By Vestnik Kavkaza
Yesterday about forty countries began International Mine Countermeasures Exercise near Bahrain and in the Persian Gulf.
According to Rajab Safarov, Director General of the Center for the Study of Modern Iran, the exercises will involve almost all the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Navy will be actively involved in them. For the first time the UK will be actively represented. “There is a sense that the West led by the United States shows the Middle East a powerful fist and is going to relocate its capabilities and military force to this zone. The U.S. military leadership does not hide its plans and intentions that after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq much of their armament and military forces will be relocated to the Persian Gulf. This is obviously important since the vector of geopolitical events is now shifted into this zone.”
Safarov predicts that in the very near future we will face serious geopolitical turmoil. According to him, the initiators of the military exercises consider the upcoming presidential elections in Iran. They thus want to provide not only the psychological pressure on the leadership and people of Iran, but also the direct political and military pressure on the country. The exercises will be held from 6 to 30 May, the duration is also unprecedented, and they really are held almost close to the coastlines of Iran, and any provocation could lead to unpredictable consequences.”
Heydar Jemal, chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia, states that “the United States has no interest that liberal pro-Western forces, the so-called reformers, come to power in Iran with their agenda, which consists in broad agreement with the West, a broad program of concessions. The United States has the task to break the triangle "Iran - China - Russia", but not by liberals and pro-Westerners coming to power in Tehran. It wants the aggravation of the game. This aggravation is only possible if the line of Ahmadinejad will be continued in varying degrees in Tehran. Similarly, they deliberately pursue a policy of destabilizing the internal situation in Pakistan using drones for deliberately targeting civilians. Do they know that about 5,000 women, children and civilians were killed, not having anything to do with the warlords, the Taliban and so forth? Certainly. They just want to cause a military coup in Pakistan, which automatically pushes India into the arms of the United States and into the anti-Chinese coalition.
Nearly the same goal, Jemal thinks, is pursued by the current exercises in the Persian Gulf: “The USA understand that the Iranian nation has such a mentality that when it is threatened, it will never surrender facing such blackmail. It will always take a position of opposition. But they do want this. They do not fear that even more radical anti-Western group will come to power in Iran. They do not fear. They are well aware that Iran is a weighted, careful state, which itself does not commit any acts of aggression. Therefore, they are absolutely sure of the stability of this wing of the situation in Eurasia. But they want aggravation of the game between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, they want to increase confrontation with Turkey, they want to damage relations with Egypt – by the way, the process has already begun. That is, they want a large-scale isolation of Iran and, possibly, a series of conflicts, which would be attended by intermediaries not directly involving the United States. They've already failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they want to supervise conflicts in which they themselves are not involved as arbitrators. In my view, the purpose of the pressure of these maneuvers is to lead not liberal but conservative forces in Iran today to power.”
“The USA wants to conduct the Iranian elections in the shadow of their battleships,” Viktor Baranets, Komsomolskaya Pravda’s military observer, thinks. “The military factor and the forces which would be sent there will definitely influence the situation morally and politically. But if the stupidest generals of the Pentagon send these six battleships to the Persian Gulf and decide to start a military operation, the USA will get at least 20 thousand coffins, because those who are aware of the real situation in the Iranian military forces, its sea and coastal defense systems know that these battleships are easily destroyed in such a narrow place as the Persian Gulf.” The concentration of huge military forces in this region resembles to Baranets a drunk gangster who takes a torch and goes to a cellar, thinking it is a wine cellar, while in reality it is a cellar with dynamite. The USA seems to understand clearly that it can threaten Iran forever, but the first missile which would reach Iranian territory will turn into a regional war initially, and then into a more global war.”
Stanislav Ivanov, the senior scientist of the International Security Center of IMEMO of the RAS, considers the coming war games in the Persian Gulf as a wide-scale provocation: “To consolidate such an armada of ships in such an explosive region, I think they have not only the goal of putting pressure on Iran ahead of the coming presidential elections, but also other goals. We know that a civil war in Syria is taking place – it is a bloody great civil war which has been taking place for three years. So, these war games can be considered as an instrument of pressure on the Syrian regime. Im the last two-three weeks we have witnessed that the Syrian conflict has stepped beyond the limits of one country and become regional. You remember the clashes on the border with Iraq – Iraqi soldiers were killed, as well as Syrian soldiers. Lebanon and Jordan’s territories were fired at; Israel fired at Syria; clashes on the border with Turkey took place; uncontrolled groups of militants who are not Syrian citizens, but soldiers of Jihad, came from Turkey to Syria – al-Qaeda and others. The Syrian conflict is becoming regional; it is spreading all over the region. Moreover, we have witnessed several terrorist attacks in Iraq ahead of the local elections. It was a wave of big terrorist attacks. Blasts of cars and murders are taking place daily these days. 14 candidates to be deputies of local administrative bodies were killed in one month in Iraq. An undeclared war is taking place in Iraq. The American troops were withdrawn, but they left a legacy. The region is on fire. So I think these war games have to be considered wider than an anti-Iranian act. It is pressure on the whole region, moreover, after the developments of the Arab Spring, when elites and regimes were changed in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, protests took place in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.”
