Both Russia and Iran are at war, and neither knows it.
Paul Craig Roberts
Russia is at war with Washington and Europe, a war that has vastly widened, but Putin thinks Russia is engaged in a Special Military Operation confined to the battlefront in Donbas.
Iran is at war, an existential war, with Satanic Israel, but the Iranian leadership thinks they are responding to an American “illegal military intervention.” All of Iran’s invective, threats, and vows are directed at Satanic America. Not a word about Satanic Israel, the cause of the conflict. America is just Israel’s proxy, as Ukraine is the West’s proxy against Russia.
As neither Russia nor Iran understand that they are engaged in existential wars, neither has a war plan to achieve victory.
Iran’s policy is to inconvenience the American empire with an oil shortage and vows to escalate Iran’s tits to America’s tats.
Russia’s policy is called TiT–Trust in Trump. John Helmer reports that the instructed Russian media and foreign policy analysts, who I suspect are financed by oligarchs, believe what they have invented as “the Anchorage spirit” has “given Russia a lot” by removing the US from direct participation in the conflict. https://johnhelmer.net/kremlin-orders-russian-gas-tanks-to-be-filled-with-more-anchorage-spirit-духа-анкориджа/
The implied hopes are in vain. What Trump has done is to turn over to Europe the arming of Ukraine with high-tech drones made in Germany that Ukraine, with US guidance and targeting information, is using to severely impact Russian oil production and refining, and to target and kill Russian civilians. Thus, the West has taken the war home to Russia. Currently, there is severe gasoline rationing in Crimea and long lines in some other Russian locations, and currently according to reports Russia is importing gasoline and diesel fuel from India. As for “trusting in Trump,” there are reports that Trump is considering allowing Zelensky to produce the US Patriot and Tomahawk missiles in Ukraine to provide more long-range weapons for strikes deep into Russia.
Russians have fled their summer holiday in Crimea where drone attacks are an everyday occurrence. St. Petersburg was under attack during the recent international meeting in the city, and Moscow’s mayor just reported that Ukraine, a.k.a., the West, launched 1,900 drones targeting Moscow in the past week. Russia is having to use its munitions to protect its capital, not to attack the enemy.
Putin, who insists that the conflict is limited to Donbas, refers to the increasingly successful attacks deep inside Russia as “terrorist actions.” Thus, Putin refuses to acknowledge them as acts of war, which relieves him of responsibility to do what Russian war doctrine requires. For example, Russian war doctrine at a minimum requires Russia to destroy the site of the German production of drones for Ukraine. In actually, Russian war doctrine requires a devastating nuclear attack on the United States. But as Washington knows that there is no threat from pusillanimous Putin, Washington knows Putin will not comply with Russia’s war doctrine. Putin proved this when he dismissed Washington’s attack on Russia’s strategic bomber force and on his home in an assassination attempt as merely “terrorist actions.”
Among the consequences of Putin’s denial of reality is the joining of NATO by Scandinavian countries that previously remained neutral, and the change in long-standing policy of Finland and Latvia to host on their territory on Russia’s border American nuclear weapons.
So, it is clear as day, it is indisputable, that Putin’s idiotic pretense that Russia is not really at war, only involved in a Special Military Operation in Donbas, is leaving Russia exposed to a much wider war. The Russian media and oligarch-sponsored “experts” describe the rising threat to Russia as a “successful negotiation.”
The Iranians, who had an equally strong upper hand as the Russians, have also thrown away their advantage. Once the Iranian government on the verge of total victory threw their victory away by rescuing their enemies from defeat by agreeing to a ceasefire, Iran left the door open for future conflict.
Ayatollah Khamenei stated: “The enemy must not sense any sign of weakness from us.” But it is signs of weakness that Iran sends.
Iran sits on its butt and permits American attacks, some of which are devastating on civilian infrastructure and civilian lives. Only then does Iran respond with disabling attacks on Washington’s bases in the Persian Gulf oil Sheikdoms and Jordan. This is nonsensical. A country that realized it was at war, would strike and wipe out the enemy bases from which it would be attacked. Not sit there and suffer the damage, as if it needs an excuse to respond.
But Iran only responds, after suffering destruction, to attacks. Iran has no war plan to defeat its enemies. This is a failure of Iranian leadership. And Russia’s is the same. The unwillingness of the two attacked countries to deal with reality is leading to two large wars.
Wherever one looks in the news reports, it is always about Iran’s and Russia’s responses to attacks. It is never about their initiative. For example, Iran promises: “We will raze to the ground the most valuable assets of American companies in all countries that host US bases.” https://www.rt.com/news/643193-iran-us-drone-ai-bahrain/
Why hasn’t Iran already done so? Why wait until after these assets have been used to destroy Iranian assets and kill Iranians?
“Iran tells Houthis to close Red Sea gateway if US hits power network, sources say.”
Why wait until your power network is hit before you respond? Why not protect your power network by hitting your enemy in a preemptive action, an action to win a war, not play a tit for tat game?
To be perfectly clear, neither Putin nor the Iranian leadership have shown the West and Israel any indication whatsoever that they are aware that they are involved in wars that intend their destruction and are so thoroughly witless that they do not even have war plans for engaging their enemies except in response to the enemy’s initiatives.
Unless Lady Luck smiles on Russia and Iran, neither country has much chance of survival as their leaderships have no grasp on reality.
Meanwhile, Putin sells out Iran by permitting Turkey to hand over the Russian S-400 air defense system to US allies in the Persian Gulf, thereby violating Russia’s treaty with Iran. The S-400 would restore the Israeli-American ability to protect their assets from Iranian retaliation. Thus, by waiting and deceiving itself, Iran has lost its advantage. Will defeat follow?
