Last week's attack by Israel on Syria was the most extensive since the Yom Kippur (Arab-Israeli) War of 1973. Allegedly taking out 'almost all Iranian military infrastructure in Syria', the Israelis claimed a great victory against their nemesis, Iran, which means its allegedly nefarious designs on the region were 'set back years'.
This latest flashpoint in the Syrian theater of war coincided with two other noteworthy events: Israeli PM Netanyahu's visit to Moscow as Putin's guest of honor at the annual (WW2) Victory Day Parade, and President Trump's big announcement that the US is reneging on the Iran Deal.
The former has people wondering if Putin has 'taken Israel's side' - or even, gasp, that he was a crypto-Zionist all along! - while the latter has European leaders doubling down on their commitment to trading with Iran and openly plotting about how to circumvent US sanctions.
On this week's episode of Behind the Headlines, SOTT.net editors Joe Quinn & Niall Bradley discussed the apparent launch of direct Israel-Iran confrontation and Trump's 'Art of The Iran no-Deal'...
Running Time: 01:27:20
Download: MP3
Interesting discussion. I like the video format. My humble opinion on some of your points raised:
I do not know what Putin is up to vs. Israel, but I know that he is a chess master who thinks many moves ahead. He was among the elite, of the elite, of the KGB, and is extraordinarily intelligent, and his press conferences are a tour de force. He can sit there in front of 2,000 journalists and rattle off facts and numbers for four hours straight without a teleprompter. He carries an enormous amount of knowledge in his head, unlike the senile Trump or the lying Teresa May, who cannot remember their lies of yesterday, and contradict them with a new set of lies today. Moreover, Russain intelligence (including cyber-penetration of western computers,) is probably the best in the world, and Putin knows precisely what is going on. He faces the facts, unlike most politicians in the West, who live in a fantasy world of lies and wishful thinking.
Here is an example of his strategic thinking. The CIA prompted their puppet Erdogan to shoot down a Russian plane over Syria which had never crossed into Turkey. The idea was to get Putin to strike Turkey, at which point NATO could come to the assistance of Turkey and start the conflict with Russia which they have been trying their hardest to provoke. But Putin did not react as expected - he is far too smart and saw their trap. Instead, he slapped sanctions on the Turkish economy, with limited results.
Next, the US, which is extraordinarily treacherous and stupid, tried to overthrow Erdogan and replace him with their man Fethullah Gulen, with the idea of destabilizing the Stans in Russia's soft underbelly, where Gulen has opened hundreds of madrassah schools, all staffed with CIA agents.
Putin came to hear of the attempted coup, and instead of reacting as most people would have, and saying Erdogan deserves to be deposed and killed for shooting down the Russian plane, he forewarned Erdogan of the planned CIA coup, which then failed. As a result, Erdogan has turned away from the US and NATO, and has been embraced by Putin. You know all the details - I don't need to list them.
So what is Putin's long-term strategy in Turkey? Who knows. It is quite possible that one day, when the time is right, and Erdogan does something stupid, (he is NOT a very smart man,) Putin will turn on Turkey and dismember it into 3 regions - a Kurdish east, a Muslim middle, and a Christian Constantinople. Long-term, I am convinced he wants Russia to occupy and control the Bosporus and the exit from Sebastopol naval base in the Crimea to the Mediterranean.
For the same reasons, it is 100% guaranteed Russia will never give up the Crimea, even if it has to fight WWIII to keep it, and because of its port at Tartus, will never allow Syria to fall to the West. Any sensible strategist should be able to figure out what Russia will and will not give up, but the CIA is filled with morons (I know this from personal experience) who could not figure out whether to wipe their asses before or after they pull up their pants.
So, what is Putin's long-term strategy vs. Israel and Iran? PERHAPS, he is allowing Netanyahu to THINK Russia is their friend and will never go against them, precisely to encourage Israel, and perhaps the US also, to attack Iran.
Move #2 in this war-game would be Iran's closure of the Straits of Hormuz, at which point sinking the US fleet in the Gulf, (with Russia's help - look up the Brahmos Missile which Russia and India jointly produced, which if used would allow Russia to blame India for giving it to Iran, and drive a wedge between India and the USA,) would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Then skyrocketing prices of oil at the pump would ensue, then economic collapse of all the developed world economies, then world condemnation of Israel's and the US' actions. Everything takes oil to produce. Look for food to triple in price, and everything else to quadruple - overnight!! Incidentally, the economy that would suffer the most is that of America, which consumes 25% of the world's oil. An economic collapse of America, the collapse of the dollar, and the bankruptcy of the Treasury and its repudiation of its $21 trillion debt, would collapse the world banking system and make the US unable to finance its military machine. Ships and planes without fuel, troops without food, and overseas bases without supplies, would pull the teeth out of the most powerful military the world has ever seen. The war in the Gulf then would give Russia the excuse, like a good cowboy movie, to become the cavalry riding over the hill to save the innocent Iranians from the Israeli savages, and to save the world economy, by supplying Iran with S-400 missiles and other means of attacking and/or destroying Israel and ending the war.
Move #3 is a massive flight of Jews from Israel to safer countries where they came from, which means the final collapse of the Zionist Dream.
Move #4 might be the Sampson Option, where Zionist Israel, seeing itself about to be destroyed, launches nuclear strikes on all the capitals of the Christian World.
Move #5 would be the world's nuclear powers re-enacting Sodom and Gomorrah and turning Israel into a desert of radioactive fused glass.
Bottom line: Do not underestimate Putin, or take his actions at face value. None of us knows his long-term strategy, and what his plans are. He may not know them himself, but his strategy and objectives may change as the other sides - plural - make their moves in turn. But whatever the other sides do, like a good chess player he has his counter-moves all planned out far ahead.
Moreover, one must remember that Russia has no ports on the Indian Ocean. China has a naval base and port at Gwadar in Pakistan, which China is connecting to itself via high-speed rail as part of the Belt & Road Initiative, giving China an outlet on the Indian Ocean to protect its shipping lanes ("The Belt") to the West. Look at the map. A hundred miles to the west of Gwadar is a mirror-image, the port of Chabhar in Iran. India is pouring billions into developing Chabhar, with the intention of connecting it by high-speed railway to Moscow and Europe via Tehran and Azerbaijan and Southern Russia. This will allow goods from India to reach Russia and Europe in a third of the time and at a much reduced cost, bypassing the troubled Middle East and Suez Canal. Think now, about exactly WHY Russia would like to become Iran's patron, defender, and best friend. I cannot say more than this - connect the dots for yourself.
One of the principal reasons why certain people in Britain wanted desperately to provoke WWI was the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway, (look it up,) which would have been extended to the port of Basra in today's Iraq. It would only have had to cross three countries - the German Empire, the Austrian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, (which together became the Axis of WWI - now you understand why,) and certain people in Britain realized that if it was built this would give Germany the ability to move troops and supplies to Basra quickly, whence they could be loaded onto German battleships in that port, and sally forth from the Persian Gulf to interdict British shipping to India, and British oil exports from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. As a result, there were fomented by the British the Balkan Wars, in which several Balkan countries threw off the Ottoman yoke and made the Railway much more difficult to complete. (It never did get completed - only certain sections got built.) Railways, then and now, are very strategic assets in time of war. Since 1870, when Bismarck's buildup of the German railway system allowed him to crush France in that war, railways have been militarily important. Why do you suppose the US and it vassals in the EU are so alarmed about the Chinese BRI? It's not only economic rivalry, but military strategy as well. (In the event of a conventional war, of course. Nuclear war is a different kettle of fish, but in the event of conventional war, remember the size of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.)
Lastly, the USA has historically chosen Sunni Islam to ally itself with, due to the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Russia has chosen Shiite Islam, on the other side, to favor. If you study the cultures of Sunni and Shiite Islam, and the histories of the countries that adhere to each of the two faiths, you will find that Russia has made by far the better choice. Persia has a 6,000-year-old civilization. Saudi Arabia discovered oil money only 100 years ago at the end of WWI, and still has to achieve the status of a civilized country, in spite of the British Empire having chosen a tribe of camel herders and called them "Kings."
Think about these things, and read quite carefully what I wrote above. There are some things in there you might miss if you just skim it. I have spent the time to write this because you folks have a bully pulpit in SOTT which is priceless, and the more you know, the better will be your communications to the public.