By Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor on
February 7, 2016
by F. William Engdahl, …with New Eastern Outlook, Moscow
Ancient Persia
[ Editor’s Note: The post sanctions Iran period
is rolling out just like we expected with a flurry of international trade contracts
being signed way over $100 billion.
Far in the rear view mirror is the
sound of the endlessly ignorant mantra of “all options are on the table” in
threatening Iran with a preemptive strike, which the Israelis were just itching
to be part of.
Now it is Iran that has all options
on the table, but these are not military threats, but the kind of cross trade
agreements that build economic and friendship bridges and decreases the chances
of war. The US could have taken this route itself, but our military industrial
complex people and their international gangster friends would have none of
that.
Mr. Engdahl gives a good overview of China making its
grand tour of this troubled region and a retrospective of the evolving
relationships of the key players. Eurasia has been his bailiwick of many
decades now, having traveled there extensively. Gordon and I had
been scheduled to attend their Habilian international conference for their
16,000 terror victims, but that went up in smoke when they did not get around
to visa finalization until the last minute.
Gordon would have had to leave for
the airport to make his plane before FedEx arrived, so months of promoting the
conference and our both submitting terrorism research papers went up in smoke —
all part of ups and downs of trying to get a lot done.
Now they are issuing everyone 30-day
tourist visas when they land, something we strongly felt they should have
done for invited conference guests who supported tearing down the Iran
nuclear weapons hoax. So
seeing the ancient land will wait until another day… Jim W. Dean ]
____________
Persia offers its own time machine to
visit our past
– First
published … February 03, 2016 –
Thanks to US sanctions and NATO aggression,
Eurasia will form a powerful military defense block with a huge population.
Sometimes profound tectonic shifts in the global
politics arise from least noticed events. Such is the situation with Iran and
the recent visit to Teheran of China’s President Xi Jinping. What emerged from
the talks confirms that the vital third leg of what will become a genuine
Eurasian Golden Triangle, of nations committed to peaceful economic
development, is now in place.
Now Iran, Russia and China have all
indicated a will to cooperate that has the potential to change the current
Western course of wars and destruction in favor of peace and cooperation.
Consider some aspects of recent events since lifting of economic sanctions on
Teheran only days ago.
What emerges in the public
announcements following talks between China’s President and all top Iranian
leaders from Prime Minister Rouhani to Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani
and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, merely hints at what is clearly a
profound shift in the relations between China and Iran.
On January 23, an official Chinese Xinhua news agency
statement on Xi’s Iran trip, the first by any Chinese leader in fourteen years,
declared the visit will, “lift their ties to a comprehensive strategic
partnership.”
In Teheran the Chinese President
noted, “China stands ready to work with Iran to seize the momentum and further
elevate our relationship and practical cooperation, so as to usher in a new
chapter for our ties featuring comprehensive, long-term and stable development.”
Developing
the economic fibers
The New Silk Road will not look like
the old one
The content of that cooperation is
of a major geopolitical and geo-economical importance for not merely Eurasia,
but for the world. Iran has just formally requested to join the world’s most
important infrastructure project, China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, often
called the New Silk Road Economic Initiative.
The New Silk Road initiative was
first proposed during a September 2013 meeting in Astana between Xi and
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan today is also a member
with Russia of the Eurasian Economic Union and also of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization. Keep these various threads of an evolving economic fiber in mind
as we proceed.
Since that initial 2013 discussion in
Astana, the One Belt, One Road has begun to transform the political and
economic map of all Eurasia. Last year in talks in Moscow just prior to the May
9 Russian Victory Day celebrations, where Xi was a specially honored guest,
Vladimir Putin announced that the Eurasian Economic Union–Russia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan–will formally integrate its own infrastructure
development with China’s New Economic
Silk Road.
Now the formal addition of Iran to the expanding
Eurasian Silk Road is a giant positive step. It will allow Iran to break years
of economic isolation and Western sanctions, and to do so over land where NATO
color revolutions and other shenanigans are rendered largely impotent. It will
open for the rest of Eurasia, especially China, but also Russia, vast new economic
potentials.
Iran’s
extraordinary resources
They are ready to take their place in
the world
Iran has a young, educated population of
more than 80 million, more than half under 35 years old, and a strategic land
expanse twice the size of the state of Texas. It has the ninth highest literacy
rate in the world–82% of the adult population, and 97% among young adults
between 15 and 24 without gender discrepancy.
Iran has 92 universities, 512 online
University branches, and 56 research and technology institutes around the
country with almost four million university students, one million of them
medical students.
One third or 31% are studying in
Engineering and construction programs, one of the highest rates in the world. Iran
today is not the primitive backwater many American policymakers imagine it to
be. I’ve witnessed that first hand.
The country has also been blessed
with vast undeveloped economic resources, not only its huge reserves of oil and
natural gas. It is situated adjacent to Armenia and Azerbaijan on the north,
Afghanistan and Pakistan on the east, and Iraq and Turkey on the west. The
Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman lie south, and the Caspian Sea—the largest
inland body of water in the world—lies to the north, giving Iran most of the
water needed for its agriculture.
In terms of other natural resources
it has one of the world’s largest copper reserves, as well as bauxite, coal,
iron ore, lead, and zinc. Iran also has valuable deposits of aluminum,
chromite, gold, manganese, silver, tin, and tungsten, as well as various
gemstones, such as amber, agate, lapis lazuli, and turquoise. It’s a beautiful,
rich country, as I can personally attest.
Now, by connecting the country to the expanding
network of high-speed rail infrastructure in Eurasia’s One Belt, One Road,
Iran’s future will become firmly tied to the most vibrant economic space on the
planet–Eurasia–from the Pacific to India to Russia and, whenever the EU decides
to stop being suicidal vassals to a Washington gone mad, also to Europe.
Notably, the peaceful economic
relations between Iran and China go back some 2,000 years, when Persia was a
key part of the ancient Silk Road trade route from China to the west. That fact
was underscored by President XI. For the past six years, China has been Iran’s
largest trading partner, which, despite western sanctions, reached $52 billion
in 2014. That is now set to vastly increase, as Western sanctions are gone.
Iran as
NATO pawn?
NATO seems to have a twisted view of
its original defense mandate
There are some who have speculated in
recent months that, with US sanctions now lifted, Iran will become a pawn of
Washington geopolitical games. While the Obama Administration clearly would
relish the prospect, it will not happen.
A recent event that has been covered
up in Western, especially USA media coverage, illustrates Iran’s clear intent
to defend its autonomy and sovereignty, much as her allies China and Russia do,
all to the chagrin of NATO and the Pentagon.
In early January Iran seized two US
Navy small ships that had violated its territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
They were captured and boarded and the 10 sailors on board taken into custody
before being released, unharmed, allowed to continue their journey in their own
boats. Their boats had “wandered” into Iranian territorial waters around Farsi
Island.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter
claimed it was “apparently” because of mechanical and navigational failure.
Farsi is the home base for the naval wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps,
in the center of the Gulf. Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the naval
branch of the Revolutionary Guard, publicly agreed with Carter, stating to
press, “They were positioned in that area due to the failure of their
navigation systems and they were not aware of being close to Farsi Island.”
Admiral Ali Fadavi was being
diplomatic and more than a bit coy. Farsi Island is one of the most strategic
bases in Iran, home to Iran’s maritime unconventional warfare force. The US
claims that their two boats “lost” their GPS satellite abilities at precisely
the same time, and the Secretary of Defense claims that he isn’t sure what
happened?
That the two boats also lost radio
communication and all other communication during the incident, is a huge
embarrassment for the US Navy, who only recently described Iran as an
“ox-cart technology
culture.”
The loss of all communication equipment and GPS
systems on two US Navy boats at the same time means one thing: Iran has
developed highly sophisticated electronic means to blind the GPS guidance
systems essential to all operations of the world’s most powerful navy. Iran is no ox cart technology culture.
This Marine boat event was handled
very quickly
In cooperation with Russia and Syria in
the war to defeat ISIS, Iran has demonstrated it is no push-over as was Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq in 2003. And, despite years of US sanctions, Iran today in
military terms is not comparable to Iran during the US-instigated Iran-Iraq war
in the 1980’s.
The recent incident recalls the event
on December 4, 2011 when a US a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone, the
premier spy drone in the US fleet, crashed into the Iranian countryside. Iran
claimed its electronic warfare unit brought the plane down. Washington laughed.
Iran was right.
They didn’t just down the aircraft, they
took control of it mid-flight:
“Using its knowledge of the frequency Iran initiated
its ‘electronic ambush’ by jamming the bird’s communications frequencies,
forcing it into auto-pilot. By putting noise [jamming] on the communications,
you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.’”
Iran managed to guide the drone to a
peaceful landing inside Iran with the drone “believing” it was Afghanistan.
This most recent Iranian capture of two US Navy boats well in Iranian waters by
sophisticated electronic jamming says that Iran is hardly bowing before the
temple of Washington power. She has become a very formidable military force.
This ability for self-defense is very important in today’s hostile world.
SCO
membership
Now, with Iran a formal partner in
the Eurasian New Silk Road infrastructure development, and with US sanctions
finally lifted, Iran will certainly be formally admitted as a full member of
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at their next annual meeting this summer.
Iran currently has SCO Observer
status. Presently SCO members include China, Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and most recently, India and Pakistan.
In coming months the SCO, if present
dynamics continue, will form the seed crystal of an emerging unified Eurasia,
cooperating economically, politically, and importantly, militarily, as well as
in counter-terrorism. It will tend to become the forum where vital issues among
all SCO member nations will be worked out, as the Chinese are fond of saying,
on a “win-win” manner.
We’re seeing the emergence of a true
Eurasian Golden Triangle with China, Russia and Iran as the three key points.
With the stated plan to route the
Silk Road rail infrastructure to assist the mining of new gold for currency
backing of the Eurasian member states, including now Iran with its significant
own unexploited gold, the hyper-inflated, debt-bloated dollar system is gaining
a formidable positive alternative, one committed to peace and development.
Isn’t that a nice prospect?
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and
lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University
and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the
online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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