IRAN: Latest and Breaking News

nomadski wrote:
TMA1 wrote " I'm sorry, homie. We have so much culpability in all this. Can Russia work with the Iranian military to defend its borders? " Yes there is a lot that can be done , but most importantly Russia can mediate between Iran and neighbours right now , since there are suspicious adventurism by elements within Iran , aimed at starting a war and provocative elements internally also fomenting chaos . It will cost Russia nothing , just a bit of advice and security assistance .

The protesters are not voicing economic concerns , but political ones . Sure , if there was no sanctions and Iran had a positive economic growth and low unemployment then the Protests would not happen , or if they did , they would be smaller or happen in the future , with less anger and violence . Progress would then take place slowly and surely , without bloodshed . I see everyday people getting shot and killed , I am starting to feel very low in mood and angry , I think I am loosing my mind over this !

Question for you nomadski, are the Iranian Intelligence good enough to get to the root of this and get the people that are doing this(the ones they can get to?

China-brokered Iran-Saudi Deal Threatens to Push US Out of the Gulf and Washington Knows It, by Ilya Tsukanov for SputnikNews. 03.11.2023.

Negotiators from long-time regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia signed a surprise agreement in Beijing on Friday on the normalization of relations, the reopening of embassies and the resumption of cooperation on security, trade and investment. The deal, which came after years of grueling negotiations, was met with sour grapes in Washington.

The Biden administration’s utter lack of involvement in the negotiations which culminated in the Iran-Saudi diplomatic deal secured by China is a warning sign signaling the waning of Washington’s influence and power in the Middle East, virtually all major US media analyses covering the story have admitted.

"If this deal can be sustained – regardless of what the interest was or who sat down at the table – if it can be sustained, and the war in Yemen can end, and Saudi Arabia doesn’t have to continually try to defend itself against attacks from the Houthis who are funded and supported by Iran, in the end we welcome that,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a press briefing on Friday, putting a brave face on the sobering development.

“It really does remain to be seen whether the Iranians are going to honor their side of the deal,” Kirby repeated, adding that the US was engaged in its own “effective combination of deterrence and diplomacy” vis-à-vis Iran.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre echoed Kirby’s sentiments, telling reporters Friday that the US welcomed “any efforts to help end the war in Yemen and de-escalate tensions in the Middle East.”

"That is one of the reasons why the president – you saw him travel in – over the summer to have those conversations. De-escalation and diplomacy, together with deterrence, are key pillars of the policy that the president – that President Biden put out – outlined during his visit in July in the region,” the spokeswoman said.

But Friday’s rapprochement was about much more than just “ending the war in Yemen,” US media covering the story have admitted.

“Iran-Saudi Pact Is Brokered by China, Leaving US on Sidelines,” the New York Times’ headline read before being revised to “Chinese-Brokered Deal Upends Mideast Diplomacy and Challenges US.” The self-described paper of record indicated that the agreement signaled “at least a temporary reordering of the usual alliances and rivalries” in the region, and China’s growing global diplomatic clout, with Beijing said to have “suddenly transformed themselves into a new power player” out of a nation traditionally playing second fiddle to Washington. DC think tank analysts confirmed to the newspaper that the pact was “a big deal” and that the US had proven itself unable to broker an analogous agreement.

The Washington Post gave off similarly humdrum and depressing vibes, with the lead to its report reading “After decades of US failures in the region, China takes a turn as Middle East power broker.”

“What is notable of course is the decision to hand the Chinese a huge public relations victory – a photo op that is intended to demonstrate China’s newfound stature in the region,” Brookings Institution vice president Suzanne Maloney told WaPo. “In that sense, it would appear to be yet another Saudi slap in the face to the Biden administration.”

Business Insider took a more provocative approach, suggesting Riyadh’s move wasn’t so much a “slap in the face” as a “middle finger to Biden,” signaling a new low point in traditionally strong Saudi-US ties.

CNN, meanwhile, offered a curiously forthright reflection about the Iran-Saudi deal’s global implications in terms of the reordering of the world order away from US unipolarity, characterizing the agreement as a “signal” to “the start of a new era, with China front and center.”

“Unlike Washington, Beijing has shown an ability to transcend the many rivalries that criss-cross the Middle East. China has forged good diplomatic relations with countries across the region, driven by strengthening economic ties, without the Western lectures on human rights. In retrospect, Beijing has been poised to broker the conflict-ridden Middle East’s latest diplomatic breakthrough for years, simultaneously underscoring the US’ diminishing regional influence,” CNN’s story reads.

Beltway politics-focused outlet The Hill emphasized that the China-brokered deal further “undercuts the posture of the US in the region” after the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan and the purported paring down of the US troop presence in Syria. The only hope for the US, a think tank researcher told the outlet, was that the Saudis and the Iranians wouldn’t be able to put aside their differences for long.

"It remains to be seen if they can have a meaningful dialogue. Opening up embassies is not the same as having a meaningful dialogue,” Middle East Institute Iran program director Alex Vatanka said.

'Victory for Dialogue’

Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi hailed the Iran-Saudi deal a “victory for dialogue” and “a victory for piece,” calling it “significant good news” in a world wracked by violence and uncertainty.

The agreement is the product of many years of intense, behind the scenes negotiations by Iranian and Saudi diplomats, including the late Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US missile strike in Baghdad in January 2020 while engaging in Iraq-brokered indirect negotiations with Saudi officials.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have been regional rivals for decades, with tensions rising after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which brought to power an Islamic Republican government, sparking a bitter competition for leadership of the Islamic World. Tensions have been exacerbated by Riyadh’s traditional close ties with the United States, which Tehran formally dubs the “Great Satan.” The two countries broke off relations entirely in 2016 after the execution of a Shia Saudi cleric, and attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions inside the Islamic Republic, with Friday’s agreement meant to put an end to years of bad blood based on religious differences and geopolitics.

https://sputniknews.com/20230311/china-brokered-iran-saudi-deal-threatens-to-push-us-out-of-the-gulf-and-washington-knows-it-1108298905.html

Saudi Arabia's king invites Iranian president to visit Riyadh, 03.19.2023.

DOHA (Sputnik) - Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz has invited Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi to pay an official visit to Riyadh, deputy head of the Iranian Presidential Administration for Political Affairs Mohammad Jamshidi said on Sunday.

"King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, in his message to Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi, welcomed the agreement between the two brotherly countries to restore relations and invited the Iranian president for an official visit to Riyadh. The king called for stronger economic and regional cooperation between the two countries," Jamshidi wrote on his Twitter account.

He stressed that "the President of Iran, for his part, thanked King Salman for his invitation and reiterated Iran's readiness to strengthen cooperation."

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian announced early on Sunday that he would meet with his Saudi counterpart, after both countries agreed to resume relations.

On March 10, it was reported that Iran and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement on the resumption of diplomatic relations, providing for the mutual opening of embassies within two months. The respective joint statement was issued after several days of negotiations held in Beijing between the head of Iran's Higher National Security Council and his Saudi counterpart.

Yandex Translate from Spanish

https://sputniknews.lat/20230319/el-rey-de-arabia-saudi-invita-al-presidente-irani-a-visitar-riad-1137056437.html

Iran and Saudi Arabia: A Chinese Win-Win, by Pepe Escobar for The Cradle. 04.08.2023.

The idea that History has an endpoint, as promoted by clueless neoconservatives in the unipolar 1990s, is flawed, as it is in an endless process of renewal. The recent official meeting between Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Beijing marks a territory that was previously deemed unthinkable and which has undoubtedly caused grief for the War Inc. machine.

This single handshake signifies the burial of trillions of dollars that were spent on dividing and ruling West Asia for over four decades. Additionally, the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the fabricated reality of the new millennium, featured as prime collateral damage in Beijing.

Beijing’s optics as the capital of peace have been imprinted throughout the Global South, as evidenced by a subsequent sideshow where a couple of European leaders, a president, and a Eurocrat, arrived as supplicants to Xi Jinping, asking him to join the NATO line on the war in Ukraine. They were politely dismissed.

Still, the optics were sealed: Beijing had presented a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine that was branded “irrational” by the Washington beltway neocons. The Europeans – hostages of a proxy war imposed by Washington – at least understood that anyone remotely interested in peace needs to go through the ritual of bowing to the new boss in Beijing.

The irrelevance of the JCPOA


Tehran-Riyadh relations, of course, will have a long, rocky way ahead – from activating previous cooperation deals signed in 1998 and 2001 to respecting, in practice, their mutual sovereignty and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

Everything is far from solved – from the Saudi-led war on Yemen to the frontal clash of Persian Gulf Arab monarchies with Hezbollah and other resistance movements in the Levant. Yet that handshake is the first step leading, for instance, to the Saudi foreign minister’s upcoming trip to Damascus to formally invite President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab League summit in Riyadh next month.

It’s crucial to stress that this Chinese diplomatic coup started way back with Moscow brokering negotiations in Baghdad and Oman; that was a natural development of Russia stepping in to help Iran save Syria from a crossover NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coalition of vultures.

Then the baton was passed to Beijing, in total diplomatic sync. The drive to permanently bury GWOT and the myriad, nasty ramifications of the US war of terror was an essential part of the calculation; but even more pressing was the necessity to demonstrate how the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, had become irrelevant.

Both Russia and China have experienced, inside and out, how the US always manages to torpedo a return to the JCPOA, as it was conceived and signed in 2015. Their task became to convince Riyadh and GCC states that Tehran has no interest in weaponizing nuclear power – and will remain a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Then it was up to Chinese diplomatic finesse to make it quite clear that the Persian Gulf monarchies’ fear of revolutionary Shi’ism is now as counter-productive as Tehran’s dread of being harassed and/or encircled by Salafi-jihadis. It’s as if Beijing had coined a motto: drop these hazy ideologies, and let’s do business.

And business it is, and will be: better yet, mediated by Beijing and implicitly guaranteed by both nuclear superpowers Russia and China.

Hop on the de-dollarization train


Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) may exhibit some Soprano-like traits, but he’s no fool: he instantly saw how this Chinese offer morphed beautifully into his domestic modernization plans. A Gulf source in Moscow, familiar with MbS’ rise and consolidation of power, details the crown prince’s drive to appeal to the younger Saudi generation who idolize him. Let girls drive their SUVs, go dancing, let their hair down, work hard, and be part of the “new” Saudi Arabia of Vision 2030: a global tourism and services hub, a sort of Dubai on steroids.

And, crucially, this will also be a Eurasia-integrated Saudi Arabia; future, inevitable member of both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS+ – just like Iran, which will also be sitting at the same communal tables.

From Beijing’s point of view, this is all about its ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A key BRI connectivity corridor runs from Central Asia to Iran and then beyond, to the Caucasus and/or Turkey. Another one – in search of investment opportunities – runs through the Arabian Sea, the Sea of Oman, and the Persian Gulf, part of the Maritime Silk Road.

Beijing wants to develop BRI projects in both corridors: call it “peaceful modernization” applied to sustainable development. The Chinese always remember how the Ancient Silk Roads plied Persia and parts of Arabia: in this case, we have History Repeating Itself.

A geopolitical revolution

And then comes the Holy Grail: energy. Iran is a prime gas supplier to China, a matter of national security, inextricably linked to their $400 billion-plus strategic partnership deal. And Saudi Arabia is a prime oil supplier. Closer Sino-Saudi relations and interaction in key multipolar organizations such as the SCO and BRICS+ advance the fateful day when the petroyuan will be definitely enshrined.

China and the UAE have already clinched their first gas deal in yuan. The high-speed de-dollarization train has already left the station. ASEAN is already actively discussing how to bypass the dollar to privilege settlements in local currencies – something unthinkable even a few months ago. The US dollar has already been thrown into a death by a thousand cuts spiral.

And that will be the day when the game reaches a whole new unpredictable level.

The destructive agenda of the neocon leaders in charge of US foreign policy should never be underestimated. They exploited the 9/11 “new Pearl Harbor” pretext to launch a crusade against the lands of Islam in 2001, followed by a NATO proxy war against Russia in 2014. Their ultimate ambition is to wage war against China before 2025.

However, they are now facing a swift geopolitical and geoeconomic revolt of the World’s Heartland – from Russia and China to West Asia, and extrapolating to South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and selected latitudes in Latin America.

The turning point came on 26 February, 2022, when Washington’s neocons – in a glaring display of their shallow intellects – decided to freeze and/or steal the reserves of the only nation on the planet equipped with all the commodities that really matter, and with the necessary nous to unleash a momentous shift to a monetary system not anchored in fiat money.

That was the fateful day when the cabal, identified by journalist Seymour Hersh as responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, actually blew the whistle for the high-speed de-dollarization train to leave the station, led by Russia, China, and now – welcome on board – Iran and Saudi Arabia.

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/iran-and-saudi-arabia-a-chinese-win-win/