As the Israel-Iran war enters the second week, Russia has warned Washington and Tel Aviv against escalation and damage to Russian-operated commercial nuclear power plants and any harm to Russian technicians living and working in Iran.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week used various media platforms to publicise this warning that he had earlier given directly to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Premier Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.
“Unpredictable consequences”
Putin had firmly asserted Russia’s continued commitment to Tehran in fulfilling its nuclear assistance program which included the regular supply of nuclear fuel for the energy plant.
At the same time, on June 19, as the aerial strikes continued to be exchanged between Israel and Iran, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone summit specifically on this conflict.
Thus, as illicitly nuclear-armed Israel and nuclear hegemon USA openly show unanimity in a continued military onslaught on non-nuclear armed Iran (which is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT unlike Israel), the other two global nuclear Great Powers, China and Russia, are now firmly coming down on the side of that besieged West Asian regional power.
At the interaction with the European news media, Putin strongly hinted that this partnership could expand to defence cooperation. He pointed out that Russia had earlier offered hi-tech military equipment to Iran but Tehran had “at that time” demurred. But, he reiterated Moscow’s ongoing support for Iran’s peaceful nuclear development in “all fields”.
China is currently busy building a strategically vital ‘economic corridor’ from China (via central Asian States) through Iran to the Persian Gulf coast, the source of much of the Carbon fuel supply to the world’s biggest economy. That economic corridor is one of several belonging to China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) global economic connectivity project across the entire Eurasian landmass.
Political analysts the world over are flummoxed over Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, the third regional military power after Israel and Turkiye. In the first place, all analysts (not pro-West propagandists) acknowledge that even that Israeli military power is entirely gratis vis-à-vis unstinting Western financing and firm geopolitical backing.
Western geo-strategic objectives
As these columns remind readers, in real terms, Israel is no more than a very small, highly militarised, outpost of European colonists virtually arbitrarily implanted on non-European soil (just 78 years ago) not so much for the benefit of the colonists themselves but purely to meet Western geo-strategic objectives.
However, the governing ability of the regimes controlling this outpost forcibly created on Arab-Palestinian populated territory, seems to have waned over the decades. Rather than build cooperation with its Arab neighbours, successive regimes in Tel Aviv have simplistically exploited the West’s strategic largesse to build an ethnic exclusivist state that emulates the now-defunct White Apartheid State of South Africa, thereby antagonising its entire Arab neighbourhood.
Israel’s backing Western powers, prioritising their own strategic interests in West Asia (oil, Suez Canal, adjoining region of Europe), have cynically continued to fund the maverick Euro-Jewish colony-outpost, come what may, disregarding the worsening relations between Israel and its neighbours.
Today, Israel is now an embattled European colonial ghetto in a hostile West Asia – eerily reminiscent of those old Ashkenazi Jew ghettos in Europe that were first marginalised by the larger society and later horrifically devastated by European racism culminating in the Nazi holocaust.
The Likud Government’s official excuse for the war on Iran is that of a “pre-emptive” strike against Iran to stall what Tel Aviv claims are Tehran’s nuclear arms ambitions. But many analysts in the West itself as well as the rest of the are noting that the sensationally brutal Gaza genocide as well as the new war against Iran are convenient ploys to sustain regime popularity and longevity.
Some critical analysts said that the Likud regime’s motive was not to pre-empt Iran’s nuclear-arming but, rather, a panic move to pre-empt any nuclear control treaty that may have emerged from recent talks between Tehran and Washington. The Likud’s regime longevity is the actual goal.
Is the West stuck with a criminally suspect Netanyahu in the Holy Land and a politician in Washington who is best at tweeting about “killing” of State leaders and demanding “surrender” by one of the world’s oldest, most distinguished civilisations (Iran)?
