of upcoming Ukrainian ingress into Russian territory. There are further indications of massive Ukrainian troop concentrations standing in readiness for an order, and of intensification of Ukrainian shelling and FPV droning in the borderlands, including an attack on a Russian missile production facility in Bryansk. Additionally, Dima of the Military Summary Channel has referred twice in the past 24 hours to at least three explosions heard in the vicinity of Saint Petersburg.
Russia, meanwhile, has attacked a concentration of Ukrainian forces in the Sumy area, using Iskander missiles, with the result that Ukraine lost one hundred soldiers and many dozens of fighting vehicles. Further, Ukrainian sources reported that they had witnessed a new kind of Russian missile deployed in the Chernikov area that travelled at a speed of 8,000 kilometers an hour and which appeared and disappeared. A large Russian convoy has been reported in motion towards to the regions of Bryansk and Belgorod.
Terror Regime in Syria
Ukraine is also establishing links with new HTS-controlled system of government in Damascus. The HTS presence in Syria should be considered a hybrid Turkish-Jihadist achievement, with some participation by the US and by Israel. Turkey has been stealing assets from Syria for years from its base in Idlib.
The historical development of HTS owes much to the work of the CIA, and to the British who pumped weapons to the diverse movements of the anti-Assad, pro-Jihadi opposition from 2011 onwards that threatened the genocide of the otherwise highly secular, cross-sectarian followers of the philosophy of the Alawites, and set up anticipatory parellel government infrastructures, including a police force, the White Helmets and pro-Jolani media (see my book Conflict Propaganda in Syria: Narrative Battles, published in 2022 by Routledge).
Israeli War on Syria
Despite its proclamations of wanting peace with all its neighbors, including Israel, the HTS continues on a terrorist offensive against the country’s minorities, while converting the nation’s school curriculum from a pro-nationalist and secularist to a pro-Sunni ideology, while meeting and greeting a series of representatives from the collective West and the Arab world, and yet whose nation - from the south to the north, including Damascus and Aleppo - is being devastated by Israeli bombing of military facilities.
These would be facilities, inherited, certainly, from Assad’s Syrian Arab Army and from its key allies, Russia and Iran, but also constituting the necessary means for the new State to defend itself. Israel is moving with greater force through southern Syria, has established control over six dams that constitute the major sources of water for Syria and 40% of the water for Jordan, and is establishing ties with the Kurdish SDF.
Greater Israeli Jubilation
Zionist supporters of Netanyahu (representing some 30% of Israeli citizens) are deliriously celebrating the unexpected emergence of the Zionist wet-dream of a “greater Israel.”
But the real Israel is looking surprisingly fragile. It has not demolished Hamas, which is recruiting faster than Israel can kill, and it has not demolished Hezbollah, explaining why Israelis are still for the most part reluctant to return to northern Israel and why Israel will continue to be over-extended in southern Lebanon even beyond the 60 day limit imposed by the recent ceasefire agreement between the Lebanese government, Israel and Hezbollah.
The Israeli economy is shattered. It has suffered an exodus of many of its most skilled and educated citizens who will not quickly want to return. Its armed forces are showing signs of depletion, desertion, demoralization and indiscipline.
A Fragmented Syria
Is it any wonder that the HTS wants Russia to stay around and wants Iran to remain friendly, since these are still the counterparts to foreign invasion over and above the many foreign invasions that have already taken place. There are signs of an emerging but internally self-contradictory Turkish-HTS-Sunni Syria based in Damascus at war with a Turkish-US-Israeli-Kurdish Syria, with Russia and Iran present in divers ways as buffers against the outbreak of total war.
For all the enthusiasm of Western visitors to Damascus for their new partnership with a Sunni Jihadist movement that has illegally, and undemocratically, taken power over a sovereign country, how strange it is to find the US so outraged with what the FBI claims was an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New Orleans.
This thought inspired the three participants of a discussion yesterday on Judging Freedom between host Judge Napolitano, and former CIA analysists Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, to express utter skepticism with anything that the FBI has to say about anything (given its recent history of instigating the Russiagate hoax for the Democrats, and recruiting dummies for FBI-organized acts of domestic terrorism, amongst other scandals) and to raise many unanswered questions both about the Bourbon Street attack and about the Trump Tower hotel attack in Las Vegas.
Both acts of terrorism were said to have involved US army vets. One was said to be a Jihadist (evidence of this surprisingly furnished for the public benefit by a known pro-Israeli broadcaster inappropriately allowed access to a crime scene at the suspect’s home to reveal Korans and ISIS insignia). The person in question was unlikely to have received sufficient training to assemble the two anti-personnel devices found in his vehicle. The other was said to be a Vet with experience of drone warfare in Ukraine but whose explosive devices were declared amateurish.
Interesting to hear such a discussion from a social medium with an audience of half a million that regularly features former but now enlightened senior members of the National Security State who are even prepared to express publicly their doubts about official narratives of the JFK and RFK assassinations and 9/11.