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Between Russia and Iran all is well that ends well

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | October 14, 2024 

 The mystery about the hastily-arranged ‘working meeting’ between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian at Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on Friday has only deepened after the event. This was their first-ever meeting. Putin didn’t even have the post-event presser. 

Why such a meeting was considered necessary becomes an intriguing thought, as the two leaders are to meet in Kazan within days on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit on October 22-24. 

Russia and Iran have had a difficult relationship through centuries. It still remains complicated, as the protracted negotiations over their strategic partnership treaty show. They have serious conflict of interests, as the controversial idea of Zangezur Corridor makes plain.

The two countries are potential competitors in Europe’s energy market. Both are tough practitioners of strategic autonomy. And their partnership in a future multipolar post-American century will have too many imponderables for an overall prediction.  

At Ashgabat, Pezeshkian pointedly suggested to Putin that the signing of their proposed strategic treaty should be speeded up. Putin is known to have approved the draft agreement as far back as September 18. What is holding back the signing ceremony begs an explanation. Pezeshkian proposed that the ceremony could take place in Kazan. But the Russian side is dragging its feet. 

Such ambivalence is reminiscent of the inordinate delay some years ago in Russia’s transfer of S-300 mobile surface-to-air missile system to Iran even after Tehran had made payment for the system. In sheer exasperation, Iran filed a $4 billion lawsuit against Russia’s defence export agency and embarked on the manufacture of its own long-range, mobile air defence system, the Bavar-373.

Russia was known to have come under US-Israeli pressure. Geopolitical considerations continue to prevail in Russia’s arms transfers with Iran. Pezeshkian, after his return to Tehran disclosed to the media that he had told Putin that Russia should “act more effectively in relation to the crimes committed by the Zionist regime in Gaza and Lebanon.” 

Apparently, the tense exchange at Ashgabat provoked a frank remark later by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov to Tass, the state news agency. Ryabkov said: “We are closely and anxiously following the events [in the Israel-Iran standoff], the risk of a large-scale conflict is indeed high. The tendency to escalate into a full-scale conflict is a real danger. We call on all parties to exercise restraint. We are in intensive dialogue with the countries of the region. And once again — a major war can be avoided, but everyone must show restraint.” [Emphasis added.] 

Indeed, Moscow is pragmatically continuing with its ‘neutrality,’ which of course does not help Tehran. At the same time, Putin reportedly did not take a call recently from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu! Presumably, Russian-Israeli cogitations have gone underground. 

That is understandable, as Russia keenly monitors the trajectory of the US-Israeli relationship. The paradox is, while powerful strikes on Iran’s infrastructure is impossible without US help and any Israeli plan to attack Iran would require preliminary discussions with the Pentagon, the Biden Administration is hoping with bated breath that Netanyahu keeps it in the loop about planned military actions.

On the other hand, the US’ willingness to assist in planning an offensive against Iran is also iffy. Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper quoted a Russian analyst Vladimir Frolov last week who used to be an employee of the Russian Embassy in the US: “I think Biden and company do not want an escalation [with Iran.] Israel’s relations with Biden are irreparably damaged. Netanyahu is just lying to him… Netanyahu is waiting for Donald Trump.” 

That makes it twosome. Like the duo in the Samuel Beckett existential play Waiting for Godot, Putin and Netanyahu are waiting for Trump who may not even come at the end of the day. Committing one hundred percent to Iran, therefore, becomes problematic for the Kremlin. Then, there is the angst in Moscow about the intentions of the Pezeshkian government, which has prioritised the resumption of negotiations with the West. 

Tehran noted carefully last week that the US officials went out of the way to affirm that despite tensions with Israel, Tehran is not ‘upgrading’ its nuclear doctrine. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in Washington added to the public remarks earlier in the week by CIA Director William Burns, who said the US had not seen any evidence of Iran’s Supreme Leader reversing his 2003 decision to suspend the [alleged] weaponisation programme. 

Interestingly, Nournews, which is identified with the establishment, commented that the US intelligence assessment “could help explain the US opposition to any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program in retaliation” — put differently, the US could still be keeping an eye on future nuclear negotiations with Iran. 

At the Ashgabat meeting, Pezeshkian told Putin that Iran and Russia have good mutual and complementary potentials and can help each other. Pezeshkian stressed that Iran’s ties with Russia are “sincere and strategic.” He added, “Our positions on global matters are much closer to each other than to those of many other countries.” 

According to the Kremlin transcript, Putin told Pezeshkian, “Our relationship with Iran is a priority for us, and it is developing very successfully… We are actively cooperating on the international arena, and often share close or even converging assessments of the ongoing developments.” 

However, on his part, Pezeshkian remarked that “we must ensure that our relations improve and become stronger moving forward. We have many opportunities to achieve this objective, and it is our duty to assist one another in these efforts. We share similar visions, and there are many similarities in terms of our respective international standing.” 

When it comes to the Ukraine conflict, Tehran’s stance is similar to India’s approach. Interestingly, in a post on X in the weekend, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi wrote that in his recent interactions in New York with top EU officials, he categorically told them “Iran-Russia military cooperation is not new; it has a history, long before the Ukrainian crisis began… I clearly said, and reiterate once again: we’ve NOT provided ballistic missiles to Russia. If Europe needs a case to appease Israel’s blackmail, better find another story.”

At the Ashgabat meeting, neither Putin nor Pezeshkian claimed a strategic convergence in their respective foreign policies. Pezeshkian, nonetheless, assured Putin that he looks forward to attending the upcoming BRICS summit and “we will do everything needed to approve and sign the documents on its agenda.”

October 14, 2024 - Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , ,

5 Comments »

  1. Interesting. Convoluted. My layman mind wonders why MKB didn’t mention the crippling (and illegal) US economic sanctions on Russia and Iran; surely those sanctions are harsher than on any other equivalent country. I’d think that Presidents Putin and Pezeshkian would have “converged” in condemning sanctions. Of course, I also read idly that Russia has done quite, quite well, thank you, in overcoming the sanctions with its own initiatives and power plays. WTH: My head aches. I simply wish that President Putin would pronounce “Colonial Zionist Israel, Prime Monster Netanyahu: Back off the people and land of Palestine, for whom/which I have endless respect and solidarity.” Shouldn’t that be the effing bottom line here?

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    roberthstiver's avatar Comment by roberthstiver | October 14, 2024 | Reply

  2. ‘Russia was known to have come under US-Israeli pressure.’

    No. Judaic-Zionist-Chabad Lubavitch-Israel power acting simultaneously both within and without Russia ‘pressured’ Putin to do something publicly that he already will do anyway – because he knows this game all too well.

    Putin is ‘approved’ by virtue of having spent some of his formative childhood on a Jewish-owned property where the Jewish owners were kind and sensitive enough to help his poor family.

    You will find a similar story again and again among prominent gentiles in important positions of power.

    For instance, and immediately just off the top of my head, go see Condoleeza ‘we couldn’t have imagined planes flying into buildings’ Rice.

    How about Ketanji Brown Jackson?:

    https://israelpalestinenews.org/will-ketanji-brown-jackson-be-able-to-transcend-her-pro-israel-influences/

    Does this mean Amy Coney Barrett et al are better?

    God we are screwed unless people wake up to this (we are) and remain constantly vigilant.

    You will see again and again and again and again instances of incredible Jewish wealth and power coinciding with the official history as one of constant persecution and misery.

    Monstrosities are continually carried out in the interest of this self-serving ideology, and they will continue so long as this grand historical lie is maintained. This is raw power that is able to operate through a veil of powerlessness allegedly due to an historically unparalleled persecution that is absolutely no fault of its own.

    Brilliant.

    ————————-

    This power manifests as RAW (Hindutvadi) inside India itself.

    Tulsi Gabbard and her family and funders are very RAW-adjacent. This is probably why she so easily pretends that she ‘served’ when in fact she did nothing of the sort. She is a pampered elite who never saw any fighting, and would cower in horror if she did.

    She is what the Creedence Clearwater Revival lyric ‘I ain’t no senator’s son’ is referring to.

    Yet she became a hero to large swathes of the working class and veterans and nationalists of this country!

    How?

    How did the American working class and alleged nationalists allow itself to be so thoroughly infiltrated, castrated and destroyed by these monsters?

    Television.

    Sure CNN is a pathetic joke and the dems are totalitarian warmongering freaks.

    And Trump et al aren’t?

    https://www.wrmea.org/2003-june/rupert-murdoch-and-william-kristol-using-the-press-to-advance-israel-s-interests.html

    —————————

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/sobran-fusion-and-realignment/

    ‘Leaving aside the issue of Holocaust denial, anyone who takes the time to read Sobran’s writing will immediately notice that he shared many of the ideas of the European far right from the early 20th century, in particular the belief that Jews are an alien, nearly monolithic and subversive force whose main goal is to destroy Western Civilization.’

    https://archive.ph/GUbMt#selection-389.125-389.347

    Hmmm. That’s interesting.

    Was mega Judaic Zionist Nahum Goldmann a victim of Sobran-like “antisemitic ‘holocaust’ denialing activities prior to his actually being born?

    Because Goldmann was born in 1895 and Sobran in 1946.

    Oh, right. I forgot:

    ‘Anti-semitism’ is historically perenially innate among all non-Jews (gentiles) the world over.

    ‘Jews are an alien, nearly monolithic and subversive force whose main goal is to destroy Western Civilization.’

    Are we certain only ‘Western Civilization’ was in their crosshairs?

    Because the Soviet Union and present-day Russia even after the fall of the wall were/are considered ‘the East.’

    These are the words of Lev Davidovich Bronstein aka ‘Leon Trotsky’ regarding Judaic Zionist plans for Russia before the grand ‘East-West’ divide:

    ‘We must turn her (Russia) into a desert populated by white Negroes upon whom we shall inflict such a tyranny as none of the most dreadful despots of the East have ever dreamt of. The only difference is that this tyranny will not come from the right, but from the left, and will not be white, but red, in the literal sense of that word, for we shall shed such streams of blood that all the losses of human lives in Capitalist wars will shrink and pale before them.

    The biggest bankers on the other side of the Atlantic will work in very close collaboration with us. If we win the Revolution, crush Russia, we shall consolidate the power of Zionism on her funereal remains and become such a force that the whole world will go down on its knees before it. We will show what real power is. Using terror, blood-baths, we will reduce the Russian intelligentsia to a complete idiocy, to a bestial condition…

    And meanwhile, our youth in leather jackets – the sons of watchmakers from Odessa and Orsha, Gomel and Vinnitsa – oh how magnificently, how rapturously they are able to hate everything Russian! With what enjoyment they are annihilating the Russian intelligentsia – officers, engineers, teachers, priests, generals, academicians, writers…’

    ‘Trotsky’ uttered these monstrously sociopathic, anti-gentilic words in a speech in Petrograd (‘Leningrad’; St Petersburg) in December 1917.

    Aron Simanovich gleefully recounted Bronstein-Trotsky’s speech in his Memoirs published in Paris in 1922.

    ‘White negroes’ may want to consult with other negroes – as well as other gentile groups the world over – to compare notes on what ‘the Jews’ are saying and doing.

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    Dan Kelly's avatar Comment by Dan Kelly | October 14, 2024 | Reply

  3. ‘many of the ideas of the European far right from the early 20th century, in particular the belief that Jews are an alien, nearly monolithic and subversive force’

    The ‘left’ groups that maintained their own cultural/ethnic and/or religious identities within the nation-states or empirial domains they inhabited were either vilified or outright ignored by Jewish imperialist agents like Marx.

    In other words, people who don’t subscribe to / want to fall victim to Judaic imperialism are then hard right nationalists!

    Again, this is an incredibly powerful binary within which to operate.

    Like

    Dan Kelly's avatar Comment by Dan Kelly | October 15, 2024 | Reply

  4. ‘…my late father who was a prolific writer, author, and <b>Marxist intellectual and thinker who introduced me at a young age to dialectics as a matchless intellectual tool to analyse the material world and decode politics.</b>

    https://archive.ph/rPgbY#selection-199.484-199.491

    Here we go again.

    You see, it never fails: Marxism destroys all underlying identities and strength thereof, as it was brilliantly designed to do.

    Two powerful living examples of this are Steve Salaita and Adolph Reed.

    Steve Salaita is a Palestinian Christian steeped in Marxism. The Marxism overrides his other identities so that his inner narrative as expressed through his writing is weak and ineffective. The verbosity destroys.

    Adolph Reed’s writing and speaking is similarly illustrative of what Marism does to an otherwise intelligent voice. It reduces its power and effectiveness, as it was designed to.

    You don’t see the same issues with Marx himself. Or, say, Richard Wolff.

    The Jewish Marxists and Commies are quite forceful, as are the gentiles who succumb to their bullshit.

    Examples would be Jimmy Dore – who easily morphed from commie sympathizer to hard right economic guy, directly paralleling all the Jewish left intellectuals turned ‘neo’ conservative over the years.

    It’s an easy ‘switch’ because their isn’t any substantive difference to begin with. It’s all a facade.

    Fellow travelers such as the ‘Revolutionary Blackout Network’ and ‘Black Agenda Report’ are just as confused and pathetically weak despite their outward front.

    ‘Stand up tall, pretend you’re strong, in the hopes that you can be.’

    You ever notice how none of these people are ever out with the actual living, working and exploited classes that they have so much alleged concern for?

    Personages such as Chris Hedges and Kashame Sawant would be mocked and laughed at by the true working class. ‘They’ would see right throgh ‘them.’

    Of course, the same should be true of Donald Trump et al – and there was a time when it would have been.

    Get it?

    You think Huey Long would give a flying fu*k about Harris, Trump, Bush, or Clinton? Jerremy Corbyn? Claudia Sheinbaum? Jill Stein?

    All of these people are an incredible degree of ‘bourgeoisie’ themselves! – a word that their masters hijacked seemingly eons ago in the interest of exploiting it for their own nefarious purposes.

    So, they will mingle with the lower classes only to the extent it gives them material/content to ‘drop.’

    In other words, it’s all about the benjamins for the marxists and their fellow ‘world travelers.’

    Twas always such.

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    Dan Kelly's avatar Comment by Dan Kelly | October 15, 2024 | Reply

  5. ‘dialectics as a matchless intellectual tool to analyse the material world and decode politics’

    Good god.

    Nothing is matchless, and there is nothing particularly ‘deep’ to decode about politics. Your own canon says as much!

    Try dialecting your dialectics. You might wake up to the reality you’ve lost as a result of immersing your entire life in it in the first place.

    I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to see the light. I’d like to go on living a while longer…

    —————————

    OK, I’m done.

    Thank you for the work you do, atheo.

    Like

    Dan Kelly's avatar Comment by Dan Kelly | October 15, 2024 | Reply


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