Elon Musk has announced that he is helping to smuggle hundreds of Starlink satellite communications devices into Iran. The South African-born billionaire made the admission on December 26, replying to a tweet lauding female Iranian protesters for refusing to cover their hair. “Approaching 100 Starlinks active in Iran”, he tweeted, clearly implying a political motivation to his work.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a meeting in Sochi (File photo)In his second coming as Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has hit the ground running. The international climate in which he skilfully operated for close to 15 years in two stints as prime minister has changed beyond recognition.
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister likened the US-backed parliamentary coup that removed him from power in April 2022 to the violent CIA operation that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953.
A ship passing passing through a gate on the Volga-Don Shipping Canal, Russia (File photo)Consequent upon the Ukraine war, as the Sea of Azov becomes an inland sea for Russia, bracketed by the Crimean Peninsula and the mouth of the River Don, the sea and rail networks of the region extend to Iranian hubs on the Caspian Sea and ultimately lead to the Indian Ocean. A feature article in Bloomberg last week titled Russia and Iran Are Building a Trade Route That Defies Sanctions brings to centre stage this “sanctions-busting” project in the region.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell (L) with Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian, Tehran, July 27, 2022. (File photo)The European Union has returned to the ritual of sanctioning Iran to leverage its foreign and security policies. The highlight of the EU Foreign Affairs Council ministerial meeting in Brussels on Monday was the imposition of sanctions against Iran over a range of issues.
The mainstream media, politicians, and celebrities brought into a lie about Iran preparing to kill 15,000 protesters this week. The original story came from the UK-based, Saudi-funded Iran International news outlet.
Ali Shamkhani (L), representative of Supreme Leader and secretary of Supreme National Security Council, met Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Tehran, Nov. 9, 2022Ignoring the hype in the US media about White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Kissingerian diplomacy over Ukraine, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, former KGB counterintelligence officer and longstanding associate of President Putin, travelled to Tehran last Wednesday in the equivalent of a knockout punch in geopolitics.
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A police officer inspects parts of a drone at the site of a Russian strike on fuel storage facilities, Kharkiv, Ukraine, Oct 6, 2022The manner in which Tehran handled its drone deal with Russia has been somewhat clumsy. The fact that the first ‘leak’ on this topic originated from none other than President Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan should have alerted Tehran that something sinister was afoot.
Over the last weeks there were some riots in Iran. At first there were protest about the falsely reported death of a young women, Mahsa Amini, who had suddenly collapsed (video) while waiting in a police station. She died a few days later. Mahsa Amini had previously had brain surgery and her collapse and death were related to that, not to police action.
[Source: theguardian.com]In an era increasingly awash with political instability, the latest protests in Iran are yet another manifestation of the plague of Western imperialism. The sudden death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini and the unclear circumstances surrounding her death have precipitated a remarkable global response condemning the Iranian government as well as purporting to champion the rights of Iranian women in defiance of Islamic fundamentalism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and then Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at G20 summit, Hangzhou, Sept. 5, 2016, where they planned an oil output task force that fructified as OPEC+The news that made the headline today is that the Biden Administration may have inched closer to restarting the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Meanwhile, it escaped attention that Iran’s oil minister Javad Owji said just a day earlier in Tehran following a meeting with Igor Levitin, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s senior aide, that the two countries have finalised their talks on “gas purchase and swap” and a contract is going to be signed in Moscow.
Chairman of Turkey’s left-wing and nationalist Patriotic Party, Dogu Perincek is reportedly leading a delegation to Damascus (File photo)Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev regarding the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand on September 15-16. This must be the fourth or fifth time the two leaders confabulated over the upcoming event. One lost count!
Author Salman Rushdie, an ‘X’ factor in JCPOA (File photo)In an interview on The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro Show, the former prime minister of Israel — and the likely next PM — Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Sunday that he had an ingenuous Plan B for forcing regime change in Iran. Netanyahu said, “With low-flying satellites” and other miniature devices, “you might break their (regime’s) hold—their monopoly on information. That begins to challenge them.”
Iranian envoy to the IAEA in Vienna, Mohsen Naziri Asl, leaves Palais Coburg, venue of closed-door nuclear talks, August 5, 2022From the look of it, the US-Iran rapprochement is getting on to a bumpy start. The usage ‘rapprochement’ is deliberate — and will be disputed — because in the near term at least, what can be expected if an agreement is indeed reached in Vienna, which is an open question, can only be a state of cordial relations between the two countries, no longer hostile but not yet friendly either.
U.S. oil giant Chevron plunders natural gas from the stolen waters off PalestineJoe Biden didn’t go to Arabia in July to beg for oil. That’s not the nature of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
He didn’t go to Palestine to promote peace. The U.S.-Israeli relationship is based on endless war. And war is what Biden’s trip was about.
A report recently published on the RT Arabic website reveals details of the recent landmark meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the Iranian capital Tehran.
Iran’s Chief of the General Staff of Armed Forces Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri (L) and Commander of the Army Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi visiting an underground drone base in western Zagros Mountains, May 28, 2022When the US National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan first spoke about a potential Iran-Russian drone deal, Moscow kept quiet and Tehran issued a pro forma rebuttal, which, taken together, suggested that it is a work in progress. Sullivan’s disclosure appeared at the fag-end of a White House briefing for President Biden’s forthcoming West Asia tour to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and seemed to have an element of grandstanding aimed at fuelling the latent anti-Iran sentiments in the Gulf region that could, in turn, inject some degree of contemporaneity to POTUS’ signal project to cobble together an Israeli-Arab military front in the region.
In March this year we were treated to an onslaught of obviously false claims that China would deliver weapons to Russia for the fight in Ukraine.
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Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani (R) with EU envoy Enrique Mora who will shuttle between the US and Iranian sides at the talks in Doha, Qatar, which began on June 28, 2022There could be a feeling of déjà vu over the news that indirect talks began between the United States and Iran under the mediation of the European Union (EU) in the Qatari capital Doha on Tuesday. Is any positive outcome to be expected in terms of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA)? Quite likely. The reason for saying so is that there is a confluence of circumstances today, internal and external, that gives hope.
By Pepe Escobar
At St. Petersburg on Friday, backers of multipolarity pushed forward integration of their networks * Photo Credit: The CradleThe St. Petersburg International Economic Forum has been configured for years now as absolutely essential to understand the evolving dynamics and the trials and tribulations of Eurasia integration.
St. Petersburg in 2022 is even more crucial as it directly connects to three simultaneous developments I had previously outlined, in no particular order:
The New Dark Age 