I ended Is it to be war on Iran? Part 3 – meant to be the last of three – by endorsing the view of Nel Bonilla that the billion dollar question has shifted from “will it be full-on war or Trump climb-down?” to “will it be full-on war or attrition, blockade and assorted skullduggery”; with that ‘beautiful armada’ on the one hand, US assets in the region on the other, doing duty as the most costly trip-wire in military history?
(An argument Nel does not weigh is that in times of turbulence, with the geostrategic case for war evenly balanced with that against it, maverick factors may tip things one way or the other. Given an Israel longing to Take Out Iran and sensing a now or never constellation of factors, 1 yesterday’s post On Israel, Epstein and the elephant suggests one such tipping point. Should the rogue state have sufficient kompromat on Trump, that factor alone – or rather, in tandem with deep state elements either fully onboard with Team Bibi else similarly honey-trapped by Isle of Epstein footage – may outweigh Trump’s aversions, MAGA be damned, to all out war.)
In any event an assumption shared by all shades of anti-imperialist opinion, whatever else may divide them, is that neither China nor Russia can allow Iran to fall, and both will do all they can to prevent that outcome. 2
Among other reasons, such as Iran being a major BRICS member whose fall to the US would set a devastating precedent, half of China’s oil imports pass through the choke point of the Hormuz Strait at Bandar Abbas, while Iran is vital to New Silk Road, one of whose benefits will be immunity to blockade at other choke points like Malacca by US maritime supremacy. Vital too to north-south routes linking Russia to the Persian Gulf and West Asia.
That assumption is disputed in a post today by Andrew Korybko. As usual with this man, I have to rise heroically above my ire at his neo-Westphalian blindness to class and empire, his smug sideswipes at “the Alt-media community” and toughest of all his tortuous syntax, to make room for the fact he just might be right.
I deem that unlikely though. Methinks he overstates Moscow and Beijing caution …
Putin [is] neither the monster, madman, nor mastermind that his foes and friends respectively perceive him as being. Putin is the consummate pragmatist, and that’s why he’ll never risk World War III for any other country’s sake and will only do it for Russia’s sake if he truly feels that he has no choice … It’s the same for China …
… while underestimating Iran’s pivotal importance to both, hence failing to appreciate that the time may have arrived when what he calls caution has in truth become the least safe option for either.
Time – and probably not that much of the stuff – will tell.
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- On the ‘push’ side for Israel are on the one hand Iran’s military capabilities, and those of her superpower allies, growing ever stronger; on the other a demographic time bomb of waning support by younger Americans, Jews included, for Israel. On the ‘pull’ side it may never again have so pliant a US presidency as the Trump administration.
- In respect of Russian assistance to Iran, see this YouTube podcast on the significance of the now delivered and unfettered S400 air defence system and, by the same presenter, this one on China’s input. In each a robotically flawless delivery denotes AI. This could be spit and polish, or to further some sinister aim beyond my ken. (I’ll post asap on AI under capitalism.) More substantively, talk of the criminality last June having seen the aggressor fly unchallenged in Iranian skies, and ending in Iran’s humiliation, cannot go uncontested, even when the aim is to show the game-changing nature of Sino-Russian aid. One, there is no evidence of US-Israeli planes in Iranian skies after the first few hours. The speed of recovery, of defence systems outed by electronic jamming, forced subsequent strikes to be fired from Arab or empire-pliant Caucasian airspace, constraining range and accuracy. Two, the video is oddly silent on the fact of Israel, its shields penetrated and US supplied Patriot missiles depleted, agreeing to a ceasefire after just twelve days. But such flaws are easily factored in and allowed for, making both videos well worth the viewing.