Crossfire War – TEHRAN WATCH – Eurasia Theatre: Tehran/Moscow; 10th Session of Iran Foreign Policy Council Meeting – Evaluation of Military Threat from Russia – Post-World War III Regional – International Cooperation
Night Watch: TEHRAN – Realizing Moscow is the only Allied capital that is any real offensive threat to Tehran, Iran’s government has convened its 10th Foreign Policy Council Session on Saturday, chaired by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. The meeting is being held at the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in Tehran. A statement was released, “Iran’s ambassador to Moscow along with a number of university lecturers and experts in Russian political affairs attended the meeting where they studied the Russian status in regional and international developments together with existing opportunities and hurdles on the way of expansion of ties between Tehran and Moscow.” [IRNA]
I am not surprised this meeting is being held now. Tehran knows that under Russian President Vladimir Putin Russia has engaged in serious military and economic reforms, since 1999, that have drastically improved not only Russia’s military performance in the North Caucasus, against Islamic groups Tehran-Ankara have been supporting, but has also enabled Russia to wield more influence in international affairs using the enormous budget Moscow can now deploy internationally as powerful countries can strategically deploy troops. One of the more recent examples, Tehran is reviewing, is in Northeast Asia and Moscow’s immediate response when last October, after Pyongyang exploded a nuclear bomb at an underground test site for possible export to Iran, as North Korea has been exporting ballistic missiles to Iran for years. Moscow immediately reasserted its old influence and contacts with North Korea’s government, completely removing Beijing, which had been controlling Pyongyang’s decisions since the end of the Cold War in 1990.
I suspect at this foreign policy session Tehran has to acknowledge that since Beijing and China are going through another wave of corruption, its historical-cultural pattern, therefore Beijing can never again be the influence in international affairs it had been since World War II and can therefore no longer guarantee further shipments of advanced weaponry to Iran or Syria.
Making these grim realizations are officials on the highest levels of Tehran’s foreign policy and it is being held almost ten years to the day of the formation of Iran’s Foreign Relations Strategic Council, which reports directly to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei. Its chairman is Kamal Kharrazi, the Foreign Minister immediately before Mottaki, and one of its members is another former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati. Former Defense Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani is a member as is Mohammad Shariatmadari and Mohammad-Hossein Taromi. The members serve five year terms so they will be in a position to advise Tehran on the post-World War III international situation and they know the principal foreign capital Iran will be in closest cooperation with will be Moscow.
Earlier this year Velayati made an important, almost secret visit to the Kremlin where I suspect he and the Russian officials he conferred with outlined the rest of the war. NATO and the West will be increasingly defensive in the Balkans, make a stand somewhere, as will India as Delhi confronts the massive military support Tehran sends through Pakistan. Therefore only when Tehran sees Russia coming through the South Caucasus through Georgia-Armenia and if need be Azerbaijan, will Tehran then enter into negotiations ending Iran’s participation in World War III. Though the war will be continuing in other areas Tehran will no longer be at the center of it.
What has enabled Moscow to emerge as the main victor of the war is its extremely intelligent decision to withdraw all of its military forces from the debacle in the Balkans, that was intiated 1990-92, in the name of the New World Order. It was intended and planned as an enlightened, orchestrated crisis NATO-Warsaw Pact governments envisioned they could use to solve the crisis of the coming division of Yugoslavia peacefully, an international display of European unity, conducted by Brussels-Vienna. What was revealed instead was the dark ages cesspool of European decision making that has also incorporated Washington, and now they are about to plunge into the depths of another Balkan war, this one revolving around Kosovo. That prevents NATO/EU from providing any effective support for the European units in south Lebanon-UNIFIL or in any other theatre. So I suspect the Iranian officials in this 10th Foreign Policy Session have written the West off as a stationary target.
South Asia, the India/Pakistan fourth war, is the other major theatre Tehran is evaluating and Moscow’s long standing support for Delhi as one of Moscow’s way of countering Beijing and its territorial designs on the region. Tehran supports Islamabad for similar reasons as Beijing has since 1951, for the control of the vast resources on the Indian sub-continent and they know Moscow is still in a position to provide India with advanced weaponry, but no troop support. Iran may also be aware there are serious issues, some of them recorded on crossfirewar.com, as to whether or not India has effectively maintained the readiness of its large military. What is powerful on paper may not always indicate effectiveness on the ground. Tehran has placed itself to provide very eager and major support for Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf’s offensive “Action Plan” that he presented to Tehran in February.
The action year is 2007 and these officials may have been informed by Adm. Shamkhani, that Iran has enough for one year of offensive warfare, primarily directed at the West-India. Iran’s main weapon against Israel is propaganda. These foreign policy experts may also be aware former U. S. Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger arrived in Moscow two months ago (as recorded on crossfirewar.com 4-26) to co-chair the Strategic Working Group with former Russia Premier Yevgeny Primakov. And that is the result of Washington increasing its strategic coopertion with Berlin for more than a year, reducing Washington’s historical cooperation with London. It was Berlin, the main purchaser of Russia’s resources and therefore the principal supplier of Moscow’s hard currency even before the Cold War, who had Putin become head of state and reorganize Russia along some very serious industrial frontlines.
www.crossfirewar.com
