James Bond Tomfoolery

Hopeless Ceasefire Proposals

The New York Times today reports that Hamas is still considering the latest proposal for a 60-day ceasefire in the Gaza war and the release of hostages. Its major concern is whether there are sufficient guarantees that there will eventually be a permanent ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel wants only a temporary ceasefire for the dismantling of Hamas’s military wing and government.

The current proposal, which US President Donald Trump announced two days ago, when he also claimed that he had secured the agreement of Israel, would involve the release of 10 living hostages still held in Gaza and the return of 18 hostages’ bodies, in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners. The US, Qatar and Egypt would “ensure serious negotiations” to end the war during the ceasefire. The release of the hostages and the return of the bodies would be staggered over five stages during the 60-day truce. Israel would have to pull back some or all troops deployed in Gaza under the proposed deal.

I see major problems. Most important of these is the fact that two parties to these talks, the US and Israel, have zero credibility. US credibility has been shot to pieces in multiple ways: it poses as a “mediator” when it is in fact a 100% culpable participant in the conflict by providing almost all of Israel’s arms and has supported Israeli aggression in almost every conceivable way.

Secondly, in other concurrent conflicts such as that between Israel and Iran, the US has shown itself a deeply duplicitous “negotiator,” supporting an unprovoked attack on Iran by Israel that occurred just days before negotiations were due to be resumed. Israel has zero credibility because it is responsible for the failure of the last ceasefire and Netanyahu, like Trump, changes position almost every day. Where one cannot depend on the interlocutor to remain faithful to its position for more than a day, there cannot be serious negotiation.

Further, Trump has previously talked about the US taking control of Gaza, emptying it of Palestinians (a war crime) so that the strip can be redeveloped under US auspices. In other words, the US has indicated an interest in exploiting the Gaza tragedy for profit. As for the supposed partner mediators, Qatar and Egypt, both are severely compromised: Egypt, which arguably has had a moral responsibility (along with others) for forcing Israel, through war if necessary, to allow justice to the Palestinians in line with UN resolutions for a Palestinian state, is panicked by the fear of having to deal with the crisis that will arise if and when almost two million starving Palestinians are pushed out into the Sinai.

Qatar is compromised by its role in instigating a foreign-backed civil war in Syria for ten years during which time Qatari money backed extremist Sunni militia insurrectionists and, although Assad ultimately defeted them, Syria fell to severe UN sanctions and an unprovoked Turkish-Jihadi-Israeli invasion that has put into power a former Al Qaeda and ISIS militant whom President Trump this week blessed with the promise of a lifting of the crippling Ceasar Act sanctions that for five or more years have inflicted further massive pain and suffering on the Syrian people.

The proposed ceasefire, in which I regret to say I see no hope whatsoever, is being presented as though Israel bears no responsibility for a genocide that every day murders dozens if not hundreds of innocent people, and as though Israel’s violence in Gaza is unrelated to the concurrent violence of its killings and displacements in the West Bank, and in Southern Lebanon (where Israel occupies the south of Lebanon south of the Litani, and continues to kill what it claims are members of Hezbollah, even as the US pressures the Lebanese government into disarming Hezbollah without the prior commitment of Israel to cease its attacks) while in Syria, Israel continues to occupy the Golan Heights and southern Syria, may collaborate in the positioning of US troops in the south, and appears to be supporting a movement towards Kurdish independence as a means of curtailing Turkish influence.

Slippery Erd and the New Ottomans

Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkiye, Slippery Erd, heads the only BRICS partner (not a member) that is also a member of NATO; he balances his delicate pro-Russian responsibility to maintain neutrality of passage from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and host “peace” negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, while fatally striking Russian interests in Assad’s Syria and craving US F-35s in addition to its Sukhoi-35s; condemns the Israeli genocide, and claims to have shut down trade with Israel, while continuing to conduct the flow of oil to Israel, much of which comes from Azerbaijan, an Israeli ally and a Turkman nation; he pretends to favor Iran but his ally, Azerbaijan allows Israel to attack Iran from Azerbaijan (see below), is currently in a feud with Russia over mutual arrests, and has just announced a deal with Armenia and Turkiye over the Zangezur corridor, one which offers a final solution on Nagorny-Karabakh.

(Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian late last week called for an investigation into whether Azerbaijan’s airspace had been used by Israeli drones as they flew missions to attack Iran during their recent conflict, asking Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev during a call on June 26 to “investigate and verify” reports that Israeli drones, including micro-drones, may have entered Iranian air space via Azerbaijani territory. Aliyev has denied the claims and insisted that his government would not allow Azerbaijan’s territory to be used against Iran.).

The Iranian Factor

And this brings us back to the Israeli-Iranian 12-day war and its broader geopolitical significance if, as Pepe Escobar (currently reporting on the BRICS summit in Rio) has claimed recently, that the real reason for the war is not about Iran’s enrichment of uranium, is not even about regime change, so much as it is about Iran’s central position both to the east-to-west Silk Road from China and the north-south corridor that Russia and Iran are constructing to provide a bridge from the Indian Ocean to the Arctic. Undermining or, indeed, seizing control over this central node, working in partnership perhaps with a potential Turkmen alternative route, could enable Washington to challenge the expansion of the BRICS which is the world’s most likely route to a sinking of dollar hegemony.

The Nuclear Program

Iran, as we have seen, remains unvanquished by the 12-day war but also, in view of the likelihood that it still retains possession of 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% which, if further enriched to 90+%, would allow the construction of up to 12 nuclear warheads, remains vulnerable to the strong possibility of a further war of aggression from Israel if and when Israel has burnished its stockpiles of missiles and Patriots (which the US, now withdrawing aid from Ukraine, may now be better able to provide).

Iran may still have plenty of missiles, but it does look like it badly needs better air defenses, especially in view of the report that Russia never did actually provide S-400 systems as originally thought last fall. Another mooted reason for the timing of Israel’s attack is that Israel’s attack on Iran in the fall of 2024 was, despite skepticism on this point, more successful than many believed and that Israel had been advised that Iran would need to the end of this year, 2025, to restore its air defense capability. So Israel struck Iran at a time when it knew that Iran was still vulnerable in this regard.

It is being assumed by many commentators that Russia and China will now act quickly to provide Iran with better air defense and other, comparable aid. But we have learned from Putin that Iran greatly values its independence and is extremely cautious lest it finds itself entrapped into new dependencies on account of the world’s “nuclear hierarchy.” Iran appears, in the terms of the special partnership agreement that it very recently signed with Russia, to have promised that it will not develop a nuclear weapon but it seems inconceivable that, either then or now, the voices in Iran favoring an independent Iranian weapon do not remain powerful and influential.

Writing last fall, Scott Ritter expressed his conviction that Iran was indeed (and, Ritter now says, is still) only days away from having a nuclear weapon, waiting only on the order of the Supreme Leader that would be needed to enable this to happen (the Supreme Leader still sticking to his fatwa against the use of nuclear weapons).

This view, by the way, has not been supported by US intelligence, and was denied by the DNI chief Tulsi Gabbard as recently as March. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has also confirmed this position - but carefully too late to prevent the Israeli and US attacks for which Grossi himself had provided a false pretext by issuing, the day before Israel struck, a badly insufficient and out of date report that the E3 members of the IAEA board were then able to use to falsely claim Iran was out of compliance with IAEA inspectors.

Gabbard herself had also changed her position in Trump’s favor between March and just days before the Israeli attack. This may have been linked to a Congressional briefing at which Secretary of State Mark Rubio presided and which was also mentioned by Republican Senator of Louisiana, John Kennedy. This also made the claim of Iran only “being days away.” Since this could not have been a formal US intelligence briefing, the chances that it was based on Israeli “intelligence” are high.

As for Rafael Grossi he maintains that the Israeli and US strikes notwithstanding, the damage has only held Iran back by a matter of months from nuclear weapon capability. I note with interest that Grossi has previously held the position of Chief of Cabinet at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague from 2002 to 2007, another tortured and compromised UN agency that in Grossi’s day witnessed the kicking out by John Bolton of the OPCW’s first director general, the Brazilian diplomat Jose Bustani. At The Hague, Bolton threatened Bustani and his children if he did not play ball with the false US allegations against Iraq of being in possession of WMD. Bustani was soon replaced by the more pliable Rogelio Pfirter.

So we should assume both that Iranian capability is high - even if may doubt the likelihood that it would be activated - and that Iran remains just as vulnerable to Israeli and US aggression as it was back in early June.

If Iran wants both to be both safe and to be independent, then there is real pressure on Iran to greenlight the nuclear option. But it would have to do so knowing that even if it used a nuclear weapon it would be severely outmatched in terms of second strike capability. Iran presumably does not want to be annihilated in a retaliatory strike. And since it can seek Russian help, presumably, only on the premise that it will not greenlight the nuclear option, then the chances are that - however reluctant Iran has been up to this point to jeopardize its geopolitical independence - it will seek the protection of Russia’s nuclear umbrella, and the benefits of Russian S-400s and Russian Sukhoi-35s and 37s. Likewise with China and Chinese Chengdu J 10s.

The Afghan Factor

In the meantime there are other sources of concern when assessing Iranian security. Multiple reports suggest that in the light of Israel’s attempted decapitation strike of June 12, authorities moved (finally!) to suppress Mossad and other Israeli-inflected espionage and sabotage sleeping cells and networks in Iran. Some reports say that 900 were picked up and 200 executed. We know that a disproportionate number of these were from amongst the very sizable number of undocumented Afghan refugees in Iran, many tens of thousands of whom have now been deported back to Afghanistan. Some of the refugees were Afghani Shi’a, possibly Hararis from central Afghanistan, who had been encouraged to migrate to Iran as recently as a year ago.

It would seem to me inevitable that these massive displacements of people are potentially if not actually very disruptive both for areas of Iran and also for Afghanistan which has barely been able to cope with the mass expulsion of Pashtun Afghanis from Pakistan borderlands in 2023. Furthermore, a rapid dismantling of espionage networks in circumstances such as these likely invites all kinds of error and abuse which may backfire, causing dangerous levels of distrust that can be destabilizing.

In addition to the Afghan factor I have also alluded to the dual games that are possibly being played by Azerbaijan against both Russian and Iranian interests and in a way that may be solidifying a Turkmen influence from Turkey through Azerbaijan and onward through Myanmar in the direction of the Uighers in western China.

The James Bond Factor

These are conditions that constitute potential advantages for traditional opponents to Iran including, of course, British intelligence which has been meddling around in Iran from even before 1953 when the British and the US collaborated to covertly overthrow a great and elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh.

An article by Martin Williams for Declassified relates much of this history of British poison. In 1983, Williams claims, British intelligence provided Khomeini with a list of Iranians allegedly working for the Soviets as a result of which 1,000 were arrested and 200 executed. (I am surprised by the late date which Williams cites because it seems to me that what was in effect a civil war between the Islamists of the new revolution and the MEK or MEK-styled leftists who had at first been partners in that revolution while seeking a more liberal interpretation of Islam, and who were being hunted down even before 1983, albeit not extinguished until a massacre in 1988, the same year as the Iran-Iraq war ended. The MEK has since been converted into some very strange kind of western intelligence cutout.

More recently, British intelligence, through the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) in GCHQ, began in 2009-2011 to target the Iranian population generally in campaigns to discredit Iranian leadership and its nuclear energy program, seeking to disrupt the program, and to “discredit, delay, deny, degrade and deter” by such means as YouTube videos; online aliases, spoof emails and text messages and online resources and trade sites; efforts to foment dissent and revolution while also collecting information about dissenters.

The head of M16 in 2012, Sir John Sawers boasted that Britain had prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons and had enabled a regime of sanctions to suppress Iran’s economy. From 2020, Iran has also been the main target of the National Cyber Force set up in a partnership between GCHQ and the UK Ministry of Defence.

From recent investigations by Kit Klarenberg we have learned of the association of MI6’ Nicholas Langman with both the OPCW and the IAEA. Langman had taken credit for helping develop the sanctions regime against Iran in the period 2010-2012, and helping create international hostility towards Iran generally and who, according to Stephen Dorril, had previously been involved in efforts to suppress information or public discussion about intelligence involvements in the death of Princess Diana and with the 7/7 bombings in Britain in 2005. Langman had headed the UK Foreign Office’s Iran Department in 2006-2008 and went on to the Counter-Proliferation Center where he had the opportunity to influence the IAEA and other UN-affiliated organizations to foment a campaign of global hostility towards Iran.