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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
The Ukraine Conflict Has Moved Into Russia, and Russia’s Agreement with Iran Is a Big Zero
The Ukraine Conflict Has Moved Into Russia, and Russia’s Agreement with Iran Is a Big Zero
Paul Craig Roberts
Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is no longer limited to Donbas. The war has not moved deep into Ukraine, but it has moved deep into Russia. According to Russian and Ukrainian news reports, last week the US and NATO attacked Russian cities and facilities with hundreds of missiles and drones launched from Ukraine. Industrial and military facilities and oil refineries were targeted, fuel supplies destroyed, and Russian schools in three cities were forced to close. The cities that experienced the US/NATO attacks were Engels, Saratov, Kazan, Bryansk, and Tula. These are attacks deep into Russia, bringing war into the Volga region and Tatarstan Republic. There is no reason to believe that the air attacks on Russia will cease because Ukraine is defeated in Donbas.
It is the most extraordinary thing that Putin prefers Russian cities to be attacked than to use sufficient force to bring the Ukrainian conflict to an end. How do Russians feel safe when school children far from Ukraine are subjected to air attack?
Thinking about this raised the question whether it has occurred to Putin and the Russian general staff that Washington might be using these attacks to map Russian air defense locations and to conditionRussia to air attacks, catching Russia off guard when the missiles arrive with nuclear instead of conventional warheads. Everyone talks about Ukraine’s collapse, but the missiles keep hitting deeper into Russia. Are these attacks collapsing Russians’ confidence in Putin?
It really is extraordinary that Putin tolerates the US/NATO to use proxies to attack Russian cities. Has Putin forgot his statement that Russia will never again fight a war on its own territory?
It is equally extraordinary that Russia continues to supply Washington and NATO countries with energy and strategic minerals such as enriched uranium, faces Washington’s likely destruction of the TurkStream pipeline, and never held Washington responsible for the destruction of the NordStream pipeline. The phenomenon of supplying one’s enemies who are conducting war against you is a new one to me. Ukrainians in German tanks rolled into Kursk, and Putin wants to sell energy to Germany.
Whatever this is, it is not a serious or responsible approach to war. It is the responsibility of a war leader to get the war over quickly, not to drag it out longer than it took Stalin to clear the Wehrmacht out of Russia, Eastern Europe and occupy Berlin once the Russian counteroffensive began.
What Putin needed was the West’s fear of Russia militarily. Instead, he has convinced the West that Russia has no red lines.
In the interest of peace, I have long advocated a Russian-Iranian-Chinese mutual defense treaty like NATO. Apparently, the governments are too timid or too distrustful of one another–and, if the latter, have made the mistake of showing their mutual distrust to Washington–to unify against aggression.
Instead of a meaningful agreement, last Friday Putin signed with Iran a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement” that far misses what is needed. The agreement affirms that “Our countries firmly uphold the principles of the supremacy of international law, the sovereignty of states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries,” Putin said.
But so what? It is difficult to believe that Putin and Iran do not yet know that the West could not care less about international law, sovereignty, and non-interference. What does Putin think the West is doing in Ukraine, with sanctions, with proxy attacks on Russian cities? Where in the Middle East does Iran not see the West’s interference?
The security and defense provision is limited to “if one of the parties is subjected to aggression, the other should not provide any assistance to the aggressor.”
It is a toothless agreement. Russian and Iranian cultural exchanges, exchanges of military delegations, and port calls by warships do not comprise discouragement of, or protection from, the West’s aggression. John Helmer describes it as “a declaration of maybe–we promise to be nice to each other, when possible, perhaps.” https://johnhelmer.net/the-pistachio-pact-is-the-russian-iranian-strategic-agreement-the-nut-or-the-shell/
Some commentators have explained away the toothless security clause on the grounds that Russia and Iran see the Middle East differently and Iran’s conflicts could be outside the range of Russia’s interests. This is an unimaginative explanation. If Iran falls like Syria, Libya, Iraq, Washington will be funneling jihadists into the Russian Federation. As a buffer for Russia, Iran is as important, if not more so, than Ukraine. It is extraordinary that Putin doesn’t see this.
We don’t know whether Trump will try to disengage from Washington’s war against Russia in Ukraine or whether Trump’s pro-Zionist appointees will agitate for war against Iran. But Iran should have stressed in the agreement negotiations that Trump’s senior officials are declared enemies of Iran and tried to get a bit more out of Putin than Russia’s promise not to aid the West in an attack on Iran.
Putin might have a secret plan that he disguises with the appearance of weakness. If so, the risk he is taking is that what Washington perceives is weakness. The danger that has long concerned me is that Washington seeing weakness will push too hard, forcing Putin to fight or surrender. I doubt that the Russian military would allow him to surrender.