Washington's idiotic ME foreign policy keeps benefiting Russia
The neocons in Washington are playing checkers, while Moscow is playing chess.
There is no strategy to help Russia gain influence in the Middle East. It just works out that way because of Washington's incompetence.
Yemen
The pro-secession Southern Transitional Council (STC) continues to expand their influence through southern Yemen. At this rate the Saudi-backed Hadi government only has weeks to live.
the preoccupation of the Hadi government with the challenge the secessionists pose in the south may give the Houthis an opportunity to increase their military pressure on Saudi Arabia. Given that the kingdom has failed to achieve any of the objectives it declared in March 2015, this pressure may force it to sue for peace. This most likely will result in the establishment of a Houthi-led state in northern Yemen and a vassal state supported by the UAE in the south, in effect putting the lie to the last few years of Saudi regional policy and seriously wounding Saudi credibility for the foreseeable future.
While the UAE would certainly benefit from the restoration of South Yemen, it's important to recall that South Yemen has it's own history and legacy.
“Moscow certainly could work with the STC and an independent South Yemen. It was South Yemen, after all, that had a pro-Soviet Marxist regime from South Yemen’s independence from Britain in 1967 until its unification with North Yemen in 1990 at the end of the Cold War. Many from the older generation of the South Yemeni elite studied in the USSR, and contacts between them and Russia continued,” Mark Katz, Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University, told Lobelog.
We should be about to see a new socialist government on the Arabian peninsula.
Syria
Washington's neocon f*ckups in Syria are too many to list here.
The most serious f*ckup could be their alienation of NATO ally Turkey, which appears to be about to invade north-east Syria.
Turkey fired the elected mayors of three major Kurdish-dominated cities in the country’s southeast and detained more than 400 people in a crackdown as it prepares to push a Syrian Kurdish militia away from its border.
In a conflict between Washington's NATO ally, and our Kurdish allies in Syria, who are helping to partition Syria, who do you think will benefit?
The calculation is that once Turkey launches its assault and the Americans are unable to provide a cover for them, the Kurds may turn to Russia, empowering Moscow to try to create the conditions for yet another attempt at a rapprochement between the Kurds and Bashar al-Assad’s government. Until now, Russia sees the Kurds as having adopted “maximalist positions” in their dealings with the Syrian government. “Of course, we’d like to avoid casualties.But the Turkish operation could, perhaps, help us settle some issues,” a senior Russian diplomat told the outlet Al-Monitor on the basis of anonymity. “If the Turks attack the Kurds, this may make the latter more flexible in terms of reaching an agreement with Damascus.”...In other words, Russia is willing to guarantee Kurdish rights in exchange for the U.S. departure and Assad reclaiming full control of Syria — a position based on the presumption that neither party trusts the Americans.
After watching the Turks ethnically cleanse Afrin province, it won't take much to convince the Kurds that they can't trust Washington.
Iran
Washington's embargo on Iranian oil has helped several other oil producing countries. One of those countries is Russia.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s sanctions against Iran and Venezuela have inadvertently increased demand for a Russian brand of crude oil, boosting revenues for the nation’s exporters.Russian oil companies received at least $905 million in additional revenues between November and July, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The Iranian oil embargo has also caused a rift between Washington and Europe, much to the delight of Moscow. The best example of this is INSTEX – Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges – a European special purpose vehicle (SPV) designed to keep trade with Iran flowing through barter and non-USD, non-SWIFT transactions. France recently offered Iran a $15B line of credit for using Instex.
Comments
Yemen
It seems that nowadays, as opposed to years back, the UAE and the US seems to be dancing together at least in certain respects. From Wikipedia:
Also from the linked Lobe Log article:
It seems there's gonna be a lot of trading partners at this dance.
And as a possible sidebar that might enter into the equation, the UAE has a really big presence in the world of international football. Arsenal and more than a few other teams including Real Madrid are at least partially sponsored by their state airline. And the UAE's Sheikh Mansour owns Manchester City.
Russia's diplomacy is 10x America's
While their military budget is 1/10. Russia has good relations with everyone in the ME, except the terrorists. Russia is tight with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, just about every country. The US divides the area up into friends and foes. Russia works with everyone. Russia only uses economic sanctions in symmetrical response, as in the EU. It is really clear that Russia's agenda is peace and the destruction or assimilation of terrorists. Russia always looks for diplomatic solutions first. The US was destroying ME country after country until Russia said enough and stopped it in Syria. What are the US goals in the ME? Anyone have any idea, other than chaos? Nobody trusts the US, for good reason. The US invasion of Iraq is a war crime. "Oops I made a mistake, he didn't have WMD" is not a defense. Walking away from the JPCOA with Iran was based on what? I doubt that many believe that Assad used poison gas on his own people. That was clearly a false flag. How did the massive organization of terrorists in the ME get organized, funded and armed? Eventually endlessly insane policies catch up on Washington. Are Washington policies making Russia look good? I say no, Russian diplomacy is making Russia look good, and US policies are destroying the US in the ME.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Russia not looking good with that nuclear explosion
. . . that killed at least five workers.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/13/europe/russia-missile-technology-kremlin-...
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/politics/nuclear-monitoring-stations-russ...
Hopefully, Putin learned something from the Chernobyl disaster. Maybe not:
edit/add:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/06/04/putins-media-struggle-to-deal-...
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/20/russia-says-it-wont-share-rock...
Well, I'm sorry
but I for one have no trouble at all believing that if an accidental nuclear explosion or melt down happened in this country our owners would not tell us the whole truth. I admit, I have not read your links or much about this but when I first saw a headline about it the hypocrisy of this country acting like this is something that would NEVER be done here in the good old Homeland came shining through for me. This country never hesitates to call out the horror of what other country's do to "their own people" while blithely ignoring what goes on here every single day.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
May I suggest
. . . that the best approach is not to trust any government's or any media version of events in and of itself?
Instead, read as widely and as critically as possible. Regarding this particular trajedy, read RT's version as well as the version put forth by the Moscow Times. I'll also be looking as to what Pussy Riot has to say about it.
Well if CNN reports it that means it is true
and I'm sure they had a response from Putin,or Lavrov, before they made that report.
And pigs fly.
"....Also, a nuclear incident has recently happened in Siberia. There are rumours about high radiation levels in the air. So, what tests have been done and what did the experts find?
Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: We have to get the geography straight. There were no incidents in Siberia. If you are referring to the North Sea, this is a whole different region of the Russian Federation. It is not under threat in any way, and background radiation levels are not elevated. Experts were dispatched there, including independent experts, who have the situation under their control. In any case, I receive these reports from our experts, including both military and civilian. We do not see any significant changes there. However, preventive measures were taken in order to avoid any unexpected developments. This is the first thing I wanted to say in this regard.
Second, the people who unfortunately suffered or died during the incident were on a state mission of critical importance. They will all be awarded state decorations."
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61336
"The five who perished had been working on an “isotope power source” for the experimental “liquid-propellant engine.” An increase in background radiation was registered on the test site, but the measurements are said to have soon returned to normal.
Rosatom revealed that the blast, which killed five employees and seriously injured three others, took place on a sea platform and followed a series of trials.
The test of the classified engine went smoothly at first, but then the device caught fire and blew up, Rosatom said.
The blast threw several employees into the sea, giving some hope of finding them alive.
Water in high latitudes is ice-cold even in summertime, but search attempts lasted the whole day, until hopes faded. Only then were the five operatives declared dead.
Three more workers have been hospitalized with various traumas and burns. The agency lauded the work of the employees, who, it said, were well aware of the dangerous nature of experimental engine tests.
The term “isotope power source” used in the report refers to a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, a device that collects heat from natural radioactive decay to produce a relatively small amount of electricity and does not utilize a nuclear chain reaction like a regular nuclear reactor.
However, rumors of serious “radiation leak” soon appeared in the media. The city of Severodvinsk, located some 30km east of the test range and hosting a key shipyard of Russia’s Northern Fleet, added fuel to rumors after authorities posted –and then deleted– news of a brief radiation spike. The report said that it lasted for half an hour only, and the daily average wasn’t seriously affected.
But the secrecy surrounding the ill-fated test inevitably gave rise to conspiracy theories. Pictures of hazmat teams taking measurements and specially-prepared ambulances transporting the injured were used to support some panic-inducing media headlines, while tabloids speculated over the type of weapon involved in the test." (my highlight)
https://www.rt.com/russia/466238-russian-rocket-blast-sea-rosatom/
Who reported an explosion in Siberia?
That wasn't in the CNN reports I linked.
And the CNN folks did interview Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. I don't imagine either Putin or Lavrov jump to respond to CNN when the Kremlin is called.
I was actually surprised by the rather straight forward factual reporting of CNN in those two linked reports. I've come to expect nothing but bullshit from them.
Hopefully, we'll find that no one additional suffered any kind of contamination and that the hospital staff who treated them are all clear of any health problems as well.
I never forget
that the neocons started out as communists bent on destroying the US. Did they switch to “republican” or did they infiltrate? Given their policies, how they "hold the course" disaster after disaster...
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Moon of Alabama is reporting, or at least saying, today
that the Saudi/Yemeni War is OVER and KSA, that would be our allies, lost.
It seems that the Yemenis fired drones which nobody knew they had, at some Saudi major military targets and did a bit of damage. Where did they get drones? No, not the ubiquitous Pres. Putin again. The drones came from a triple play, USA to Iran to Yemen, Iranian scientists having reverse engineered American technology and the Iranian govt. wanting to help their friends the Houthis.
Mary Bennett
The incompetence is by design
The state department and other foreign policy centers have been systematically gutted of talent for years, there isn't much left there but the sycophants and flunkies.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."