Shifting Fortunes in the Eastern Mediterranean, War Preparations in Europe
Iranian Gas Crisis
Providing evidence of what seems like a deterioring situation in Iran, the New York Times today runs an article on Iran’s current energy crisis (see Iranian Crisis) which certainly seems to detract from the image over recent months of Iran as a plausible threat to Israel, although it is not inconveivable that Iran’s public energy system is siloed off from its military system. The article stresses the weakness of energy supply to public institutions.
While Israeli attacks a month ago may have made the situation worse, other articles that I have seen suggest that the makings of the crisis is of longer duration than that. It does seem, on the basis of this source, that the crisis is growing worse, and constitutes one further reason, in addition to the fall of Assad in Syria, Israel’s encroachment into southern Syria, the anti-Iranian character of US President elect Donald Trump’s appointees, and what may now be greater Iranian insecurities about how far they can depend on help from Russia or China, why the entire geopolitical balance of the Middle East may be shifting, and shifting primarily in favor of the interests of the US, Turkey and Israel, although not necessarily in that order.
The Times reports that government offices in Iran are closed or operating at reduced hours, that schools and colleges have moved to online only, highways and shopping malls are in darkness, and that manufacturing has been brought to a near halt. To make matters even worse, the rial, has been in free fall last week, plunging to its lowest rate ever against the dollar.
The Times lists the causes of the crisis: sanctions, mismanagement, corruption, cheap prices, aging infrastructure, wasteful consumption, targeted attacks by Israel. As just indicated there has also been a weakening of Iran’s regional position as a result of the fall of Assad in Syria, and Israel’s crushing of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel blew up two gas pipelines in Iran as long ago as February. The government quietly tapped into emergency gas reserves to avoid service disruption to millions of people, but this has not been sufficiently replenished.
For most of last week, the whole of Iran was virtually shut down to save energy. 17 power plants had been completely taken off line by December 20th, and the rest were only partially operational. Natural gas accounts for about 70 percent of Iran’s sources of energy, yet the country’s gas deficit is 350 million cubic meters a day. The government has chosen to prioritize supply to residential over industrial users who have been told to brace for widespread power cuts that could last days or weeks, a move that could reduce Iranian manufacturing by up to 50%. But residential users are also impacted. Iran began enforcing two-hour scheduled daily power cuts to residential homes in November, but that did not suffice. The power cuts now happen more randomly and last longer.
A failing Iran is not good news for the BRICS.
Other Middle East
Yemen
While two of Iran’s allied militia - Hamas, in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have suffered severe setbacks in their respective territories - a third, the Houthis in Yemen, continue to threaten shipping in the Red Sea that they believe is carrying supplies to Israel. TeleSur reported today that the Houthis repelled a joint US/UK aerial attack that employed 8 missiles and seventeen drones, and brought down an FA-18.
Syria
The broad contours of the Syrian crisis remain much the same as they have been since the fall of Assad:
(1) the seizure of the formal machinery of state in Damascus by a Turkish proxy, HTS - a terrorist organization with whom western governments are in conversation and which they are in process of elevating to non-terrorist status;
(2) concentrations of remaining Syrian Army or pro-Assad militia positions along parts of the Mediterrean, especially Latakia;
(3) the continuing presence, so far, of Russia’s naval base in Tartus and its military base in Khmeimem, although Russia now says these serve a humanitarian rather than a military purpose, and it is anticipated by some commentators that Russia will soon leave Syria in preference to other potential bases in the eastern Mediterranean. Israel was reported to have subjected Tartus to significant bombing earlier last week;
(4) the movement of Turkish forces and proxies such as the SNA across the north and into otherwise Kurdish areas in the northeast, where there are also now up to 2,000 US soldiers in support of the Kurdish SDF for the purposes of maintaining possession of key Syrian oil and agricultural resources;
(5) Israel’s seizure of all the remaining Golan Heights that it did not previously occupy, and further movement north towards Damascus and eastwards to include Mount Hemron. Jonathan Cook considers that Syria’s fate lies largely in the hands of Israel, which faces in HTS an eager collaborator, and may introduce either a Gaza or a West Bank model of the future (direct Israeli control, or Israeli control through an indigenous proxy of the likes of the Palestinian Authority which is currently helping the Israeli genocide by suppressing Palestinian rebels in the West Bank).
US Role
The British Daily Telegraph has reported that the US had foreknowledge of the invasion of Syria by the Turkish-backed proxy HTS, and that the US helped another rebel group join the fight. This was the RCA (Revolutionary Commando Army), a US-funded militia based out of a US base in Al Tanf (where there were also prison camps for ISIS fighters and their supporters, who may have been recruited into this battle to fight alongside the RCA). In October, the US brought several other Sunni Muslim militia under the command of the RCA to create an auxiliary force of some 3,000 fighters. The RCA is said to now control 20% of Syrian territory.
The most immediate likelihood of major violence in the new Syria is between Turkish proxies (and the Turkish army) in its battle with the Kurds and, therefore, its potential battle with the Kurdish SDF and perhaps even directly with US forces. Russia, as we have seen, is staying quiet, at least for the moment, and Russia is maintaining diplomatic cordiality with HTS and Turkey. As many commentators acknowledge, the fortures of Turkey and Russia are deeply intertwined, however much damage Turkey may appear to have inflicted on Russian interests in Syria in the short term.
NATO’s War with Russia Over Ukraine
Oreshnik
In his broadcast for today December 22nd, Alexander Mercouris discusses the possibility, in a continuing context in which Ukraine refuses access to the site of the Yuzhmash factory in Dnipro following Russia’s Oreshnik attack on November 21, that images of the site provided after the incident by private satellite companies may have been altered to show much less damage than there actually was. Such evidence has been the basis of some expert comments to the effect that the main damage was to subterranean facilities, or that it was relatively slight, or that there had been no new damage at all (the site had been subject to previous Russian attacks). Other than image fakery of some kind, the other potential explanations - that the Oreshnik multi-warhead missile missed its target or that it carried only dummy warheads - seem highly unlikely. It also seems highly unlikely that if the attack had not been particularly impressive, Ukraine would not have celebrated this fact very publicly, or that Putin would risk exaggerating the weapon’s threat potential or lying about the attack itself. Suspicions of falsified satellite images are hardly new.
Preparing for World War Three
Of greater significance than all this is continuing evidence of Russian preparedness to fight World War Three. At his recent press conference, Putin said that “the army and navy are being re-equipped with up-to-date weapons and equipment at an accelerated pace. For example, the share of such weapons in the strategic nuclear forces has already reached 95%. Meanwhile, we have specified the fundamental principles for the use of nuclear weapons envisaged in the updated Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence. Let me stress once again, so that no one accuses us of trying to scare everyone with nuclear weapons: this is a policy of nuclear deterrence.”
On Dec. 16, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told an expanded meeting of his agency’s board that one of the priorities for the Russian armed forces is “ensuring full readiness for a possible military conflict with NATO in the next decade.”
On NATO’s side, Ahmed Adel recently writes how NATO is:
“Massively transferring military equipment from European countries to Poland, arming the country much more heavily than it armed the Ukrainians on the eve of the Russian special military operation. This is part of the Atlantic Alliance’s efforts to pressure and isolate Russia in Eastern Europe.
“The grouping of NATO forces on the borders of Russia and Belarus has been a systematic effort for years. With such actions, NATO, in the interim, wants to tie up as many Russian and Belarusian forces as possible on the borders, while in the near future, Poland is intended to be a staging point in case of any hot war with Russia.
“The exclave region of Kaliningrad, which has no land border with Russia proper but borders NATO countries Lithuania and Poland and has access to the Baltic Sea, is particularly at risk. Responding to this NATO threat, Russia and Belarus have increased their military group deployed along the borders of Poland and Lithuania.
“Russian tactical nuclear weapons have also been deployed in significant quantities in Belarus. The goal of deploying nuclear weapons is to show that Russia and Belarus are capable of causing irreparable damage to NATO, essentially meaning it is for deterrence. Therefore, if NATO is ready to risk a nuclear war, then it will not be Russia’s choice, which will only be left with the choice to respond”.
The Banderites
An interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko by Philippe Alcoy and Sasha Yaropolskaya for the journal Révolution Permanente, is carried today at Natylie’s Place (Ishchenko). He provides interesting evidence to support his thesis of a diminishing will among young Ukrainians to fight the war, and also discusses the role of the Banderites and the Communists.
Ishchenko argues that the Banderite movement in Ukraine is far more extreme than so-called extreme Right parties in Europe such as the party of Marine Le Pen in France. Many far right Ukrainian military units have ties to the Ukrainian military intelligence service, the GUR. The Ukrainian far right groups have more weapons than their western equivalents, are more often built around official military units, and rest their power less on parliamentary legitimacy and more on their capacity for mobilization and violence on the streets. The Azov battalion has become celebrated for war heroism, cheered at home and whitewashed in western media.
“Azov has grown, now forming two brigades – the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Azov Brigade of the National Guard. This is in addition to a special unit, the Kraken, which are subordinate to the GUR (military intelligence)...In the event of the disintegration of state institutions and a failing economy, the nationalists will have a good chance of consolidating their power because they are a very legitimate, very well-known, and militarized political force”.
Labor Movement and Communists
“The working class cannot play any role in the current situation. The labour movement in Ukraine was weak long before the war. The last really massive political strike was in 1993 among the miners of Donbass. They demanded autonomy for Donbass and closer relations with Russia, ironically. But even that strike was linked to the interests of the “red directors” of former Soviet enterprises who had a lot of power in the immediate post-Soviet years…
“For three decades, we have seen only small-scale strikes, usually limited to individual companies, at best to certain segments of the economy, and very rarely politicized…And so yes, since the current large-scale invasion, strikes are banned. The strikes that have taken place are probably informal strikes.
“The empowerment of the labour movement would require some economic growth so that workers are not laid off. This requires a successful reconstruction of the Ukrainian economy”.
“The Ukrainian left has always been very diverse.
“The largest left party in Ukraine, the Communist Party of Ukraine, supported the Russian invasion. The Communist Party of Ukraine was a very important party… until EuroMaidan… After EuroMaidan, it lost its electoral stronghold in Donbass and Crimea, as these territories were cut off from Kiev. The party also suffered repression due to the government’s “decommunization” policies – the party was suspended, and in 2022, it was permanently banned, as were a number of other so-called pro-Russian parties.
“At the same time, there were much smaller and younger left groups. They were always critical of the communists and integrated better with the democratic socialists and the liberal left in the West.
“There is also criticism of the ethno-nationalism coming from this left environment because it has become too difficult to ignore how Ukraine has changed in two years, with the spread of discrimination against Russian speakers and the regime’s ethnic assimilation policies. For example, Russian is no longer taught in Ukrainian schools, even as an option, even in massively Russian-speaking cities like Odessa, where probably 80-90% of even ethnic Ukrainian children speak Russian with their parents. A recently introduced bill could ban speaking any Russian in schools, not only in class with teachers, but also during breaks, in private conversations of students among themselves. The bill has already been approved by the Minister of Education.
“The third segment of the Ukrainian left is Marxist-Leninist, and is part of what I call the “neo-Soviet revival” that is happening in many post-Soviet countries. They are usually organized in kruzhki – literally ‘circles’. These are proto-political organizations, something more than just Marxist-Leninist reading groups. They are much more popular in Russia, where they are able to create YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers..”
Russian Economy
It is interesting how Western economists or economic analysts who like to gloat over what they see as the challenges to the Russian economy seem so blind to the weaknesses of their own economies. Excitement about Russian interests rates of 21%, introduced with the express purpose of containing inflationary pressure, should be tempered with acknowledgment of US credit card rates that currently average 24% or higher. Pressures on Russian debt (maybe approaching 15% of GDP) should be compared with those of the US (129%) or Japan (244%).
Trump wants the US out of Ukraine war and to that end is pushing European nations to increase the proportion of their GDP that they spend on NATO to more than 3%, not so that the US can better manage the unsustainable rate of growth of its debt, but so that the US can then invest more in its military build up against China in Taiwan (to which the outgoing Biden administration has just sent over a half a billion dollars of aid) and thus increase US debt (especially if it loses the wars that it initiates).