What’s happening in Ukraine just got more geopolitically complex! NATO is no longer the only international force entering the mix! As it turns out, the nation of Iran is playing a pivotal role in the conflict. But why? I’m going to break down for you in a step-by-step fashion why the nation of Iran is getting so deeply involved in the Ukrainian conflict!
-Iran is a key ally of Russia AND China!
-Iranian drones have proven themselves on the battlefield!
-This is all part of the post globalist, multipolar world rising before our eyes!
As NATO nations band together in their aid to defend Ukraine from Russia’s Special Military Operation, one nation’s involvement in the conflict may have gone unnoticed: The Islamic Republic of Iran. A powerful alliance has formed between the theocratic regime and the Russian Federation and it’s an alliance that’s not only affecting the theater in Ukraine but, in many respects, is a foreshadowing of the future world order that even now is beginning to appear!
To understand what’s going on, we have to go back to the pivotal year of 1979. Prior to that, Iran was led by a pro-American monarchy, and in the decade leading up to that year, Iranian relations with the other pro-American Middle Eastern power, Saudi Arabia, were highly cooperative and friendly. But all that changed when the exiled religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, returned to Iran as the leader of a powerful and ultimately successful Islamic revolution! With Iran led by Shiites and Saudi Arabia by Wahhabi Sunnis the two nations aligned themselves geopolitically with the two opposing Cold War powers, Saudi Arabia with the United States, while Iran entered into a rather tepid militarily-strategic alliance with the Soviet Union.
After the fall of communism in 1991, Russian and Iranian relations grew closer, this was largely due to the resurgence of religious sentiment in the renewal of Russian Orthodoxy within the Federation. Scholars have long recognized that Russia and Iran are among the nations that represent a rising post-secular world, where ancient religious traditions are returning en masse and effectively reshaping their politics from geopolitics to what we might call “Theo-politics”!
This alliance grew even stronger with the eruption of civil war inside Syria in 2011! Both Russia and Iran were concerned that the Syrian civil war would result in a pro-Western, pro-NATO regime, and were both determined to stop it! Both countries provided crucial support to the Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad, while pursuing their own strategic interests in the region. Iran has been a longstanding ally of the Syrian government, primarily due to their shared geopolitical and ideological interests. Syria serves as a crucial link in Iran’s regional influence, providing a land route for the transportation of weapons and supplies to Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group based in Lebanon, Russia and Iran’s cooperation in Syria deepened significantly over time. They coordinated their military activities and shared intelligence to support the Assad regime’s military operations. The Russian military provided air support to Iranian-backed ground forces, facilitating their offensives against opposition groups and terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State (ISIS). In return, Iran allowed Russia to use its air bases for conducting airstrikes in Syria.
The alliance between the two nations grew even closer when the US and Western nations imposed a blitzkrieg of sanctions against Russia in retaliation for their invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions were so intense that they were actually three times greater than the sanctions levied against it as the world’s second most heavily sanctioned country, and that of course is Iran! Both Russia and Iran suddenly became, respectively, the number one and number two most financially sanctioned states in the world. This massive economic isolation obviously caused the two nations to grow even closer together, both economically and militarily. Since the sanctions were imposed, Russian exports to Iran have risen by more than 27 percent while Iranian exports to Russia have risen by more than 10 percent. Moreover, Russia has promised to invest upwards of $40 billion in assisting Iran with nuclear development.
And as the two nations have grown economically closer, they in turn have grown militarily close, and this brings us to the role of Iran in Ukraine. As NATO militarily supplies Ukraine, so Iran now supplies Russia. Iranian-manufactured Kamikaze drones, known as Shahed 136, were deployed by Russia in Ukraine, overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses and causing significant damage to civilian infrastructure. Iran’s assistance to Russia goes beyond drone supplies. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard has deployed military advisors and soldiers in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. And Iran has provided Russia with ammunition, artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and body armor, significantly bolstering Russia’s fighting capabilities. In fact, this growing cooperation between Moscow and Tehran could potentially lead to the formation of a full-blown Russian-Iranian military alliance that would have significant implications for the region and the world.
The significance of this alliance recently reached new heights with the Chinese-brokered agreement to reestablish diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, which until fairly recently was a reliably pro-American influence in the Middle East, is now increasingly locking Arms with Iran. The Saudis are now in talks with Iran to start investing in their infrastructure; Iran is very backward in terms of their capacity to export and import goods; they have no major high-speed railways, and they’ve been very limited in what they can build because of the US-led sanctions against them. That looks like it’s going to end with Saudi Arabia’s investment in the Iranian infrastructure and both Saudi Arabia and Iran are even now in the process of joining BRICS, the Chinese-Russian economic alliance that is quickly becoming the largest economic alliance in the world! And so what’s happening with Iran and Russia is turning out to be just the tip of the iceberg of a very new world order that’s even now rising up for all to see. As scholars note, this is a thoroughly post-secular, post-globalist order that involves an extraordinary return to nation, culture, custom, tradition, and civilization! The alliance between Russia and Iran looks as if it will only grow stronger as a result, and as the fledgling powers of NATO and the woke West tries to isolate both nations, the real question that more and more people are beginning to ask is: with the rise of this new world, who is really isolating whom?
Copyright, 2023. TurleyTalks.com
