Putin Meeting with Middle Eastern Leaders
Continuing on with my most recent post of last Tuesday. I see in this morning's RT that other geopolitical analysts, this time from Russia, are also noticing that there is a flurry of diplomatic activity between Russian President Putin and Middle East Leaders, including Israel's Netanyahu, Iranian high officials and other stakeholders in the region. To reiterate, these leaders all have more to do with their time than to meet about nothing. Logic tells me, at least, that there must be something "big" in the works. Please read the following report from RT which I have copied in its entirety and I will have more comments to follow:
*****************
From This Morning's RT
https://ift.tt/2makTtR
Moscow is awash this week with Middle East movers and shakers, apparently eager to have a word with Vladimir Putin ahead of his meeting with Trump. Is there a big ME deal in the making? RT talks to analysts.
Before having a face-off with his US counterpart in Helsinki next week, President Putin is to have several high-profile meetings in Russia. There is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ali Akbar Velayati, the foreign policy aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be in Moscow in time to watch the World Cup finals on Sunday and is expected to meet Putin. Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, will also be among the spectators, although whether he would talk with Putin is yet to be confirmed.
Amid the flurry of visits there is some speculation in the media that a grand deal between the US and Russia, which would involve a rebalancing of power in the Middle East, may come out from the Helsinki talks and that regional players are making an 11th-hour bid to ensure that their interests would be taken into consideration.
Such a scenario is possible, but highly unlikely, because it would be inconsistent with Russia’s current policies in the Middle East, Grigory Lukyanov, a Middle East analyst and senior lecturer at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, told RT.
“There are concerns in Damascus and Tehran that the course which Russia had in foreign policy over the past years, may take a shift similarly to how it happened in the past, when in pursuit of some global agreement with the US, Russia would sacrifice its Middle Eastern achievements and interests that it perceived secondary,” he said.
The sentiment is particularly strong in some Iranian political circles, which view Moscow as unreliable and its interests inconsistent with those of Tehran, he said. Such concerns don’t seem to be backed by facts and are inconsistent with Russia’s own interests in the region.
The sentiment is particularly strong in some Iranian political circles, which view Moscow as unreliable and its interests inconsistent with those of Tehran, he said. Such concerns don’t seem to be backed by facts and are inconsistent with Russia’s own interests in the region.
‘US - a beautiful and rich, but air-headed girl’
One should not overestimate how much Donald Trump may realistically offer in Helsinki to have Russia make any major policy change and how tempting this offer would be for Putin, Sergey Balmasov, a senior analyst at the Center for Crisis Society, a Moscow-based think tank, told RT.
“The moods of America are like the moods of a very beautiful and rich, but air-headed girl. Today you flirt with her, and the next day you find relations with that guy Iran spoiled. Such things require great care, and people in the Russian foreign ministry realize it well,” he explained. “And anyway, global issues cannot be solved Gorbachev-style with a stroke of a pen.”
‘Russia offers solutions US failed to’
Russia’s involvement in Syria, which changed the situation dramatically from the hopeless slide towards total disintegration in 2014 to the relative stability of today, is a major point of leverage for Moscow in regional politics, Balmasov said. Tactical considerations like the presence of pro-Iranian troops in southern Syria and Israel’s combative reaction to it, are of course important, but the really important issue for the country would be post-war reconstruction and who would pay for it.
Lukyanov agrees that Moscow would win nothing from siding with either party involved in the Middle East. Russia’s current policy in this region is to play its own game while taking into account the interests of other players. The meetings with Netanyahu and Velayati are most likely just meant to keep Putin up to date with the positions of Israel and Iran respectively, he believes.
At the moment Russia sees a more prominent place for itself in the Middle East, but the role it is ready to play is limited, compared to other global players, he said.
“Russia’s strong point now is the ability and willingness to offer solutions to security problems. The US failed in that regard in Iraq and some other places,” Lukyanov said. “But Russia cannot and is not trying to replace the US as a primary trade partner for Middle Eastern nations. Same is true about replacing China or Europe."
“Solving security issues requires constructive dialogue with stakeholders, and the Syrian experience is viewed by the Russian leadership as more than constructive. Many people in the Middle Eastern nations, Arab or otherwise, share this position,” he added."
*****************
Greencrow says: the only thing new about the above report which I did not factor into my previous analysis of Tuesday is that they [Putin and the Foreign Leaders] may be discussing "post-war reconstruction and who would pay for it."
Post war reconstruction could be broadened to include all of the Middle East which has been torn apart by conflict during the past 60 or so years. This would include Palestine...which closely resembles war time internment camps, complete with high concrete walls surrounding Palestinian "reserves" and fortified military check points--through which all must come and go. Palestine is definitely a festering, toxic war time situation--which should be included in any holistic approach to the Middle East Peace Process.
Let's face it...trying to get reconstruction money to rebuild all the rubbled infrastructure that USrael has created in the Middle East would be like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. Ain't gonna happen. I keep wondering why Trump is so obsessed with getting NATO members to "up their contributions" and wonder if he's trying to gather a nest egg to fling at any project that Putin might have towards a "Marshall-type Plan" for the middle east. But trying to make some logical sense out of Trump's rambles is also a non-starter. Even Trump's fellow NATO members have no clue what he's trying to do.
All I can do is apply logic to Putin's actions. I have faith in the Russian Leader's adherence to logic... and it seems logical to me that he's trying to apply his superb negotiating skills to the Middle East Gordian Knot of occupied Palestine. This is the nucleus of all the troubles in the Middle East. This is what gathers disparate Arabs/Muslims from all over the region into Hezbollah armies to fight the Israeli regime in all its manifestations and proxies throughout Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine, etc.
The only way to solve the central problem in the Middle East is to open a relief valve for the demographic crisis that's building in Gaza. If those Israelis who are unable to tolerate free Palestinians in a unified, democratic society were given another option, say an option to move en masse to a huge arable tract of land in Russia's Asia [coincidentally the ancestral homeland of 90% of them] this would relieve the societal pressure to constantly tighten the screws on the poor Palestinians. Similar to the 15,000 or so white South Africans who cannot abide the collapse of the apartheid system in SA...and are now considering a Putin offer to move to Russia.
Putin believes Russia needs more settlers in the eastern provinces of Russia. This is made evident in his longstanding offer of "free land" to those who would come and settle and develop the far eastern reaches of Russia. Now, in this era of the building of the "New Silk Road", with its gas and oil pipe lines....human labour is needed more than ever in this region. So this is where the "win win" comes in. I guess Putin's hope is that, given the distances between settlements in this region, it would be several generations at least before the Khazarians entered their inevitable cycle of political infiltration, parasitical control and destruction of their [Russian] host.
Some readers think I'm going out on a limb in making this prognostication. But I've been emboldened to follow my hunches, more so ever since my hunch that there was/is a Deep State Civil War going on in the "security agencies" and institutions of the United States proved prescient. When I first wrote about that undeclared internal civil war several years ago now...I was alone in my assessment, just like I'm now alone in my assessment that Putin is going to render Russia's vast geographic potential into a lubricant...that will soften the hardened tangles of the Middle East Gordian Knot.
from Greencrow As The Crow Flies https://ift.tt/2uyysqP
Breaking News: Middle East officials flocking to Moscow – is there a big deal? - News Paper
0 komentar:
Post a Comment