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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">How Iran’s ‘strategic patience’ switched to serious deterrence</h1><p class="gmail-">Iran’s
retaliatory strikes against Israel were not conducted alone. Strategic
partners Russia and China have Tehran’s back, and their role in West
Asia’s conflict will only grow if the US doesn’t keep Israel in check.</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/authors/pepe-escobar" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">Pepe Escobar</a></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span>APR 15, 2024 - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/how-irans-strategic-patience-switched-to-serious-deterrence">https://thecradle.co/articles/how-irans-strategic-patience-switched-to-serious-deterrence</a></font></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="http://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/aa333046-fb4c-11ee-8285-00163e02c055.jpeg" alt="" width="408" height="193" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span>Photo Credit: The Cradle</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span><p>A
little over 48 hours before Iran’s aerial message to Israel across the
skies of West Asia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov <a href="https://tass.com/politics/1773813">confirmed</a>, on the record, what so far had been, at best, hush-hush <a href="https://sputnikglobe.com/20240410/pepe-escobar-lavrov-wang-yi-sketch-the-future-as-the-world-waits-for-iranian-move-1117849516.html">diplomatic talk</a>: </p><blockquote><p>The
Russian side keeps in contact with Iranian partners on the situation in
the Middle East after the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in
Syria.</p></blockquote><p>Ryabkov added, “We stay in constant touch
[with Iran]. New in-depth discussions on the whole range of issues
related to the Middle East are also expected in the near future in
BRICS.”</p><p>He then sketched The Big Picture: </p><blockquote><p>Connivance
with Israeli actions in the Middle East, which are at the core of
Washington’s policy, is in many ways becoming the root cause of new
tragedies.</p></blockquote><p>Here, concisely, we had Russia’s top
diplomatic coordinator with BRICS – in the year of the multipolar
organization’s Russian presidency – indirectly messaging that Russia has
Iran’s back. Iran, it should be noted, just became a full-fledged
BRICS+ member in <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/17574">January</a>. </p><p>Iran’s
aerial message this weekend confirmed this in practice: their missile
guidance systems used the Chinese Beidou satellite navigation system as
well as the Russian GLONASS system. </p><p>This is Russia–China intel leading from behind and a graphic example of BRICS+ on the move.</p><p>Ryabkov’s
“we stay in constant touch” plus the satellite navigation intel
confirms the deeply interlocked cooperation between the Russia–China
strategic partnership and their mutual strategic partner Iran. Based on
vast experience in Ukraine, Moscow knew that the biblical psychopathic
genocidal entity would keep escalating if Iran only continued to
exercise “strategic patience.” </p><p>The morphing of “strategic
patience” into a new strategic balance had to take some time – including
high-level exchanges with the Russian side. After all, the risk
remained that the Israeli <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/iran-will-respond-to-israeli-attack-on-syria-consulate">attack</a>
against the Iranian consulate/ambassador’s residence in Damascus could
well prove to be the 2024 remix of the killing of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand.</p><p><strong>And don’t forget the Strait of Hormuz</strong></p><p>Tehran did manage to upend the massive Western psychological operations aimed at pushing it into a strategic misstep. </p><p>Iran
started with a misdirecting masterstroke. As US–Israeli fear porn went
off the charts, fueled by dodgy western “intel,” the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made a quick sideways move, <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24380">seizing</a> an Israeli-owned container ship near the Strait of Hormuz. </p><p>That
was an eminently elegant manoeuvre – reminding the collective west of
Tehran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz, a fact immeasurably more
dangerous to the whole western economic house of cards than any limited
strike on their “aircraft carrier” in West Asia. That did happen anyway.</p><p>And
once again, with a degree of elegance. Unlike that ‘moral’ army
specialized in killing women, children, and the elderly and bombing
hospitals, mosques, schools, universities, and humanitarian convoys, the
Iranian <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24387">attack</a>
targeted key Israeli military sites such as the Nevatim and Ramon
airbases in the Negev and an intel center in the occupied Golan Heights –
the three centers used by Tel Aviv in its strike on Iran’s Damascus
consulate.</p><p>This was a highly choreographed show. Multiple early
warning signs gifted Tel Aviv with plenty of time to profit from US
intel and evacuate fighter jets and personnel, which was duly followed
by a plethora of US military radars coordinating the defense strategy. </p><p>It
was American firepower that smashed the bulk of what may have been a
swarm of 185 Shahed-136 drones – using everything from ship-mounted air
defense to fighter jets. The rest was <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/jordan-shot-down-dozens-of-iranian-drones-alongside-us-uk-report">shot down</a>
over Jordan by The Little King’s military – the Arab street will never
forget his treachery – and then by dozens of Israeli jets. </p><p>Israel’s
defenses were de facto saturated by the suicide drone-ballistic missile
combo. On the ballistic missile front, several pierced the dense maze
of Israel’s air defenses, with Israel officially claiming nine
successful hits – interestingly enough, all of them hitting super
relevant military targets. </p><p>The whole show had the budget of a
mega blockbuster. For Israel – without even counting the price of US,
UK, and Israeli jets – just the multi-layered interception system set it
back at least <a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/economy/article/rkl6kwygr#autoplay">$1.35 billion</a>,
according to an Israeli official. Iranian military sources tally the
cost of their drone and missile salvos at only $35 million – 2.5 percent
of Tel Aviv’s expenditure – made with full indigenous technology.</p><p><strong>A new West Asian chessboard </strong></p><p>It
took only a few hours for Iran to finally metastasize strategic
patience into serious deterrence, sending an extremely powerful and
multi-layered message to its adversaries and masterfully changing the
game across the whole West Asian chessboard. </p><p>Were the biblical
psychopaths to engage in a real Hot War against Iran, there’s no chance
in hell Tel Aviv can intercept hundreds of Iranian missiles – the
state-of-the-art ones excluded from the current show – without an early
warning mechanism spread over several days. Without the Pentagon’s
umbrella of weaponry and funds, Israeli defense is unsustainable. </p><p>It
will be fascinating to see what lessons Moscow will glean from this
profusion of lights in the West Asian sky, its sly eyes taking in the
frantic Israeli, political, and military scene as the heat continues to
rise on the slowly boiling – and now screaming – <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24219">frog</a>.</p><p>As
for the US, a West Asian war – one it hasn’t scripted itself – does not
suit its immediate interests, as an old-school Deep State stalwart
confirmed by email: </p><blockquote><p>That could permanently end the
area as an oil-producing region and astronomically raise the oil price
to levels that will crash the world financial structure. It is
conceivable that the United States banking system could similarly
collapse if the oil price rises to $900 a barrel should Middle East oil
be cut off or destroyed.</p></blockquote><p>It’s no wonder that the
Biden combo, days before the Iranian response, was frantically begging
Beijing, Riyadh, and Ankara, among others, to hold Tehran back. The
Iranians might have even agreed – had the UN Security Council imposed a
permanent ceasefire in Gaza to calm the regional storm. Washington was
mute. </p><p>The question now is whether it will remain mute. Mohammad
Bagheri, chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, went
straight to the <a href="https://x.com/SputnikInt/status/1779411893230215205">point</a>: </p><blockquote><p>We
have conveyed a message to America through the Swiss Embassy that
American bases will become a military target if they are used in future
aggressive actions of the Zionist regime. We will consider this as
aggression and will act accordingly.</p></blockquote><p>The US dilemma is <a href="https://x.com/SputnikInt/status/1779407837896056939">confirmed</a> by former Pentagon analyst Michael Maloof: </p><blockquote><p>We
have got some 35 bases that surround Iran, and they thereby become
vulnerable. They were meant to be a deterrence. Clearly, deterrence is
no longer on the table here. Now they become the American’ Achilles
heel’ because of their vulnerabilities to attack.</p></blockquote><p>All
bets are off on how the US–Israel combo will adapt to the new
Iranian-crafted deterrence reality. What remains, for the historic
moment, is the pregnant-with-meaning aerial show of Muslim Iran
singlehandedly unleashing hundreds of drones and missiles on Israel, a
feat feted all across the lands of Islam. And especially by the battered
Arab street, subjugated by decrepit monarchies that keep doing business
with Israel over the dead bodies of the Palestinians of Gaza. </p></span></div></div></div></div>
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