The Biden sanctions on Russia, issued in the final 10 days of the Biden administration, hit primarily at Russian oil companies, their executives, even the executives of Russia’s principal nuc;lear energy company, and most importantly, the so-called shadow fleet that distributes sanctioned Russian oil, and the Russian companies that insure the tankers.

Will the Sanctions Work?

Alexander Mercouris, in his daily broadcast earlier today, makes a good argument that the sanctions will not stop Russian oil exports. There will always be ships available to ship them; they will always find crews and ports; they can always get insured by Russian insurers, and they can, if necessary, seek repairs in Russia.

Sanctions may make Russian exports more expensive (though the pressures on price of Russian exports have yet to show, even as energy prices in Europe rise) and given the importance of Russian oil to total oil distribution, the sanctions will exert upward pressure on oil prices and, because the energy markets are interrelated, on gas prices as well.

Russia will take a few months to establish work-arounds for the sanctions. That they will establish these work-arounds is certain because this is what has always happened in the past when largely self-sufficient major economies are attacked in this way. The demand for oil is so high, and some alternative sources (think Iran) so threatened and suppressed, that markets always find of way of getting their supplies.

In the meantime there may be some temporary inconvenience to the Russian economy. Western economists decry its supposedly high interest rates. But take a look, while you are at it, at credit charge interest rates in the US for a sober, comparative assessment). Russian inflation is around the same level as experienced by the US a couple of years ago, and the Russian Central Bank is handling the challengbe quite satisfactorily.

But Western economists do not allow their judgments to be influenced by the elephants in the room:

*The absurdly low level of Russian indebtedness (14% to GNP) as against the absurdly high level of US indebtedness (around 125% to GNP, if memory serves, and it is much worse across the collective West);

*The utter beholdeness of Western economies to their oligarchs whereas, in Russia, the oligarchs are kept beholden to the State;

*Russia’s alliance with China and the BRICS who are committed, ultimately, to establishing a parallel trading and financial architecture that will demote the dollar and the tools of Washington financial imperialism – the IMF and World Bank;

*The increasing standard of living enjoyed across Russia’s social classes and different geographical regions;

*The respectable rate of growth of the Russian economy (3-4%);

*Russian military superiority, and its acquisition in Eastern Ukraine of important new mineral and energy resources.

Will the Sanctions Last Longer than Nine Days?

That might be more compelling a vision if Russia wasn’t winning in Ukraine and the collective West wasn’t hopelessly losing.

If he isn’t complicit, and he truly disapproves of measures that seem designed as much to make Trump’s life more difficult as to make life difficult for Russia, then he can, if he wishes, simply rescined the executive orders that Biden’s sadistic controlled used to introduce the sanctions. Even if he needs Congressional approval to rescind the sanctions, and it is not clear that he does, Trump can easily secure that approval, given his strength in both houses or, he can even disregard theoretical Congressional disapproval by refusing to sign a note of disapproval (which could be overriden by Congress only with a two-thirds majority in both houses).

Trump would be advised to rescind the Biden sanctions immediately for four main reasons:

(1) Because they will inevitably increase pressure on both oil and gas prices, so that it will be the American people who suffer their consequences long before Russia will (Russia can simply lower the value of the ruble to maintain constant sales revenues), and US citizens will deeply resent an elite that can pass such an outrageously inflation-promoting measure even as Biden boasts that he has been able to suppress inflation; similarly, the people of Europe (whose gas reserves, at least, are in some quarters, Britain included, running very low and whose gas prices are expected to rise because of Ukraine’s action in shutting off the supply of Russian gas to Europe; and, similarly, Russia’s main clients in the Global South, especially China and India;

(2) The reckless, punitive but self-sabotaging sanctions-wielding imperialism of the US provides further concrete proof that the era of the dollar must come to an end, as soon as possible, to put an end to this disastrous, empire-in-anguished-decline idiocy. The BRICS must stand up, now;

(3) Because the impact of sanctions are at best only temporary’

(4) There is a better chance that this idiocy will strengthen Russian resolve to press home its battlefield advantage as far as it can go than that it will shrink in terror before the Biden paper tiger. The Russian people can expect nothing less in their clear sight of US lack of integrity, lack of morality, lack of magnaminity; lack of character or, simply, its grotesque and pitiful weakness.

Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping

This will not be a smooth process. Trump will face bitter opposition within the US, albeit an opposition on which he has more leverage in 2025 than in 2017, and the country’s fractures and fissures will be widened, perhaps violently. Trump’s reactionary domestic politics will sharpen the internecine civil war to come. Europe will fall apart, much in the same way, but with more complications and convolutions. Russia and China, not so much.

An order of spheres-of-interest is perhaps a safer world, but it is far short of the best kind of world, and far less of a world that the people of the world all deserve. For that, the struggle has barely begun.[su_divider style=”dotted” divider_color=”#153e75″ size=”8″ margin=”20″]

On the Question of Empire

The 1980s to early 1990s saw the transition of a global order away from one that had been defined around the Cold War conflict from 1945 between two superpowers. Supposedly this was all about capitalism versus a version of communism or, if you prefer, state capitalism. To some extent, that division was real (if we are speaking in bottom line terms). Only, as it turned out, communism had little to do with the conflict itself, because the conflict persisted unabated after the communism had ended with the end of the Soviet Union.

What the conflict was really about (in addition to being about who could suck up the most wealth from the Global South) was the hegemony of the US and its subalterns in the collective West. This blossomed in the 1990s in the form of “globalization,” the rapid intensificiation of economic links between previously sovereign nations, and their integration in obedience to international institutions that in turn were subject to disproportionate influence exerted by Washington.

If, as in the case of the WTO, those disproportionate ties were insufficiently pliable to Washington priorities, then the institutions were downgraded or ignored. This was the moment of peak “globalization,” which further integrated countries like Russia, China and India into a global financial and trading system that was dominated by Washington. A promise of harmony and equality permeated the air, a sense that for once everyone could benefit.

But there was never any harmony, only rising expropriation and inequality.

The Implosion of the Soviet Union

The first of these was that the Soviet Union and its satellite states imploded in the period 1989-1991. There were many reasons for this, too. But before we get to that set of reasons, I will make the point that this was the last opportunity in modern history for the US to transform the world.

Instead, and predictably, it doubled down on unimaginative, amoral, foreign policies guided only by the motive of maximization of short-term power. As we know, the US failed, utterly failed, contempuously failed and made no serious attempt even to explore any other options for the human experience.

Instead, even as the Soviet Union began to implode, the US was already upping its game (the game it had perfected as far back as 1953 with the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, and in 1954 with the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala – prelude to a long list of such interventions, in Indonesia, Greece, Chile, Brazil, etc., etc.) with the overthrow and destruction by covert and overt foreign intervention of Panama in 1990 and of Iraq in 1991.

Among the principal explanations for the implosion of the Soviet Union, I would contend, were the damaging aftershocks to the Soviet Union of its occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, the worrying inefficiency of its infrastructure as demonstated by the Chernobyl disaster of 1985, the growing dissatisfaction throughout much of Soviet leadership – especially as represented by Mikhail Gorbachev – with a schelorotic Soviet bureaucracy, and the impressionability of Soviet leadership and elites to the persuasiveness of Western propaganda, through Western informational and entertainment media product, as to how great was the Western world and how great was (relatively) unregulated capitalism. There was also the vulnerability of the Soviet Union to the explosive growth of nationalism beyond the frontiers of the central Slavic state, a nationalism which, I suspect, was prodded into existence, at least in part, through Western propaganda and covert influencing.

From Globalization to Globalism

The globalization phase of US empire, therefore, gave way to what we can describe as the period of neoconservative globalism, a system of US hegemony enforced by a toolbox of aggressive economic punitive measures against competitors backed up when necessary by covert (principally) and overt (occasionally) military and other coercive agencies. This phase was birthed as the US acquired tactical insight into the logics of imperial maintenance in places like Panama and Iraq, as we have seen, soon to be followed by a more articulated neoconservative agenda under the informal leadership of Robert Kagan and his wife, Victoria Nuland in the form of their playbook, Project for a New American Century and its program for the destabilization, amongst other things, of several Muslim countries and any other countries, like Russia or Iran that might resist the program, for the coercive refashioning of the globe into a US-dominated “rules based” order.

Back to Balance

A Hint of Serious

But yes, what there is – through South America and the Global South – is a growing Chinese influence through trade and China’s Belt and Road initiative. Paradoxically, as I noted the other day, China’s growing strength in South America is rendering the Panama Canal moot, since the canal, at the current time, is insufficiently wide or deep to allow passage for the largest of China’s tankers, which is why China has bought and is redeveloping the Peruvian port of Chancay to replace the Canal.

What seemed at first to be a string of arbitrary, perhaps jocular, but needlessly provocative comments of a distinctly Teddy Rooseveltian flavor, is beginning to cohere in the minds of many around the world, including in Russia, as representing the dawn of a new age of American imperialism – and yes, the term imperialism still applies even if it is one of a somewhat revanchist kind (in terms of its tariffs, its walls against immigrants, and its pulling of neighbors into one tight unit).

The new age will replace the neoconservative wet dream of perpetual US hegemony with a somewhat more modest, but realistic – in the realpolitik sense of the word – adjustment to an emerging world order. I have been accustomed to describe this order, optimistically, as multipolar or multicentrist. But I have also worried that it might simply represent a return to the 19th and 20th century world order of great powers and of the alliances and conflicts between them. This is the world of the “balance of powers,” the aim of which is to secure global stability through the establishment of “spheres of influence,” by each of the major powers, over the secondary powers, usually close to them, in which they can have confidence that their will and their interests will be allowed by rival great powers to take precedence.

Unfreezing the Arctic

Such an interntional system can bring about a period of relative stability, but the stability is under constant threat of the breakout of inevitable tensions, arising from greed an fears of being taken advantage of.

This is the world to which Trump is now reverting. But it has a novel focus, and that focus is the Arctic. By uniting, in one form or another, the US with both Canada and Greenland, Trump is emphasizing that the US has a “sphere of influence” in the Arctic that is almost of large as that currently enjoyed by Russia.

The Arctic has become enormously more important in the era of climate change because the melting of the ice greatly increases access to the mineral wealth that lies below the ice, and also has made and will make possible more transit routes for shipping that transform the physical distribution of products in such a dramatic way that some other routes, once considered existentially crucial, such as the Suez and Panama canals, will become much less important and critical.

Indeed, I have often wondered whether the world’s torpid progress towards resolving the challenge of climate change is explained by unwillingness of the oligarchic and corporate class and its political pawns to pass up the unprecedented trade and transit opportunities of climate change. Did they decide to put on hold any serious action to resolve climate change, perhaps by such stalling measures as “sun dimming” (the suspected purpose, Robert Kennedy doubtless thinks, of the ubiquity of chemtrails)?

It could be that the situation in the Arctic is shaping up as an articulation of a new front of conflict in a perpetual struggle between Russia and the US. But it could also be – and this has been rumored, as indicated earlier today by Dima of the Military Summary Channel – that there has been a reaching out by Trump towards Putin in the spirit of seeking a grand security agreement between these great powers.

This agreement could be just about the Arctic, but it could also be extended to Europe, and to the world. In other words, perhaps the Arctic might be the catalyst for the kind of overarching new security architecture that Russia has consistently said that it wants in order to resolve the Ukraine crisis. If Trump needs “something big” with which to impress the US public even as he downsizes or eliminates the role of the US in the Ukraine conflict, then what could be bigger than this?

If Russia can be enticed by the long-term benefits of a peaceful exploitation of the Arctic in balance with, or even with the cooperation of other Arctic powers, principally the US, then it must do so without destroying its alliance with China. It is not unremarkable therefore that Putin should have recently advertised an upcoming telephone meeting that he will have with Xi Jinping, even though such meetings are a regular phenomenon.

Implications of a New Order

In short, what may be emerging, therefore, is a rapprochement between Russia and the US in which the Arctic is recognized as an area of mutual interest and the US retires from Ukraine, and perhaps from NATO.

Such a transition by a Trump administration foreign policy – from the neocon position of US-centered globalism to a foreign policy of the balance of power or spheres of influence – may not in itself herald all that great of an improvement in the light of what we can recall of how the world was before the first Cold War.

But it does have the advantage of abandoning an ideologically-driven foreign policy in favor of an inherently more predicable interest-driven foreign policy, one that will allow legitimate space for China, Russia, and the BRICS to pursue their interests under conditions of global security. Whether this will actually benefit many more individual citizens of the world will depend in some measure on whether the ideologues behind the BRICS can think beyond trading currencies and the like to pondering the quality of life, life’s meaning, the perpetuation of the human species, democracy and social justice.

Europe

What happens to Europe will depend on whether Trump is inclined to remove the US not only out of Ukraine, but also out of NATO and even of Europe as a whole. It is unlikely that he will want to detach the US from Europe immediately or in the medium term. He will probably want to continue using Europe as leverage against Russia, unless he finds eventually that Europe, weakened industrially, financially and culturally by its foolish and profoundly unprofitable commitment to Project Ukraine, has become a liability for the US.

Europe, in the meantime, is not likely to survive as a coherent force, whether or not NATO or even the European Union survive. It is not implausible that European unity has required, depended on, US intervention. Without US support, European unity will fragment, and some members may begin to strike their own deals with Russia. In this context we could also expect to see a broad reconsideration of the energy factor and a more freewheeling approach than currently possible so far as European purchase of oil and gas from Russia is concerned. Although, we should note that European consumption of Russian LNG gas is doing extremely well despite all the sanctions and other obstacles, at a time when gas prices generally are drifting upwards.

For the moment, I do not see it likely, as floated recently by Col. Douglas Macgregor, that Germany will leave NATO. This idea is premissed on the assumpton that Germany’s new government, to be formed on the basis of the outcome of elections next month, will be dominated by the thinking of the new AfD party. But I give greater credence to the assessment of Gilbert Doctorow that the elections will result in yet another coalition of establishment parties that will cut out AfD.

This might keep Germany in NATO for the forseeable future, but the reduction of US participation in and financial support of NATO will require a much heavier investment by NATO’s European members in the proportion of their GDPs that they commit to NATO expenses. I do not think, given the current economically strapped climate in which Europe finds itself, that these investments will be made. Nor is it likely that interest payable on seized Russian assets or even a distribution of the capital of such assets, were it ever to be legally imaginable, will provide sufficient compensation. In short, if NATO doesn’t sink completely, it will be weaker and less consequential. Russia will, by and by, exert increasing influence on all of Europe.

Ukraine

How any of this impacts the precise manner in which the proxy war over Ukraine will end remains unclear. Current Russian advances are formidable and they will become more so. I dont buy Trenin’s idea of a tripartite Ukraine because I don’t see that a new Ukraine, dividing Russian Ukraine from a rump proto-fascist Ukraine, makes any kind of sense or is better or safer for Russia. Trump’s ability, were he so minded, to guarantee that Ukraine can never join Ukraine is a step beyond any that the US Senate could stomach. But Ukraine itself, under a new leadership (likely the result of devastating loss on the battlefield) might be persuaded to amend its constitution and itself make a commitment never to join Ukraine.

I would propose, however, that the better approach is to side-step all these issues by going the “big route” outlined above, in the form of a European or even new global security architecture, one that involves the dismantling both of NATO and the removal of nuclear capable missiles on Russian or on anyone’s borders.

Greenland

The Economist today in a mood of imperialist gloat, drools over the “deal of the century” and how the purchase of Greenland could be worth infinitely more to the US, predictably than its GDP of $3bn, 56,000 people and a fishing industry”

“Yet Mr Trump covets Greenland for its strategic and economic potential, rather than its puny output. The island sits between America and Russia in a part of the world that is becoming more navigable as Arctic ice melts. Although America’s Pituffik Space Base on the territory’s north-west coast already provides the armed forces with missile-warning sensors, an American Greenland might better monitor the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, a strip of the Atlantic Ocean that is the access route for Russian submarines to America’s east coast, and to the North Atlantic.

“On top of this, Greenland’s resource wealth is immense. It has known reserves of 43 of the 50 minerals deemed “critical” by America’s government, including probably the largest deposits of rare earths outside China. These are crucial to military kit and green-energy equipment. Wells off Greenland’s coast could yield 52bn barrels of oil, about 3% of the world’s proven reserves, according to an estimate in 2008 by the US Geological Survey.

“…But as the climate warms, the minerals become both more accessible and more valuable. Already, perhaps the greatest resource rush ever seen, on a per-person basis, is under way. Firms are drilling at around 170 sites, up from 12 a decade ago”.

Middle East Notes

Alastair Crooke, in interview earlier this week with Judge Napolitano, cited former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, James Jeffrey, as confirming that the US never wanted HTS in Syria to disintegrate and did nothing to disturb its control in Idlib. HTS leader al-Jolani has in the past said that he had been instructed by Al Qaeda not to target the West. By 2010, the CIA was spending $1 billion a year training and arming a wide network of anti-Assad militia. In short, this is confirmation of the view that HTS, along with many other fraternal militia were nothing less and little more than contract armies paid by Washington and its allies for the purposes of regime change.

Dick Cheney, the “real” president behind Bush junior, was once told by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar that the Saudi king knew of nothing that would weaken Iran more than losing Syria. Now HTS, directed by Turkish intelligence and funded by Qatar, has taken Syria. HTS’ al-Jolani, while claiming the other day that Syria needed a cordial relationship with Iran, is falsely blaming Iran for protests, in Aleppo, against HTS destruction of the key Allawite shrine and the massacre of its guards.

Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati, who was the top Iranian commander in Syria under Assad has said publicly that the fall of Syria is a major set back to Iran, and has blamed Russia for failing to provide sufficient support to Assad at the time of the invasion by HTS, even deliberately dropping bombs on empty fields rather than on the advancing army.

Be that as it may, Iran is still very much the focus of US and Israeli attention. From their perspective the main issue seems to be whether to limit an assault on what are misleadingly described as Iranian nuclear facilities or whether there should be a total war. The latter is premissed in part on the idea – I believe false – that Iran could within a few days move from 60% purified uranium to an actual, operable, nuclear-tipped missile and that just one or two of these would be sufficient to impress an Israel that has over four hundred of these.

It is reported that in a meeting in December last year, the G7 concluded that Iran would be a priority, if not THE priority issue for 2025, and if the Iranian issue is not resolved within the next six months there will be a major crisis (i.e. would have the bomb). This thinking indicates that the G7 is trapped by its own propaganda into thinking the bomb is a real issue, and it isn’t. The real issue is regional dominance. I’m

It is difficult to explain how Israel could be anything other than over-extended in the current circumstances. It is still so entrapped in Gaza that a Knesset group is actually demanding, in effect, the annihilation of Palestinians. This is another way of admitting that Israel has not, after all, defeated Hamas and that it is still losing military personnel in Gaza, at the very same time as it has moved into both southern Lebanon and southern Syria. Here, it will surely and eventually be a direct target for both Hezbollah in Lebanon and of Druze, Alawite and Christian and other minority militia in Syria.

Most important of all, Israel will have to deal with Turkey because Turkey will be unable to tolerate the presence in Syria of an Israeli force that collaborates with the Kurds (while the US builds a new military base in the north in collaboration with the terrorist denominated Kurdish YPG), and an Israeli force that is increasingly a direct threat to the foreign, jihadist, Turkish-backed, HTS regime in Damascus, with Israeli positions now only a few kilometers distant. The HTS regime really does need the Syrian oil in the Rmekain and Al-Omar fields, and the Syrian wheat, that is currently being stolen by the Kurds in alliance with the US and Israel.

Turkey now has control over 6 dams and 40% of the water supplies to the northeast. It could even become an ally of Hamas (both are Sunni). Maybe all parties to the Syrian imbroglio are currently pondering what other oil reserves lie close to the surface in Syria.

Yes, perhaps an alliance, a “spheres of influence” agreement between Turkey and Israel is forseeable, but this is not yet on the cards. In the meantime, how could this be a good time for Israel to attack Iran? Israel might want to attend more closely to what Esbati (above) is saying about Iran’s need to rebuild its militia in Syria.

News of Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement is further evidence, to my mind of significant fissures in the Collective West’s prostration before Washington and its fanatical anti-BRICS posturing following, as it does, the resignation a few weeks ago of arch Ukrainian nationalist Chrysta Freeland, Trudeau’s former finance minister.

More and more, the Trump team looks to extend the imperial legacy of the “white man’s burden” towards more white men and women (in Canada) and Greenland, and more brown men and women in Panama (and doubtless, eventually – were it have its way – to places like Mexico, Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela and Guinea, to name but a few).

The prospects of a Collective West consolidation around this revived Washington imperial ambition are dim, even as Trump moves to kick out millions of the displaced victims its previous imperial adventures from the US.

The likelihood of further fracture is immense.

My thanks to Patrick Lawrence who in his piece today for Consortium News cites Charles Augustin Sainte–Beuve (1847)

“There are now but two great nations — the first is Russia, still barbarian but large, and worthy of respect…. The other nation is America, an intoxicated, immature democracy that knows no obstacles. The future of the world lies between these two great nations. One day they will collide, and then we will see struggles the like of which no one has dreamed of.”

Ukraine’s New Offensives

Dima of the Military Summary Channel has promised us two significant Ukrainian offensives, the first already taking place in the form of three waves of Ukrainian attacks in the Sudzha section of Ukraine’s previous Kursk invasion. (Mercouris today expresses skepticism that this is of a magnitude that would warrant the description as an offensive, although it may indicate a Russian expectation that it will be followed up by other strikes into Russian territory). The other is forecast for the spring, when Ukraine has mobilized its new army ofx 18-24 year olds.

In the Sudzha area, Ukrainian troops over the weekend moved north of Martynovka and northeast of Cherkasskoe Porechnoe, achieving an advance seven kilometers deep into the settlements of Berdin, and Novosotnikskii in the direction of Bol’shoyi Soldstskoye. They are said to have used fiber-optic drones that are resistant to Russian jamming.

Details of Ukraine’s offensive were reportedly available on the site of a Spanish blogger some 48 hours in advance of its occurrence, and it is also reported that Russia had advance knowledge of the Ukrainian attacks.

Russian forces meanwhile have been moving south of Sudzha, establishing new positions inside Maknovka (at least half of which is currently controlled by Russia) and Dmitriukov. Northwest of Sudzha, Russian forces have recovered Leonidovo, and moved east to the outskirts of Malaya Lokhnya. Several Russian tanks were destroyed in this area by mines and FPV drones.

The Ukrainian offensive in Kursk is taking place just as Russia completes a significant victory in taking all of Kurakhovo, the conclusion to a campaign that reportedly cost Ukraine some 12,000 lives, 3 000 weapons and military hardware, including 40 tanks and other armed fighting vehicles. Russian forces are moving significantly westwards from the western end of the the Kurakhove reservoir towards Dachne and Andriivka, beyond which there are no Ukrainian fortifications to speak of before Russian forces reach the Dnieper.

West of Kurakhove, Russia is now in an excellent position to close the gap between Shevchenko in the north to Zelenivka further south, and to form a cauldron that will entrap Ukrainian forces in this area. As a result of its success in Kurakhove, Russia is reported by Dima of the Military Summary Channel to have suppressed a significant source of Ukrainian artillery fire against Donetsk City, which has suffered Ukrainian terrorism since around 2015.

Can a MAGA President Go Great?

The main purpose, I surmise, of Ukraine’s offensives (actual, predicted or imagined) is to persuade the incoming Trump team in the US that the war is still continuing and that Ukraine can be portrayed as winning it and that therefore Trump needs to hold off from forcing a negotiation (if he even could) and continue supplying arms and cash to Ukraine.

This does again raise the question of what it is that Trump could then do that would still push towards peace, yet conveying an impression of US strength, and that would be palatable to Trump’s domestic allies?

I have for some time explored the view that the only decent prospect for peace negotiations is if, instead of maintaining the pretense that this is just a local confict between Russia and Ukraine, all parties acknowledge the vastly more imposing and realistic view that the conflict is in fact civilizational, one that pits the Global Majority represented by China and other members of the BRICS seeking a multipolar, law-based world order, against the unipolar, rules-based hegemonic order of Washington and its subalterns. This path would have to embrace the demolition of NATO and commit to a radical, new conversation about the European and global security architecture.

[su_note note_color=”#e9ebed” text_color=”#0c0a0a” radius=”0″]I do not think it is inconceivable that Trump would recognize some of the advantage of “going bold” and of seizing firmly in his grasp the nettle of what this conflict is really about, and doing so in a proactive manner that would come across to his base as decisive, courageous and big. He would be thinking clearly were he to recognize that the current global order is unsustainable and that if the US resists the birth of a new order it will do so to its great and ultimate disadvantage.[/su_note]

But, there are two big problems. One is the hundreds of years of Western anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda in support of a Western ideology of Western imperial and neo-imperial entitlement. The vast majority of Western citizens fail to benefit from this, yet most are thoroughly, perhaps irrevocably brainwashed by it. And they are brainwashed, secondly, by what some analysts have rightly described as the US “superweapon,” namely a compliant, corporate mainstream media system that does not see it in its business interest to interrupt or in any serious way challenge the long reign of Washington’s neocon supremacists.

The Coming War with Iran

In discussion with Judge Napolitano this morning of January 6th, expert analyst Alastair Crooke offered a gloomy prognosis on the Israel-Iran crisis, pointing out that the conditions are ripe for an Israeli offensive given Israel’s successful destruction (continuing both north and south of Syria) of Syria’s air defenses, and amidst a fragile Iranian economy that is registering an inflation rate of over 30%. (Incidentally, I would also note that Turkiye’s rate of inflation is over 40%, and Russia’s is only 10%).

Crooke’s argument is that the invasion of Syria by HTS with mainly Turkish backing has devastated a web of checks and balances in the region that were orchestrated by former US President Obama, and introduced a period of relative chaos that Netanyahu’s Israel is best positioned to take advantage of.

While conceding that the situation is very dangerous, noting the long-standing US neocon lust for just such a war, and the very recent Sullivan-Biden conversation as to how the US itself might bomb Iran, I would take some measure of comfort from the upcoming signing on January 17 of the Russian-Iranian strategic partnership agreement, and recent signs that Turkiye-HTS very much want Russia to maintain its presence in Latakia and to develop a good relationship with Iran.

The role of Iraq, which separates Syria from Iran is very mixed, harboring as it does (1) a large Kurdish community which is the target of constant Turkish harrasment, (2) the continuing presence of at least 2,000 US troops who claim to be there to root out ISIS elements (although the US was if anything likely protecting former ISIS fighters at Al Tanf in Syria and putting them into action in support the HTS invasion), US troops which (3) the Iraqi government is constantly saying it wants to kick out, even though sections of the political class owe their survival to the US occupation and (4) a medley of Shi’a and other militia. In general, I would tentatively conlude that Iraq as a sovereign nation will exercise little muscle in the unfolding tragedy of Syria and the Iran crisis.

What I have suggested in previous posts, and am inclined to retain this on the table, is my proposition that we seeing the emergence in Syria of a strange HTS-Turkish-Russian (and, perhaps, because of Russian concentration in Latakia, even the HTS-persecuted Alawaites) block, setting off against an Israeli-Kurdish-US block. If so, neither of these blocks would be particularly stable or advantageous for ordinary Syrians no matter how much Western mainstream media insist on feeding us images of “liberated” Syrians enjoying new-found freedoms and even a feminist paradise in Damascus. I strongly sense that this is all rubbish.

The Weakness of Lebanon

For the World Socialist Web Site, Jean Shaoul notes that Lebanon’s parliament is due to meet on January 9 in another bid to elect a president, under intense pressure from the US, France and Saudi Arabia to select someone of whom they approve. They want a pro-US/Israel government and an end to Iranian influence in the country via Hezbollah and its political allies. Lebanon has been without a president for more than two years after Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022.

“This left the country without a functioning government. Headed by Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s richest man, the government has been unable to impose the “economic reforms” demanded by the International Monetary Fund and international banks in return for a restructuring of the country’s debts—amid bankruptcy, soaring inflation and mass poverty caused by the looting of the country’s wealth by the handful of billionaires that have run Lebanon since the end of the civil war in 1990.

Aoun, a candidate for the presidency, now heads Lebanon’s armed forces in southern Lebanon where he is charged with disarming Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have made it clear they will not help Lebanon rebuild if Hezbollah remains the dominant force in the country

“The US is building a new $1.2 billion fortified embassy on a 43-acre site near Beirut whose declared purpose is to counter the “Axis of Resistance”, meaning Iran. Its scale, out of all proportion to the country’s size, is indicative of US geo-political interests in Lebanon, with its strategic location and newly found sources of gas and oil under the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Following the settlement of a longstanding maritime border dispute between Israel and Lebanon, a French, Italian and Qatari consortium began drilling in 2023, while Israel has already begun extraction”.

The US has exercised at least as much influence, financially, in Lebanon, as has Iran, paying $3 billion to Lebanese security forces since 2006 as part of its $10 billion aid programme to the country. The US has troops stationed at two Lebanese military air strips not far from Beirut where large C130 style military planes have been seen landing.

US/Israeli operations in the Middle East, Shaoul argues, constitute nothing less than a war to eliminate Iran’s allies, encircle it and provoke retaliatory action against US forces that could be used as the pretext for an all-out war against Tehran. US support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the name of support for Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has a parallel in its support for the genocide of Lebanese in the name of support for Israel’s war on Hezbollah.

“The IDF’s October ground invasion of southern Lebanon caused widespread destruction, about which little has been said. It forced more than 1.2 million, including 400,000 children, of Lebanon’s 6 million population to flee their homes. It killed around 4,000 people, mostly civilians, and injured more than 16,000, according to the Ministry of Health. Nearly 250,000 homes were completely or partially destroyed, 20,000 public buildings damaged and hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses closed down. According to the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (UNESCWA), this devastation includes the destruction of 13 hospitals and 130 ambulances, and the closure of 100 primary healthcare centres, which has left vast sections of the population without access to essential care. Furthermore, the overcrowded shelters (908 of the 1,095 are at full capacity) exacerbate the risk of infectious diseases and compound care needs”.

Israel has continued its air strikes on Lebanon in defiance of the 60-day ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal imposed by Washington in late November. Beirut claims that there have been 300 violations of the truce. The truce was based on an agreement which called for Hezbollah to give up its fortified positions in southern Lebanon and withdraw its forces to the north of the Litani River, and included a US letter granting Israel the right “to take military action” if “Hezbollah looks to be preparing an attack”.

BBC-CIA-Mossad Zionist Propaganda

For Mint Press News, veteran investigative reporter Alan Macleod pursues the story of a senior BBC editor many of whose colleagues complained was acting as principal gatekeeper weeding out anything that might be too embarrassing for the Zionist-Genocidal State of Israel. Macleod reports that Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group. His critics have blamed him for a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel. (The BBC has disputed these claims).

Berg was an employee of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) three years before joining the BBC. The FBIS is understood the world over to be a CIA front group known for gathering intelligence for the agency. In 2005, the FBIS was subsumed into the CIA’s new Open Source Enterprise

Berg also has a rich professional relationship with Mossad, Israel’s premier intelligence agency. His 2020 book, “Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,” was written “in collaboration” with Mossad commander Dani Limor, whom he relied on extensively. In August 2020, Berg shared a picture of Netanyahu at his desk in front of a copy of his book.

“The BBC sells itself as an impartial distributor of news on the Middle East and beyond. And yet, Berg, who, by most accounts, calls the shots when it comes to the network’s Israel-Palestine coverage, clearly believes that this is acceptable and unremarkable behavior…(Yet)…The BBC suspended six of its reporters for simply liking pro-Palestine tweets. And yet, in Berg’s case, his overt pro-Israel advocacy has been treated as entirely unproblematic”.

Macleod correctly places this episode within the context of a long-standing history of intimacy between the CIA and Western mainstream media (see CIA Media).

Brazil BRICS

As Poland takes over from Hungary in the leadership of the European Commission in a move that will fortify neo-con aggression against Russia in Ukraine, Brazil takes over from Russia in leadership of the BRICS, in a move that some commentators have worried – in view of Brazil’s 2025 responsibility for the next COP30 summit – may slow the further development of that principal icon of multipolarity.

Nine new members are set to join: Cuba, Bolivia, Indonesia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda and Uzbekistan. This follows BRICS 2024 growth to include Iran, UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. The original members were Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Intellinews today reports that the Brazilian Foreign Ministry has yet to specify whether the newest additions will join as full members or partners, the latter having limited voting rights. BRICS now represents over 40% of global population and 37% of world GDP by purchasing power, exceeding the G7’s economic influence. Over 100 official BRICS meetings are planned between February and July. Most will take place in Brasilia.

Wars of Attrition, West and East

We can acknowledge both that Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s SMO has been far more intense than many expected, and, at the same time, that the Ukrainian army is fast losing territory east of the Dnieper and that evidence of Ukrainian courage, endurance and resilience notwithstanding there is also evidence of demoralization, desertion (95,000 cases for far, and showing a sharp increase in 2024 over 2023), poor or corrupt leadership, insufficient care of troops, horrible conditions, and flight.

Yet, we have also seen recent reports of new concentrations of Ukrainian troops, and more plans to attack Russian territory (especially in the Bryansk, Belgorod, Chernikov and Sumy regions).

In addition, there are dependable indications that the Ukrainian RADA, under pressure from Washington, will pass the bill to lower the age of conscription to 18 years. Ominously, General Syrsky has been talking about the need for a prohibition on movement out of Ukraine by young men as young as 16 or 17.

It is envisaged that this will pave the way to a mobilization of a new army that could number up to 500,000, much of which could be ready for combat by May, if we accept the very low bar that Ukraine sets for being able to say that any recruit has actually been meaningfully “trained.”

For every report of an expectation of dialog after the inauguration of Trump there is a report of planned US/EU escalation that will prolong the war indefinitely. For the overall geopolitical goal, as veteran and former military analyst Brian Berletic never tires of reminding us, is to over-extend Russia and in that way to defeat it through gradualist attrition in a mirror-image of the attritional strategy that has brought Russia in sight of the Dnieper and the whole of Ukraine close to collapse.

It does not really need Russia to take over Pokrovsk or any other of the cities which it has recently or is poised to enter, but simply to surround them, take control of their supply routes, and then head westwards, fast, without expectation of meeting any further Ukrainian military fortifications to speak of, until Russian forces reach the Dnieper. What Russia will then do is a billion dollar question.

Russia’s attritional approach, therefore, has been effective in Ukraine; that of the collective West, so far, much less effective. But the game is not over until the fat lady sings, so to speak. The West’s attritional strategy, on the other hand, has arguably worked in Syria, where Russia was forced to give up on its mission of helping sustain the Assad government in order to focus on its prime goal in Ukraine. We have to see whether something similar could come about as a result of US and Israeli aggression towards Iran on the eve of the signing of the Russian-Iranian strategic partnership agreement. I am inclined to think that Russia will stay invested with Iran.

The Russia-Iran Strategic Partnership

For a starter, Iran is a much larger, more powerful, militarily stronger country than was Assad’s Syria, and an important buffer between Russia and the Western meddling in an increasingly fractious Middle East. The fact that four weeks ago Sullivan and Biden were examining the options for US bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, or worse, suggests that Israel is actually not strong enough to achieve this goal by itself. A combined US-Israel attack on Iran – which, let us be clear, would have no authentic, justifiable cause other than the propping up of a hegemonic civilization in decline – is far more likely to press Russia towards World War Three than was Assad’s Syria.

In the meantime, it still remains unclear whether Russia has lost as much as at first seemed in Syria, in geopolitical terms, given that the new Turkish-HTS government needs the presence of Russia and a cordial relationship with Iran in order to fight off what increasingly looks like will turn out to be an opposing US-Kurdish-Israeli incubus on the indigenous peoples of Syria.

The point is that we can never lose sight of the fact that Ukraine is being used as a proxy by the collective West for its contest with Russia. The West can afford to “lose” a front with Russia temporarily if this is necessary to pursue its goals against its even more substantial challenger, China, at a time when China is experiencing (relative) economic contraction. In this broader scenario, Russia could transition from hors d’oeuvre to desert.

As to whether the West – either the US in partnership with NATO and the EU (the two entities now seem inseparable) or NATO and the EU just by themselves – will continue to “extend Russia,” (note, a strategy which does not actually require the West to “win” in Ukraine), much depends on money, as always. Trump has been saying the US is wasting its money on Ukraine and should focus more on China, and perhaps on Iran as well. The EU and the European members of NATO as a whole, though not all of them, claim that they can find the money, and that some of this money will take the form of European “feet on the ground” in Ukraine to compensate for the weakness of the Ukrainian army.

The Never-Ending Allure of Frozen Russian Assets

A recent article from Intellinews by Ben Aris and reposted by Natylie Baldwin here: (Aris), revises and updates the issue of whether, when and how, precisely, Europe can get its hands on at least the interest payable on $300 billion’s worth of Russian assets frozen in European Central Banks. This is a source that might well make the continuation of the war more palatable at least to political leaders. European populations no so much, judging by the weakness of the Macron presidency in France, and the growing, Musk-supported AfD in Germany.

I do not however, agreee with Aris’ contention that only 10% of US support has actually been channelled through to Ukraine, as Zelenskiy claims. This runs in the face of evidence from many other sources and also likely confuses the channelling of money direct to Kiev with the proportion of all US “aid” for Ukraine that is intended all along for diversion to the US armaments industries to pay for the weapons that are then sent to Ukraine. This does, however, raise the question of the speed of production of weapons that are being paid for by the US taxpayer. It is quite probable that some of this production takes place on the presumption that the necessary funds will be voted by Congress or allowed by the White House, but it also seems very probable that some weapons will not show up on the battlefield before one party or other (almost certainly Russia) is “victorious,” or, at least, before a peace deal of sorts has been struck.

Washington has leglized the use of interest on $5bn of Russian assets on the war, even though Trump is expected to end or to significantly reduce the US commitment to supporting the war. And Washington wants Europe to put its own frozen Russian assets to similar purpose. This is unprecedented: even the reserves of Iraq and Afghanistan, still (!!) held by the US Central Bank, have never been purloined in this way.

In May, the EU approved the use of profits from the frozen assets—approximately €3bn annually—with 90% allocated to military aid for Ukraine and the rest reserved for humanitarian purposes.

Gas Crisis

Following Ukraine’s recent cessation of the supply of Russian gas that has flowed along its pipeliness across Ukraine, the most immediately impacted countries appear to be Moldova and Transnistria where the gas is used for the generation of electricity. Moldova is expected to generate some electricity domestically and import electricity from Poland (which I had mistakenly excluded from my commentary yesterday), Romania and Ukraine (although it is a mystery as to how Ukraine will be able to supply electricity when it is itself an importer of electricity from Poland and Romania).

The benefit to Ukraine of all this, as I noted yesterday, is quite mysterious given the fragility of Ukraine’s energy system in the wake of dozens if not hundreds of severe Russian attacks over the past two years, and the further damage Russia could do to future supplies of gas to Ukraine from new sources (e.g. piped LNG from Poland) if Russia decides to destroy the pipelines running across Ukraine. Further, Ukraine depends for two thirds of its electricity on three surviving, Soviet-built nuclear power stations, whose supply of electricity can be disrupted, and often is, by Russian strikes on their substations.

In Transnistria, wedged in between Moldava and Ukraine, most industrial activity is reportedly closed except for food products, and the generation of electricity for its 350,000+ residents is temporarily dependent on the country’s coal reserves. These are expected to last for only 50 days. It remains to be seen whether it will be able to import coal or LNG gas through the borders of its hostile neighbors.

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, estimates that the end of the gas deal could cost the EU €120 billion over the next two years or so. Slovakia itself would lose up to €500 million annually in transit fees. According to EuroNews, Slovakia had been receiving about 3 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas annually from Russia via Ukraine, amounting to two-thirds of its needs. To compensate, Slovakia has signed a short-term pilot contract to buy natural gas from Azerbaijan and has an arrangement to import US LNG through a pipeline from Poland. Slovakia can also receive gas through Austrian, Hungarian and Czech networks, enabling imports from Germany among other potential suppliers.

Slovakia has threatened that in retaliation for Ukraine’s cessation of a supply of Russian gas, it might cease its supply of electricity to Ukraine (a measure that would, of course, also hurt Slovakia) and that it might reduce social benefits to Ukrainian migrants in Slovakia. This might lead some such migrants to return to Ukraine (where men would risk a strong chance of being called to fight for the Ukrainian army in its war with Russia), but it is more likely that migrants would set their hopes on other European countries where they would meet a lukewarm reception at best.

Migration Crisis

To this flow of migrants would be added far larger flows into Europe from Ukraine given the expectation that Ukraine will shortly lower the age of conscription into the army to 18.

Ukraine has for many months faced pressure from the US to lower the age of mobilization even as the future of US aid to Ukraine is under question in the light of the upcoming inauguration of US President elect Donald Trump whose stated aim is to bring a cessation to the war and/or to US participation in it.

Voices skeptical of the likelihood that Russia, the US and Ukraine will be able to settle terms, envisage the possibility of a new 300,000-400,000 Ukrainian army heavily populated with 18-24 year olds, that would face off with Russian forces in eastern Ukraine in the Spring, by which time Russia plans to have successfully completed its offensive from Kamianski in Zapporizhzhia through to Velyka Novoselivka in southern Donbass up to Toretsk, Chasiv Yar, Pokrovsk, Siversk, Lyman, Kupyansk and Vovchansk, these cities constituting a south-north front line along which Russia, for the most part, is successfully advancing (although Siversk appears to be one area of potential weakness).

Ukraine’s army has commprised, principally, men in the age-range of 25-50. This is also the age range that is absolutely critical to sustaining any kind of economy. In order to both fight a war and to keep some kind of economy going, Ukraine has to look for younger men who are less immediately critical for the economy even though, in the event of the slaughter of large numbers of this younger cohort, there will be insufficient manpower for the future economy.

Fighting a War They Know is Lost

The West was advised by Ukraine military intelligence leader Kyril Budanov as long ago as April 2024 that it would be impossible for Ukraine to win a conventional war and that it would have to convert to assymetrical warfare.

Ukraine’s military commander Zaluzhnyi had come to much the same conclusion months before. Writing for The Hill, James Dorso records how in April 2024, the leadership of Ukraine’s military intelligence participated in a series of roundtable discussions involving Washington think tanks and policymakers.

“They expressed their reservations about continuing full scale conventional warfare. They were concerned that Ukraine had lost momentum and would be overwhelmed. They advocated instead for increased asymmetric warfare inside Russia to gain an upper hand in negotiations to end the war.”

Budanov was subsequently sidelined and ignored by Zelenskiy who proceeded, much as he had always done, with a mixture of conventional and assymetrical methods. In what might be described as a hybrid action, Ukraine staged an unsuccessful attempt to capture Russia’s Kursk nuclear power station, a manouever that has since wasted well over 30,000 of the Ukrainian troops who formed part of the corresponding forces that invaded Kursk around the town of Sudzha and which today is still gradually being beaten back by Russia (the White House has advised Ukraine to withdraw its forces from Kursk).

In brief, the collective West, advised that the war was not winnable conventionally nonetheless continued to throw unimaginable wealth to Ukraine for it to continue to, fight the war both conventionally and assymetrically, some of that money being siphoned off for corrupt purposes (including diversion of weapons to support militia in Africa).

Still today Ukraine is losing the war and still there are voices in both the US and Europe that believe there is merit in continuing Ukrainian escalation (e.g. assassinations, longer-range cruise and ballistic missiles against targets in Russia, and the mobilization of 18-24 year olds) so as to force Russia to the negotiating table on terms favorable to the collective West.

Only so far, and after $200 billion or so, Ukrainian “escalation” has achieved nothing. Even in its dying breath, the Biden administration is wasting a further $6 billion dollars on the effort, having burned through the $60 billion pacakge voted through by Congress in April (at around the time when the Biden administration was being told that the war was unwinnable). Indeed the Biden Administration, in its desperate bid to make life as difficult as possible for the incoming Trump administration has already chewed up 30% of the budget for 2025.

It is very difficult to assess the numbers of lives that have been sacrificed in this dreadful farce, given the opacity and fog of propaganda from all sides, but I am inclined to the view that the numbers of Ukrainian lives sacrificed for this totally unnecessary and unproductive conflict is likely somewhere in the region of 600,000 dead, a figure mentioned this week by John Mearsheimer, and the figure of 991,000 Ukrainian losses recently cited by the Russian Ministry of Defense (which I am going to assume is a reference to the number of dead Ukrainians at worst, or of dead and seriously wounded, at best).

There have been some reasonably plausible independent efforts to calculate the numbers of Russian dead and I am inclined to believe that these do not exceed 200,000. If we assume that for every soldier that is killed, there are at least three who are significantly wounded (and this may be a conservative estimate), then we would be talking about 1,800,000 dead and wounded Ukrainians, and 600,000 dead and wounded Russians.

Is Syria a Real Country and is Jolani its Real Leader?

In interview with Judge Napolitano, Professor John Mearsheimer extends some positive assessment to Syria’s new leader, al-Jolani or al-Sharaa, head of the terrorist invasion force of HTS sent down with Turkish backing from Idlib to Damascus who appears, says Mearsheimer, to appreciate the importance to Syria of maintaining good relations with Turkiye, Russia and even with Iran as these will be significant assets to Syria’s ability to hold back Israel and to diminish the sway of the US.

I do not disagree with this logic except for the fundamental premise, which is that al-Jolani has, overnight, slipped into the role of a conventional national leader who endearingly wants the best for his country. If he really wanted the best for his country, would he have invaded it with backing from Turkiye and Turkish forces, mainly, but also with assistance from both the US, and its allies, and Israel?

And is it “his” country? Al Jazeera reports that he was born Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa in 1982 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as a petroleum engineer. The family returned to Syria in 1989, settling near Damascus. Little is known of his time in Damascus, this source attests, before his move in 2003 to Iraq, where he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq as part of the resistance to the United States invasion that same year.

As I suggested yesterday, it is easier to believe that Al Jolani is a Western intelligence asset whose mission has been to direct a movement of Qatari or Saudi-paid Salafist extremists for the purposes of regime change in Damascus at the ultimate service of Western neocon foreign policy than that Jolani is an authentic leader of Sharia Islam.

The mislabelled “civil war” that broke out in 2011, and the regime-changing invasion of Syria in 2024 has absolutely nothing to do with democracy or human rights. The first phase was about a contest between two oil pipeline projects, one of which would have benefitted Qatar, the other Russia, and both are about the replacement of a secular, socialist, Arab nationalist order in Syria with an implanted Western-oriented and Western-backed, pliable Sunni extremist movement.

A central question is whether al-Jolani really can be considered a conventional leader with conventional aspirations for a sovereign nation, the nation of Syria.

In no sense can he be considered a legitimate leader, and he certainly has no claim whatsoever to electoral legitimacy. He arrives on the back of foreign support. His own military strength is quite modest so that he will continue to need the backing of foreign sponsors. One of these, Turkiye, is widely suspected of harboring imperial ambitions for Syria that would recover Syria within some form of revived Ottomanism. I

In place of a relatively stable country, albeit one badly impoverished by Western-instigated war and sanctions, that depended considerably on its closest allies, Russia and Iran, al-Jolani heralds chaos in the name, absurdly, of free trade, integration into the global economy, friendship with everyone (including Israel) and, laughingly, “democracy.”

All this as Israel grabs land to the south, Turkey is at war with the Kurds (and, in effect) the US in the north, and Jolani’s forces ride off on revengeaful killing orgies against Alawites, Christians and other minorities.

Iran, meanwhile, holds its breath as to whether Israel will use its new positions north of the Golan to launch a missile war against Iranian “nuclear” assets (although everyone knows that Iran has no nuclear weapons, its leader is committed to his fatwa against nuclear weapons, and the real nuclear threat in the Middle East is Israel which has hundreds of them) – as it already did, in 2021, against the Natanz facility. We know that Jake Sullivan recently presented President Biden with the options for the US to bomb Iran – that is to say, Sullivan went to a President with dementia to ask him whether to start World War Three.

Iran and Russia are due, finally, to sign their mutual defense treaty on January 20th. This follows hard on the heels of talks between the two countries to consolidate and advance their mutual interests in the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), and its component, the Rasht-Astana railway connection project. I do not believe Russia would sign this treaty if it was not prepared to extend full support to Iran in the event of an Israeli attack, although I do expect that there will be Russian diplomatic efforts to head off such a possibility for conflict with a country that has a substantial Russian population and with which it has formerly enjoyed quite cordial relations.

Israel in Southern Lebanon

“In accordance with the ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) entered the towns of Shamaa and Al-Bayada on 1 January. The two towns are among those that witnessed fierce clashes between the Lebanese resistance and the Israeli army during Tel Aviv’s failed ground operation in Lebanon, which began in early October and ended with the ceasefire on 27 November.

“Israel has violated the ceasefire – which is based on the implementation of UN Resolution 1701 – over 100 times since it took effect with deadly airstrikes, arrests of Lebanese citizens, troop advancements, and mass detonation campaigns in southern villages. Entire villages have been wiped out as a result of the demolition campaign…

“Tel Aviv claims to be targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in the south, which the LAF was tasked to dismantle as per the agreement.

Israeli troops are required to withdraw from Lebanon within 60 days of the ceasefire’s announcement. So far, it has been over four weeks, leaving less than a month before the Israeli army must retreat, according to the agreement”.