Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
The Gaza warfare has accelerated cooperation between World South behemoths resisting western-backed battle. Collectively, the Russian-led BRICS and Iran-led Axis of Resistance can form a US-free West Asia…
Final week, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a notable pit cease within the UAE and Saudi Arabia to satisfy, respectively, Emirati President Mohammad bin Zayed (MbZ) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) earlier than flying again to Moscow to satisfy Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The three key points in all three conferences, confirmed by diplomatic sources, have been Gaza, OPEC+, and BRICS enlargement. They’re, after all, interlinked.
The Russia-Iran strategic partnership is growing at breakneck velocity, alongside Russia-Saudi Arabia (particularly on OPEC+) and Russia-UAE (investments). That is already resulting in stark shifts in protection interconnection throughout West Asia. The long-term implications for Israel, method past the Gaza tragedy, are stark.
Putin informed Raisi one thing that was extraordinary on so many ranges:
“After I was flying over Iran, I wished to land in Tehran and to satisfy you. However I used to be knowledgeable that you simply wished to go to Moscow. Relations between our international locations are rising quickly. Please convey my greatest needs to the Supreme Chief, who helps our relationships.”
Putin’s reference to “flying over Iran” immediately connects with 4 armed Sukhoi Su-35s flying in formation, escorting the presidential airplane over 4,000 km (if measured as a straight line) from Moscow to Abu Dhabi, with none touchdown or refueling.
As each shocked navy analyst remarked, an American F-35 is able to flying at greatest 2,500 km with out refueling. But crucial factor is that each MbZ and MbS licensed the Russian Su-35s escorts over their territory – which is one thing extraordinarily uncommon in diplomatic circles.
And that leads us to the important thing takeaway. With a single transfer on the aerial chessboard, compounded with the next clincher with Raisi, Moscow completed 4 duties:
Putin proved – graphically talking – that it is a new West Asia the place the US hegemon is a secondary actor; destroyed the neocon political fantasy of Russian “isolation;” demonstrated ample navy supremacy; and lastly, as the beginning of Russia’s BRICS presidency approaches, confirmed that it retains all its essential geopolitical and geoeconomic playing cards.
Kill them, however softly
The unique 5 BRICS – led by the Russia-China strategic partnership – will open their doorways to 3 main West Asian powers Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE on 1, January, 2024. Their accession to the multipolar powerhouse gives these international locations an distinctive platform for broader markets, and is prone to accompany a flurry of investments and tech exchanges.
The long-term, refined sport performed by Russia-China is main to a whole, tectonic change within the geoeconomics and geopolitics of West Asia.
BRICS 10 management – contemplating that the eleventh member, Argentina, for the second, is a wild card at greatest – even has the potential, underneath a Russian presidency, to turn out to be an efficient counterpart to the toothless UN.
And that leads us to the advanced interplay between BRICS and the Axis of Resistance.
At first, there have been causes to suspect that the bland condemnation of the genocide in Gaza by the Arab League and the Group of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was an indication of cowardice.
But a renewed appraisal might reveal every part is evolving organically on the subject of the intersection of the Huge Image designed by the late Iranian Quds Drive Commander Common Qassem Soleimani with the meticulous micro-planning by Gaza’s Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who is aware of the Israeli mentality inside out and regarded intimately its devastating navy response.
Arguably, essentially the most incandescent focus of detailed discussions in Moscow these previous few days is that we could also be approaching the purpose the place “a sign” will unleash a concerted Axis of Resistance response.
For the second, what we’ve are sporadic assaults: Hezbollah destroying Israel’s communication towers dealing with the southern Lebanon border, Iraq’s resistance forces attacking US bases in Iraq and Syria, and Yemen’s Ansarallah concretely blocking the Crimson Sea for Israeli ships. All that doesn’t type a concerted, coordinated offensive – but.
And that will clarify the desperation throughout the Biden administration in Washington, full with rumors that it wants Israel to complete Plan Gaza between Christmas and the beginning of January. Not solely have the worldwide optics of the Gaza assault turn out to be horrifyingly unsustainable, however most of all, a lengthier navy marketing campaign dramatically raises the probability of a “sign” to the Axis of Resistance.
And that may end result ultimately of all of the Hegemon’s elaborate plans for West Asia.
The geopolitical targets of Zionism are fairly clear: re-establish its self-constructed aura of dominance in West Asia and preserve regular management over US overseas coverage and the navy alliance.
Depravity is a key part for engaging in these targets. It’s really easy to bomb, shell, and burn ultra-soft civilian targets, together with 1000’s of girls and youngsters, turning Gaza into an enormous cemetery, whereas the White Man’s Burden Membership urges Israeli occupation forces to kill them, after all, however extra silently.
Cue to poisonous Atlanticist and European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen providing bribes, in particular person, to Egypt’s and Jordan’s leaders – $10 billion to Cairo and $5 billion to Amman – as confirmed with Brussels diplomats. That’s the mind-numbing EU resolution to stopping the Gaza genocide.
All Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah bin al-Hussein would want to do is to “facilitate” the pressured exodus and Last Ethnic Cleaning of Gaza to their respective territories.
As a result of the eschatological objective of Zionism stays an undiluted Last Answer, no matter occurs within the battleground. And, after all, because the 7 October Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood operation suggests, to destroy Jerusalem’s Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque and construct a Jewish Third Temple on high of its ashes.
What occurs when “the sign” comes
So what we’ve is basically Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Emigration-or-Annihilation plan – versus what veteran West Asia knowledgeable Alastair Crooke has memorably coined as “Sykes-Picot is useless.” That phrase implies that Arab and Iranian inclusion in BRICS will ultimately rewrite the principles in West Asia, to the detriment of the Zionist mission.
There’s even a powerful chance this time round that Israel’s licensed warfare crimes in Gaza shall be prosecuted, as Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslim-majority nations, with full BRICS assist, type a World South-recognized fee to take Tel Aviv and its armed forces to court docket.
Overlook the contaminated ICC, servile because it stays to the Hegemon’s Guidelines-Primarily based Order. The BRICS will assist usher worldwide regulation again to the forefront of the worldwide scene, as supposed when the UN was born in 1945 earlier than it was castrated.
The Gaza genocide can be forcing all latitudes alongside the World South to be extra inclusive – as in delving into the knowledge of our frequent, intertwined pre-modern historical past. Everybody with a conscience has been pressured to dig deeply into oneself to search out explanations for the Inexcusable. On this sense, we’re all Palestinians now.
Because it stands, no energy – the west as a result of it refuses it; the BRICS and the World South as a result of they haven’t but made their play – has been able to stopping a Last Answer performed by a racist, ethnocentrist ideology.
But that additionally opens the startling chance that no energy shall be sturdy sufficient to cease the Axis of Resistance when the “sign” involves pull the curtain down on the Zionist Undertaking. By that point, the Axis could have a supreme ethical crucial, acknowledged, even urged, by populations globally.
In order that’s the place we are actually: evaluating the incandescent symmetry between impotence and crucial. The impasse shall be damaged – maybe prior to all of us anticipate.
That evokes a comparability with a earlier impasse. The present deadlock between a perverse, trashy model of Hebraic “civilization” and rising Islamic nationalism – let’s name it “civilizational Islam” – mirrors the place we have been in December 2021, when Russian-proposed treaties on the “indivisibility of safety” have been turned down by Washington. In hindsight, that was the final probability for a peaceable method out of the conflict between the Heartland and the Rimland.
The Hegemon rejected it. Russia made its play – and accelerated exponentially the decline of the Hegemon.
The tune stays the identical, from the steppes of Donbas to the oil fields of West Asia. How can the multipolar World South – more and more represented by the expanded BRICS – handle a raging, fearful, out-of-control imperialist west staring into the abyss of ethical, political, and monetary collapse?
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