Startling Changes of Perspective (Update 3)

There have been a number of important developments over the past 24 hours. Let me summarize these, first of all, and, in the time I have today (under time pressure as always), flesh them out as best I can. In “fleshing them out” I shall likely not proceed in the same order as my summary points are presented below. I will note that amongst the most prominent of physcial actions that have occurred in the past few hours is an Israeli attack on the inactive Iranian nuclear reactor at Arak, justified on the grounds that this will stop Iran from re-activating it (or, rather, activating it for the first time); and an Iranian call for the evacuation of Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, in advance of a forthcoming Iranian assault. Iran claims to have fired 100 drones into Israel during the last day. An alleged Iranian attack on an Israeli hospital turns out to be disinformation: the actual target was a military facility close to a hospital.

Perhaps most importantly, in the light of my most recent previous post, there are signs of a stronger, more proactive move of support for Iran from China, especially, and from Russia (apparenty Iranian foreign minister Araghchi prefers China to be a mediator for Iran over Russia). Russia has sent a senior military official for advisory purposes to Tehran.

Secondly, there are some growing doubts as to the accuracy of Israeli and US claims that Israel controls the skies over Tehran. This comes from Simplicius the Thinker whose assessment is that there is only one unambiguous case so far of a direct hit on Tehran by an Israeli fighter or bomber and most other hits are from long distance missiles perhaps fired from Iraq or Syria, or drones. It does seem, however, on the basis of a recent statement by Putin that despite widespread rumors to the contrary in the fall of 2024 to the effect that Russia had supplied Tehran with many S400 air defense systems, this was not actually the case.

Thirdly, the situation with respect to Iranian missile launchers is perhaps not so dire as might have seemed to be the case yesterday (with replacements possibly coming from China and Russia) and many of the missiles are launched from silos while, fourthly, there are persistent indications that Israel will soon run out of missiles. A senior Israeli source told antiwar.com that on Friday Israel was only able to down 65% of Iranian missiles which he said were growing more sophisticated and giving shorter warnings. Also, Professor Marandi says that Iranian missiles have bigger warheads. Iranian missiles include hypersonic that the US and Israel have much greater difficulty firing down.

Fifthly, while the US and Israel have repeatedly talked about their interest in assassinating the Supreme Leader (a foolish quest, totally illegal of course and typically gangsterish, as this in itself most assuredly would NOT bring about regime change in Iran), President Trump, who has said that he has signed off on relevant attack plans, is now saying he will hold off from “direct” US participation for up to two more weeks because, apparently, he has more hope for negotiations (which were due to continue in Geneva on Friday between the E3 and Iran within a climate of increasing European resistancence, including from Starmer and Macron, and even from Hungarian P.M. Viktor Orban, to US threats to participate directly in the conflict) can be successful, while there is plenty of evidence in the US that public opinion does not support this measure (greater US involvement in the war) and that Trump’s MAGA basis is split, with prominent foundational members of the MAGA movement such as Tucker Carlson and Steven Bannon coming out in strong opposition to another US-instigated “forever war.”

A claim from CIA director John Ratcliffe that supports ideas long-discredited by the US intelligence community and by IAEA, and again most recently by US DIA Tulsi Gabbard, to the effect that Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear bomb appears to be yet one more egregious example of the politicization of intelligence in the US (reminiscent of the behavior of George Tenet’s support for the Bush Jnr era’s claims of WMD in Iraq)

On the topic of assassinations I hold it highly likely that the President Peseshkian’s predecessor, Raisi, was assassinated - probably by Mossad, perhaps by the CIA or MI6.

Both sides are tightening up on public communication and censorship. Nevertheless, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told Judge Napolitano today that his contacts tell him that Israel is “on fire,” with many of the country’s richest leaving the country on yachts. In Iran there are internal instances of sabotage and terror conducted by Israeli assets. These include recruits from Afghans in Iran (they constitute a sizable minority) and Iran is picking many of these up.

What would be the nature of more direct US involvement in the war? There are many senior-level voices that express doubt as to the likely success of MOABs for the purpose of taking out deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities. One of these is that of MIT/Stanford professor emeritus Ted Postol (a cousin of mine through marriage, I am pleased to say) who is highly skeptical that MOABs can achieve the necessary depth. Lt. Col Wilkerson equally, says a MOAB (the US only has about 20 of these by the way) May “shakes some windows.”

An additional measure, involving the dropping of one MOAB after another at exactly the same target would be particularly challenging to achieve. Further, even if a MOAB succeeded, say, at Fordow, we need to bear in mind Khameini’s warning that Iran has comparable facilities buried in hundreds of such sites.

In short, the MOAB route could end up further embarrassing the US (which has in effect just lost a war to Yemen, having a little while back lost a war to Afghanistan, in a long line of losses going back to Vietnam and Korea - none of these being counted as amongst the most technologically sophisticated civilizations).

Besides, how is MOAB going to help, given that the real purpose of this war has nothing whatsover to do with nuclear enrichment but with regime change. Would a successful MOAB attack bring about regime change of itself? No, it wouldn’t.

A Pentagon unit (DTRA) counsels that only a nuclear bomb will be sufficient to take out Fordow. If Trump goes down that road he risks green-lighting Russian tactical nukes in Ukraine and elsewhere. A similar argument pertains to the normalization of assassination as a tool of war.

Would an attempt on the life of the Supreme Leader bring about a regime change? No, because the political system of Iran is far too complex. We can think of it as being a vibrant democracy in a system that is capped by the privileged influence of the mullahs, perhaps comparable to - but actually more benign in my view - the US system of democracy that seems in many respects to be totally overridden by an out-of-control military-industrial complex, a lobby complex and plutocrats, a far more sinister crowd than humble Shi’a clerics.

So, last night I was bemoaning the evidence of a strong, unambiguously supportive stance by Russia and China that would convey to the world their resolve that they would not allow this war crime to pass and that they would extend to Iran, their partner in the BRICS, every help it needs in order to survive and prosper, and I was also casting doubt on the efficacy of the BRICS, which is unable or unwilling to express a view on events that are tearing the world apart and whose leaders seem fearfully over-cautious about being bold.

So I am glad to say that I have to take some of this back. First of all, I should note that there was a telephone call yesterday between President Putin and Chairman Xi Jinping. This lasted about an hour and the leaders spent most of their time talking about Iran. They have issued a statement to the effect that both countries are united behind the view that the way to resolve the conflict between Iran and Israel is through diplomatic means.

Now, I am concerned that the wording of the statement seems to me to fall into the trap of legitimizing the lie that this is just about Israel versus Iran, which of course it is not - it is about the US war against the rest of the world for the maintenance of US hegemony through the use, in this instance, of Israel-as-proxy, (which does not mean that the proxy, the “tail,” is not also wagging the dog). And it seems to give legitimacy to the lie that the real issue is about nuclear enrichment and to the lie that Iran remotely constitutes a nuclear “threat” to the region when it is the humungus, inhuman bully, Israel, that is the threat and when the real issue, as I have just said, is about US global supremacy through regional Israeli supremacy.

But we should also note that the Russian-Chinese statement does not preclude hard (i.e.weapons) support for Iran.

At this point I should throw in the obvious observation that Iran is important in this context not because it may become a nuclear weapons power - on that we shall just have to wait and see, but no evidence of it so far - but because Iran sits on one of the world’s most important, perhaps THE most important global concentration of oil and gas wealth. By controlling Iran, installing a Western-friendly puppet regime, the US (which does not itself need much oil from Iran) may think it can control China, which is a major user of Iranian energy. And China, as Trump and the neocons have been parrotting for decades, is the real adversary that the US has to stop and overcome.

Now, the Moscow-Beijing statement is proactive in the sense that both countries agree to mobilize their respective departments of state to resolve the problem. A call between Putin and Erdogan of Turkey the day before came to a similar conclusion.

There are reports today from Dima of the Military Summary Channel, citing CIG/Telegram/Counter Int, that China has two electronic surveillance ships (855 and 815A) in the Gulf, their purpose being to gather intelligence of Israeli drone and missile launches and to give this to Iran.

AFP reports that China has had conversations with Oman, seeking to pressure Oman into closing its air-space to the US and Western nations, as well as China talking with Pakistan so that Pakistan can help close off its south western maritime border to Israeli, US and Western planes and ships, in this way constructing as much western traffic as possible into the Gulf, where it will be highly vulnerable either to direct hits or to Iranian measures designed to close the Strait of Hormuz (the US has already evacuated its navy and personnel from Qatar and Bahrein).

Professor Marandi, speaking to Glenn Diesen from the PressTV studios in Tehran this morning believes that such hits, coupled with Iranian missile strikes on US bases in the region, as well as strikes on neighboring oil and gas fields, could be a crippling blow to international trade, even pushing much of the world back into a pre-oil era.

China has also been talking to General al-Sisi of Egypt, trying to apply pressure on Egypt to control the passage of certain (Western war)ships through the Suez canal - a measure that would contravene a treaty of 1888 except in circumstances in which the security of the canal itself was at stake.

The threat of nuclear support to Iran from Pakistan also makes more sense when China is factored in: Chinese fighter jets to Pakistan in its recent skirmish with India over Kashmir were critical to Pakistan’s relative success and Pakistan may need to pay back a favor. Netanyahu’s recent call for regime change in Islamabad will doubtless fire Pakistani enthusiasm for an end to Israel. But Lt. Col Wilkerson suspects that Pakistan’s influential ISI is more committed to Saudi Arabi, which has given it $20 billion, than to Iran.

There is also the question of possible support from North Korea.

In the meantime there is growing consensus among analysts that Israel is lacking missiles and may soon run out. The Iranian waves of drone and missile attacks are depleting Israeli interceptors. Iran has far many more missiles than Israel, to all accounts. Israel claims to have destroyed one half of Iranian missile launchers which, in the light of some assessments, would represent quite good news about its remaining capability. But it is entirely possible that there has been a great deal of exaggeration about Israel’s successes in hitting or in other ways disabling Iranian launchers, anyway.

There are continuing reports of the arrival of Chinese cargo ships to Iran that are delivering weapons, including air defense systems.

As for Russian tardiness in responding to the crisis, Putin himself explains that in making progress towards the recent and now agreed strategic partnership between the two countries (Iran and Russia) he found the Iranians were difficult to negotiate with, that it was Iran that said it did not want a mutual defense clause, and that Iran was resistant to a program of joint Russian-Iranian weapons production on Iranian soil, and, finally, that Russia has not received a request from Iran for help with more weapons. I can see that Iran has many historical reasons for suspicion of Russia (essentially, Russia vied with Britain for control of Iran for over one hundred years), but I am not entirely satisfied with this account by Putin. A more likely explanation for Iranian vacillation is the initial naïveté of Pezeshkian who thought he could achieve some kind of deal with the West (he now thinks differently).