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Russia Is Primed for a Persian Gulf Security ‘Makeover’
Pepe Escobar
It’s impossible to understand the resumption of the JCPOA nuclear talks in Vienna without considering the serious inner turbulence of the Biden administration.
Everyone and his neighbor are aware of Tehran’s straightforward expectations: all sanctions – no exceptions – must be removed in a verifiable manner. Only then will the Islamic Republic reverse what it terms ‘remedial measures,’ that is, ramping up its nuclear program to match each new American ‘punishment.’
The reason Washington isn’t tabling a similarly transparent position is because its economic circumstances are, bizarrely, far more convoluted than Iran’s under sanctions. Joe Biden is now facing a hard domestic reality: if his financial team raises interest rates, the stock market will crash and the US will be plunged into deep economic distress.
Panicked Democrats are even considering the possibility of allowing Biden’s own impeachment by a Republican majority in the next Congress over the Hunter Biden scandal.
According to a top, non-partisan US national security source, there are three things the Democrats think they can do to delay the final reckoning:
First, sell some of the stock in the Strategic Oil Reserve in coordination with its allies to drive oil prices down and lower inflation.
Second, ‘encourage’ Beijing to devalue the yuan, thus making Chinese imports cheaper in the US, “even if that materially increases the US trade deficit. They are offering trading the Trump tariff in exchange.” Assuming this would happen, and that’s a major if, it would in practice have a double effect, lowering prices by 25 percent on Chinese imports in tandem with the currency depreciation.
Third, “they plan to make a deal with Iran no matter what, to allow their oil to re-enter the market, driving down the oil price.” This would imply the current negotiations in Vienna reaching a swift conclusion, because “they need a deal quickly. They are desperate.”
There is no evidence whatsoever that the team actually running the Biden administration will be able to pull off points two and three; not when the realities of Cold War 2.0 against China and bipartisan Iranophobia are considered.
Still, the only issue that really worries the Democratic leadership, according to the intel source, is to have the three strategies get them through the mid-term elections. Afterwards, they may be able to raise interest rates and allow themselves time for some stabilization before the 2024 presidential ballot.
So how are US allies reacting to it? Quite intriguing movements are in the cards.
When in doubt, go multilateral
Less than two weeks ago in Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), in a joint meeting with France, Germany and the UK, plus Egypt and Jordan, told the US Iran envoy Robert Malley that for all practical purposes, they want the new JCPOA round to succeed.
A joint statement, shared by Europeans and Arabs, noted “a return to mutual compliance with the [nuclear deal] would benefit the entire Middle East, allow for more regional partnerships and economic exchange, with long-lasting implications for growth and the well-being of all people there, including in Iran.”
This is far from implying a better understanding of Iran’s position. It reveals, in fact, the predominant GCC mindset ruled by fear: something must be done to tame Iran, accused of nefarious “recent activities” such as hijacking oil tankers and attacking US soldiers in Iraq.
So this is what the GCC is volunteering to the Americans. Now compare it with what the Russians are proposing to several protagonists across West Asia.
Essentially, Moscow is reviving the Collective Security Concept for the Persian Gulf Region, an idea that has been simmering since the 1990s. Here is what the concept is all about.
So if the US administration’s reasoning is predictably short-term – we need Iranian oil back in the market – the Russian vision points to systemic change.
The Collective Security Concept calls for true multilateralism – not exactly Washington’s cup of tea – and “the adherence of all states to international law, the fundamental provisions of the UN Charter and the resolutions of the UN Security Council.”
All that is in direct contrast with the imperial “rules-based international order.”
It’s too far-fetched to assume that Russian diplomacy per se is about to accomplish a miracle: an entente cordiale between Tehran and Riyadh.
Yet there’s already tangible progress, for instance, between Iran and the UAE. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri held a “cordial meeting” in Dubai with Anwar Gargash, senior adviser to UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. According to Bagheri, they “agreed to open a new page in Iran-UAE relations.”
Geopolitically, Russia holds the definitive ace: it maintains good relationships with all actors in the Persian Gulf and beyond, talks to all of them frequently, and is widely respected as a mediator by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and other GCC members.
Russia also offers the world’s most competitive and cutting edge military hardware to underpin the security needs of all the parties.
And then there’s the overarching, new geopolitical reality. Russia and Iran are forging a strengthened strategic partnership, not only geopolitical but also geoeconomic, fully aligned to the Russian-conceptualized Greater Eurasian Partnership – and also demonstrated by Moscow’s support for Iran’s recent ascension to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the only West Asian state to be admitted thus far.
Furthermore, three years ago Iran launched its own regional security framework proposal for the region called HOPE (the Hormuz Peace Endeavor) with the intent to convene all eight littoral states of the Persian Gulf (including Iraq) to address and resolve the vital issues of cooperation, security, and freedom of navigation.
The Iranian plan didn’t get far off the ground. While Iran suffers from adversarial relations with some of its intended audience, Russia carries none of that baggage.
The $5.4 trillion game
And that brings us to the essential Pipelineistan angle, which in the Russia–Iran case revolves around the new, multi-trillion dollar Chalous gas field in the Caspian Sea.
A recent sensationalist take painted Chalous as enabling Russia to “secure control over the European energy market.”
That’s hardly the story. Chalous, in fact, will enable Iran – with Russian input – to become a major gas exporter to Europe, something that Brussels evidently relishes. The head of Iran’s KEPCO, Ali Osouli, expects a “new gas hub to be formed in the north to let the country supply 20 percent of Europe’s gas needs.”
According to Russia’s Transneft, Chalous alone could supply as much as 52 percent of natural gas needs of the whole EU for the next 20 years.
Chalous is quite something: a twin-field site, separated by roughly nine kilometers, the second-largest natural gas block in the Caspian Sea, just behind Alborz. It may hold gas reserves equivalent to one-fourth of the immense South Pars gas field, placing it as the 10th largest gas reserves in the world.
Chalous happens to be a graphic case of Russia-Iran-China (RIC) geoeconomic cooperation. Proverbial western speculative spin rushed to proclaim the 20-year gas deal as a setback for Iran. The final breakdown, not fully confirmed, is 40 percent for Gazprom and Transneft, 28 percent for China’s CNPC and CNOOC, and 25 percent for Iran’s KEPCO.
Moscow sources confirm Gazprom will manage the whole project. Transneft will be in charge of transportation, CNPC is involved in financing and banking facilities, and CNOOC will be in charge of infrastructure and engineering.
The whole Chalous site has been estimated to be worth a staggering $5.4 trillion.
Iran could not possibly have the funds to tackle such a massive enterprise by itself. What is definitely established is that Gazprom offered KEPCO all the necessary technology in exploration and development of Chalous, coupled with additional financing, in return for a generous deal.
Crucially, Moscow also reiterated its full support for Tehran’s position during the current JCPOA round in Vienna, as well as in other Iran-related issues reaching the UN Security Council.
The fine print on all key Chalous aspects may be revealed in time. It’s a de facto geopolitical/geoeconomic win-win-win for the Russia, Iran, China strategic partnership. And it reaches way beyond the famous “20-year agreement” on petrochemicals and weapons sales clinched by Moscow and Tehran way back in 2001, in a Kremlin ceremony when President Putin hosted then Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.
There’s no two ways about it. If there is one country with the necessary clout, tools, sweeteners and relationships in place to nudge the Persian Gulf into a new security paradigm, it is Russia – with China not far behind.
(Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. Courtesy: The Cradle.co.)
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Russia, China Poised to Forge Alliance
M.K. Bhadrakumar
The Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times has disclosed, citing high-level “source”, that Beijing had no intentions to invite US and Western politicians to the 2022 Winter Olympics on February 4-20. This followed the US President Joe Biden’s innuendo that he’s considering a diplomatic boycott of the Games.
The White House apparently sensed that Biden was unlikely to be on Beijing’s guest list. Period. Tass had quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying following a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Dushanbe on September 16 that President Vladimir Putin had accepted “with delight” an invitation to the Games from Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Biden waited for two more months to arrive at the conclusion that he’s not on Xi’s list of invitees. The Olympic rules stipulate that for politicians to attend the Games, they must first be invited by the host country while the International Olympic Committee endorses it.
The Global Times report said that “as the host country, China has no plan to invite politicians who hype the “boycott” of the Beijing Games.” It noted wryly that Biden’s talk of boycott was “nothing but self-deception.”
In an indirect reference to the pandemic conditions in the US, Global Times observed, “Given the grave situation of the COVID-19 pandemic globally, it is not proper to invite foreign guests on a large scale, which can be easily understood by people with common sense.”
The snub comes hardly a fortnight after Biden’s virtual meeting on November 15 with Xi Jinping. In a larger perspective, though, this extraordinary episode falls in place, given the provocative manner in which the Biden Administration has been taunting Beijing by transgressing over China’s core interests lately.
On the other hand, Xi’s exceptional gesture toward Putin by personally conveying the invitation to the Games in a phone call in August bears testimony to the high quality of the two countries’ “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era”.
In a lengthy commentary on the topic on November 30 pinned on the regular bilateral consultation between the heads of governments of China and Russia yesterday, Global Times singled out the rapidly expanding and deepening ties between the two armed forces. It pointedly noted,
“On military cooperation, the two countries recently signed a roadmap for closer ties, which, according to military experts, indicates that Russia and China have common interests and views on strategic stability and regional security, especially in the Pacific region.
“Such enhancement of cooperation in the defence sector is also viewed as a reaction to the West’s pressure on Russia and to the alarming signals that China received from the US and its allies, experts said.
“Wu Qian, spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense, said at a press conference on Thursday that the Chinese military expects an even better relationship with its Russian counterpart, and is willing to play a bigger role with it in safeguarding world peace and stability.”
The above two reports in the Global Times appeared on a day when the Kremlin signalled that Russia-China strategic relations are poised for a historic leap. In separate remarks yesterday, Putin and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin beckoned Moscow’s willingness for a de facto alliance with Beijing.
Putin positively evaluated China’s “growing defence potential as it (Russia) enjoys the highest level of relations with the country and is itself ramping up its armed forces.” In his characteristic nuanced way, Putin drew a loaded comparison with the existing alliance between the US, UK and France!
Again, during the consultations between the two prime ministers yesterday, Mishustin proposed to Premier Li Keqiang that in the prevailing “complex external environment” of sanctions, “unfriendly actions”, “unfair competition” and “illegitimate unilateral sanctions as well as political and economic pressure,” Russia and China should also “team up” for their joint development.
Mishustin pointed at an intertwining of plans between the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Belt and Road initiative. “This is important for bolstering the interconnection in Eurasian space, it will help guarantee the economic progress of Russia and China and create a solid foundation for the formation of a Greater Eurasian partnership,” Mishustin told Li, while also reiterating that Putin had earlier presented this idea.
To be sure, Putin’s visit to Beijing in February holds the promise of a profound elevation of the Sino-Russian partnership from its already high level. A transition is under way from the close cooperation between the two powers to coordination and active pooling of resources to support each other not only for safeguarding their core interests in the face of the growing belligerence in the Biden Administration’s strategies but also at a global level to build network of regional alliances.
The Pentagon’s 2021 Global Posture Review, which was announced on Monday signals a global posture and the intention to develop a “global response capability” that embraces not only the Indo-Pacific and Europe but also includes “enduring posture requirements” in the Middle East, in Africa and Latin America. This is a far cry from the pacifist agenda Biden had previously espoused and his loud claim at the very inception of his presidency that diplomacy “is back at the centre” of US foreign policy.
Significantly, Putin’s remarks yesterday also touched on third-country cooperation between Russia and China as a major vector of their partnership. “We have many fields of cooperation with China. One of them concerns our work in third countries. It is well underway but it may be expanded further. Why? Because we share roughly the same approaches and principles, ” Putin said.
Putin stressed that Moscow supported Beijing’s efforts to create a global infrastructure of trade routes. “We support our Chinese friends’ efforts based on the One Belt One Road strategy,” Putin said.
Interestingly, Putin singled out West Asia as potentially a theatre of Russia-China coordination. Indeed, Putin spoke in this vein as the Sino-Russian coordination has shifted to a common stance robustly endorsing the Iranian demand on the lifting of US sanctions and the Vienna negotiations getting off to a promising start.
The bottom line is that by any reckoning of diplomatic practice, the co-authorship of a powerful opinion piece in an influential American magazine last week by the Russian and Chinese ambassadors in Washington Anatoly Antonov and Qin Gang lambasting Biden’s Summit of Democracy proclaims that the Sino-Russian alliance is already sailing on the Potomac River.
(Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. Courtesy: Indian Punchline, blog of Bhadrakumar.)
