By Pepe Escobar
November 18, 2022:
Information Clearing House
--
Southeast Asia is right
at the center of international relations for a
whole week viz a viz three consecutive summits:
Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)
summit in Phnom Penh, the Group of Twenty (G20)
summit in Bali, and the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok.
Eighteen nations
accounting for roughly half of the global
economy represented at the first in-person ASEAN
summit since the Covid-19 pandemic in Cambodia:
the ASEAN 10, Japan, South Korea, China, India,
US, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand.
With characteristic Asian
politeness, the summit chair, Cambodian Prime
Minister Hun Sen (or “Colombian”, according to
the so-called “leader of the free world”), said
the plenary meeting was somewhat heated, but the
atmosphere was not tense: “Leaders talked in a
mature way, no one left.”
It was up to Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to express what
was really significant at the end of the summit.
While praising the
“inclusive, open, equal structure of security
and cooperation at ASEAN”, Lavrov stressed how
Europe and NATO “want to militarize the region
in order to contain Russia and China’s interests
in the Indo-Pacific.”
A manifestation of this
policy is how “AUKUS is openly aiming at
confrontation in the South China Sea,” he said.
Lavrov also stressed how
the West, via the NATO military alliance, is
accepting ASEAN “only nominally” while promoting
a completely “unclear” agenda.
What’s clear though is
how NATO “has moved towards Russian borders
several times and now declared at the Madrid
summit that they have taken global
responsibility.”
This leads us to the
clincher: “NATO is moving their line of defense
to the South China Sea.” And, Lavrov added,
Beijing holds the same assessment.
Here, concisely, is the
open “secret” of our current geopolitical
incandescence. Washington’s number one priority
is the containment of China. That implies
blocking the EU from getting closer to the key
Eurasia drivers – China, Russia, and Iran –
engaged in building the world’s largest free
trade/connectivity environment.
Adding to the
decades-long hybrid war against Iran, the
infinite weaponizing of the Ukrainian black hole
fits into the initial stages of the battle.
For the Empire, Iran
cannot profit from becoming a provider of cheap,
quality energy to the EU. And in parallel,
Russia must be cut off from the EU. The next
step is to force the EU to cut itself off from
China.
All that fits into the
wildest, warped Straussian/neo-con wet dreams:
to attack China, by emboldening Taiwan, first
Russia must be weakened, via the
instrumentalization (and destruction) of
Ukraine.
And all along the
scenario, Europe simply has no agency.
Putin, Raeisi and
the Erdogan track
Real life across key
Eurasia nodes reveals a completely different
picture. Take the relaxed get-together in Tehran
between Russia’s top security official Nikolai
Patrushev and his Iranian counterpart Ali
Shamkhani last week.
They discussed not only
security matters but also serious business – as
in turbo-charged trade.
The National Iranian Oil
Company (NIOC) will sign a $40 billion deal next
month with Gazprom, bypassing US sanctions, and
encompassing the development of two gas fields
and six oilfields, swaps in natural gas and oil
products, LNG projects, and the construction of
gas pipelines.
Immediately after the
Patrushev-Shamkhani meeting, President Putin
called President Ebrahim Raeisi to keep up the
“interaction in politics, trade and the economy,
including transport and logistics,” according to
the Kremlin.
Iranian president
reportedly more than “welcomed” the
“strengthening” of Moscow-Tehran ties.
Patrushev unequivocally
supported Tehran over the latest color
revolution adventure perpetrated under the
framework of the Empire’s endless hybrid war.
Iran and the EAEU are
negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in
parallel to the swap deals with Russian oil.
Soon, SWIFT may be completely bypassed. The
whole Global South is watching.
Simultaneous to Putin’s
phone call, Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan –
conducting his own diplomatic overdrive, and
just back from a summit of Turkic nations in
Samarkand – stressed that the US and the
collective West are attacking Russia “almost
without limits”.
Erdogan made it clear
that Russia is a “powerful” state and commended
its “great resistance”.
The response came exactly
24 hours later. Turkish intelligence cut to the
chase, pointing out that the terrorist bombing
in the perpetually busy Istiklal pedestrian
street in Istanbul was designed in Kobane in
northern Syria, which essentially responds to
the US.
That constitutes a
de-facto act of war and may unleash serious
consequences, including a profound revision of
Turkiye’s presence inside NATO.
Iran’s
multi-track strategy
A Russia-Iran strategic
alliance manifests itself practically as a
historical inevitability. It recalls the time
when the erstwhile USSR helped Iran militarily
via North Korea, after an enforced US/Europe
blockade.
Putin and Raeisi are
taking it to the next level. Moscow and Tehran
are developing a joint strategy to defeat the
weaponization of sanctions by the collective
West.
Iran, after all, has an
absolutely stellar record of smashing variants
of “maximum pressure” to bits. Also, it is now
linked to a strategic nuclear umbrella offered
by the “RICs” in BRICS (Russia, India, China).
So, Tehran may now plan
to develop its massive economic potential within
the framework of BRI, SCO, INSTC, the Eurasia
Economic Union (EAEU), and the Russian-led
Greater Eurasia Partnership.
Moscow’s game is pure
sophistication: engaging in a high-level
strategic oil alliance with Saudi Arabia while
deepening its strategic partnership with Iran.
Immediately after
Patrushev’s visit, Tehran announced the
development of an indigenously built hypersonic
ballistic missile, quite similar to the Russian
KH-47 M2 Khinzal.
And the other significant
news was connectivity-wise: the completion of
part of a railway from strategic Chabahar Port
to the border with Turkmenistan. That means
imminent direct rail connectivity to the Central
Asian, Russian and Chinese spheres.
Add to it the predominant
role of OPEC+, the development of BRICS+, and
the pan-Eurasian drive to pricing trade,
insurance, security, investments in the ruble,
yuan, rial, etc.
There’s also the fact
that Tehran could not care less about the
endless collective West procrastination on the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),
commonly known as Iran nuclear deal: what really
matters now is the deepening relationship with
the “RICs” in BRICS.
Tehran refused to sign a
tampered-with EU draft nuclear deal in Vienna.
Brussels was enraged; no Iranian oil will “save”
Europe, replacing Russian oil under a
nonsensical cap to be imposed next month.
And Washington was
enraged because it was betting on internal
tensions to split OPEC.
Considering all of the
above, no wonder US ‘Think Tankland’ is behaving
like a bunch of headless chickens.
The queue to join
BRICS
During the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in
Samarkand last September, it was already tacit
to all players how the Empire is cannibalizing
its closest allies.
And how, simultaneously,
the shrinking NATO-sphere is turning inwards,
with a focus on The Enemy Within, relentlessly
corralling average citizens to march in lockstep
behind total compliance with a two-pronged war –
hybrid and otherwise – against imperial peer
competitors Russia and China.
Now compare it with
Chinese President Xi Jinping in Samarkand
presenting China and Russia, together, as the
top “responsible global powers” bent on securing
the emergence of multipolarity.
Samarkand also reaffirmed
the strategic political partnership between
Russia and India (Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi called it an unbreakable friendship).
That was corroborated by
the meeting between Lavrov and his Indian
counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar last week in
Moscow.
Lavrov praised the
strategic partnership in every crucial area –
politics, trade and economics, investment, and
technology, as well as “closely coordinated
actions” at the UN Security Council, BRICS, SCO
and the G20.
On BRICS, crucially,
Lavrov confirmed that “over a dozen countries”
are lining up for membership, including Iran:
“We expect the work on coordinating the criteria
and principles that should underlie BRICS
expansion to not take much time”.
But first, the five
members need to analyze the ground-breaking
repercussions of an expanded BRICS+.
Once again: contrast.
What is the EU’s “response” to these
developments? Coming up with yet another
sanctions package against Iran, targeting
officials and entities “connected with security
affairs” as well as companies, for their alleged
“violence and repressions”.
“Diplomacy”,
collective West-style, barely registers as
bullying.
Back to the real economy
– as in the gas front – the national interests
of Russia, Iran and Turkiye are increasingly
intertwined; and that is bound to influence
developments in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, and will
be a key factor to facilitate Erdogan’s
re-election next year.
As it stands, Riyadh for
all practical purposes has performed a stunning
180-degree maneuver against Washington via
OPEC+. That may signify, even in a twisted way,
the onset of a process of unification of Arab
interests, guided by Moscow.
Stranger things have
happened in modern history. Now appears to be
the time for the Arab world to be finally ready
to join the Quad that really matters: Russia,
India, China, and Iran.
Press TV’s website can
also be accessed at the following alternate
addresses:
www.presstv.ir
www.presstv.co.uk
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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