CROSSFIRE WAR – TEHRAN EVALUATES THREAT FROM RUSSIA
By Willard Payne

NewsBlaze, CA
June 25 2007

Crossfire War – TEHRAN WATCH – Eurasia Theatre: Tehran/Moscow;
10th Session of Iran Foreign Policy Council Meeting – Evaluation
of Military Threat from Russia – Post-World War III Regional –
International Cooperation

Night Watch: TEHRAN – Realizing Moscow is the only Allied capital
that is any real offensive threat to Tehran, Iran’s government has
convened its 10th Foreign Policy Council Session on Saturday, chaired
by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. The meeting is being held
at the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in
Tehran. A statement was released, "Iran’s ambassador to Moscow along
with a number of university lecturers and experts in Russian political
affairs attended the meeting where they studied the Russian status
in regional and international developments together with existing
opportunities and hurdles on the way of expansion of ties between
Tehran and Moscow." [IRNA]

I am not surprised this meeting is being held now. Tehran knows that
under Russian President Vladimir Putin Russia has engaged in serious
military and economic reforms, since 1999, that have drastically
improved not only Russia’s military performance in the North Caucasus,
against Islamic groups Tehran-Ankara have been supporting, but has
also enabled Russia to wield more influence in international affairs
using the enormous budget Moscow can now deploy internationally
as powerful countries can strategically deploy troops. One of the
more recent examples, Tehran is reviewing, is in Northeast Asia
and Moscow’s immediate response when last October, after Pyongyang
exploded a nuclear bomb at an underground test site for possible
export to Iran, as North Korea has been exporting ballistic missiles
to Iran for years. Moscow immediately reasserted its old influence and
contacts with North Korea’s government, completely removing Beijing,
which had been controlling Pyongyang’s decisions since the end of
the Cold War in 1990.

I suspect at this foreign policy session Tehran has to acknowledge that
since Beijing and China are going through another wave of corruption,
its historical-cultural pattern, therefore Beijing can never again
be the influence in international affairs it had been since World
War II and can therefore no longer guarantee further shipments of
advanced weaponry to Iran or Syria.

Making these grim realizations are officials on the highest levels of
Tehran’s foreign policy and it is being held almost ten years to the
day of the formation of Iran’s Foreign Relations Strategic Council,
which reports directly to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei. Its chairman is Kamal Kharrazi, the
Foreign Minister immediately before Mottaki, and one of its members
is another former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati.

Former Defense Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani is a member as is
Mohammad Shariatmadari and Mohammad-Hossein Taromi. The members serve
five year terms so they will be in a position to advise Tehran on
the post-World War III international situation and they know the
principal foreign capital Iran will be in closest cooperation with
will be Moscow.

Earlier this year Velayati made an important, almost secret visit
to the Kremlin where I suspect he and the Russian officials he
conferred with outlined the rest of the war. NATO and the West will
be increasingly defensive in the Balkans, make a stand somewhere,
as will India as Delhi confronts the massive military support Tehran
sends through Pakistan. Therefore only when Tehran sees Russia coming
through the South Caucasus through Georgia-Armenia and if need be
Azerbaijan, will Tehran then enter into negotiations ending Iran’s
participation in World War III. Though the war will be continuing in
other areas Tehran will no longer be at the center of it.

What has enabled Moscow to emerge as the main victor of the war is
its extremely intelligent decision to withdraw all of its military
forces from the debacle in the Balkans, that was intiated 1990-92,
in the name of the New World Order. It was intended and planned as
an enlightened, orchestrated crisis NATO-Warsaw Pact governments
envisioned they could use to solve the crisis of the coming division
of Yugoslavia peacefully, an international display of European unity,
conducted by Brussels-Vienna. What was revealed instead was the dark
ages cesspool of European decision making that has also incorporated
Washington, and now they are about to plunge into the depths of
another Balkan war, this one revolving around Kosovo. That prevents
NATO/EU from providing any effective support for the European units
in south Lebanon-UNIFIL or in any other theatre. So I suspect the
Iranian officials in this 10th Foreign Policy Session have written
the West off as a stationary target.

South Asia, the India/Pakistan fourth war, is the other major theatre
Tehran is evaluating and Moscow’s long standing support for Delhi
as one of Moscow’s way of countering Beijing and its territorial
designs on the region. Tehran supports Islamabad for similar reasons
as Beijing has since 1951, for the control of the vast resources on
the Indian sub-continent and they know Moscow is still in a position
to provide India with advanced weaponry, but no troop support. Iran
may also be aware there are serious issues, some of them recorded
on crossfirewar.com, as to whether or not India has effectively
maintained the readiness of its large military. What is powerful on
paper may not always indicate effectiveness on the ground. Tehran has
placed itself to provide very eager and major support for Pakistan
President General Pervez Musharraf’s offensive "Action Plan" that he
presented to Tehran in February.

The action year is 2007 and these officials may have been informed
by Adm. Shamkhani, that Iran has enough for one year of offensive
warfare, primarily directed at the West-India. Iran’s main weapon
against Israel is propaganda. These foreign policy experts may also
be aware former U. S. Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger arrived
in Moscow two months ago (as recorded on crossfirewar.com 4-26)
to co-chair the Strategic Working Group with former Russia Premier
Yevgeny Primakov. And that is the result of Washington increasing
its strategic coopertion with Berlin for more than a year, reducing
Washington’s historical cooperation with London. It was Berlin, the
main purchaser of Russia’s resources and therefore the principal
supplier of Moscow’s hard currency even before the Cold War, who
had Putin become head of state and reorganize Russia along some very
serious industrial frontlines.

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