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The NATO-Israeli cabal cheering on Damascus's fall will get more than they bargained for. Power struggles and infighting among extremist militias and civil society, each backed by different regional and foreign actors who want a piece of the pie. The short headline defining the abrupt, swift end of Syria as we knew it would be:... Read More
The G20 summit in Rio earlier this week offered the quite intriguing spectacle of a deeply divided world, geopolitically and geoeconomically, trying to put on a brave ‘holiday in the sun’ face. There was plenty of fluff to amuse attentive audiences. French President Emmanuel Macron surrounded by a beefy security detail strolling on Copacabana beach... Read More
The Russian presidency of BRICS 2024 could not have chosen a more multicultural and multi-nodal site to host a summit laden with enormous expectations by the Global Majority. The southwestern Russian city of Kazan, on the banks of the Volga and Kazanka rivers, is the capital of the semi-autonomous Republic of Tatarstan, renowned for its... Read More
The United Nations has become a parody of itself. As world leaders gathered in New York this week, Gaza, Lebanon, and Palestine were nowhere on the agenda, but a rammed-through US Pact designed to protect the ‘rules-based order’ was right at the top. The United Nations and its Security Council’s inability – and unwillingness –... Read More
The events of 11 September 2001 were intended to impose and enshrine a new Exceptionalist paradigm on the young 21st century. History, though, ruled otherwise. Cast as an attack on the US Homeland, 11 September 2001, immediately generated the Global War on Terror (GWOT), launched at 11 pm on the same day. Initially christened “The... Read More
BAGHDAD and KARBALA – Arriving in Baghdad today comes as an electric shock to any visitor who remembers recent, somber Iraqi history. There are virtually no checkpoints, apart from sensitive government areas. None of those ghastly cement blocks from the time of the American occupation, forcing a slow slalom every few minutes. No sense of... Read More
The Global Majority is fully aware that the genocidals in Tel Aviv are trying as hard as they can to provoke an apocalyptic war – with full US military support, of course. Contrast that combative mindset with 2,500 years of Persian diplomacy. Iran’s acting Foreign Minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, has recently remarked how Tehran is... Read More
HONG KONG – The Beijing Declaration, signed earlier this week, constitutes yet another stunning Chinese diplomatic coup, but the document goes far beyond affirming China’s pull. The gathering of representatives of 14 Palestinian factions to commit to full reconciliation showed the entire world that the road to solving intractable geopolitical problems is no longer unilateral:... Read More
Sanaa is eagerly engaging with Moscow in a bid to expand its astounding military gains into both the economic and diplomatic realms. While trade with Russia may be integral to blunting the effects of the siege of Yemen, Sanaa also views membership in the BRICS as a ‘golden opportunity’ to establish lasting Persian Gulf security.... Read More
The gravity around the newly-enlarged BRICS constellation is drawing in Arab, Muslim, and Global South adherents to the influential group's message on international law, Palestine, and halting forever wars. MOSCOW - Something of extraordinary magnitude happened in Moscow on 23 May. Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa personally asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to... Read More
The Hegemon is calculating for a World War to halt multipolarity. It supports Israel’s Gaza genocide as a necessary evil to win hard in West Asia, figuring who’s going to care once the war goes global? The St Petersburg Economic Forum (SPIEF) takes place this week. It’s one of the go-to annual meetings across Eurasia.... Read More
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s eastward vision was instrumental in advancing the strategic Moscow–Tehran–Beijing nexus and bulldozing a path toward institutionalizing multipolarity. Amidst all the sadness and grief over the loss of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, let’s take a moment to showcase the critical path he helped forge toward a new global order. In the nearly... Read More
The Hegemon has no idea what awaits the Exceptionalist mindset: China has started to decisively stir the civilizational cauldron without bothering about an inevitable array of sanctions coming by early 2025 and/or a possible collapse of the international financial system. Last week, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his list of delusional US demands... Read More
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. A little over 48 hours before Iran’s aerial message to Israel across the skies of West Asia, Russian Deputy Foreign... Read More
The emergence of Axes of Resistance in various geographies is an inextricable byproduct of the long and winding process leading us toward a multipolar world. These two things – resistance to the Hegemon and the emergence of multipolarity – are absolutely complementary. The Axis of Resistance in West Asia – across Arab and Muslim states... Read More
World War III is here, playing out asymmetrically in military, financial, and institutional battlefields, and the fight is an existential one. The western Hegemon, in truth, is at war against international law, and only 'kinetic military action' can bring it to heel. The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and... Read More
During my recent vertiginous journey in Donbass tracking Orthodox Christian battalions defending their land, Novorossiya, it became starkly evident that the resistance in these newly liberated Russian republics is fighting much the same battle as their counterparts in West Asia. Nearly 10 years after Maidan in Kiev, and two years after the start of Russia's... Read More
The Arabic word Asabiyya, or 'social solidarity,' is a soundbite in the west, but taken very seriously by the globe's new contenders China, Russia, and Iran. It is Yemen, however, that is mainstreaming the idea, by sacrificing everything for the world's collective morality in a bid to end the genocide in Gaza. Yemen's Ansarallah resistance... Read More
Pretoria's genocide case against Israel is crucial, not just to stop Tel Aviv's carnage in Gaza, but to plant the first flag of mutipolarism in the globe's courtrooms: this is the first case of many that will seek to halt western impunity and restore international law as envisioned in the UN Charter. Nothing less than... Read More
Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia – from Persia to Turkestan – chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated. Yes, a... Read More
MOSCOW - Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a notable pit stop in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to meet, respectively, Emirati President Mohammad bin Zayed (MbZ) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) before flying back to Moscow to meet Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. The three key issues in all three meetings,... Read More
While the world cries “Israeli genocide,” the Biden White House is gushing over the upcoming Gaza truce it helped broker, as though it's actually “on the verge” of its “biggest diplomatic victory.” Behind the self-congratulatory narratives, the US administration is not remotely “wary about Netanyahu’s endgame,” it fully endorses it - genocide included - as... Read More
The Global South was expecting the Dawn of a New Arabian Reality. After all, the Arab street - even while repressed in their home nations - has pulsed with protests expressing ferocious rage against Israel's wholesale massacre of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Arab leaders were forced to take some sort of action beyond suspending... Read More
The complex, nuanced issue of Russia’s geopolitical neutrality in the Israel-Palestine tragedy was finally clarified last week, in no uncertain terms. Exhibit A is Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing - in person, on 30 October - his country's Security Council, top government officials, and heads of security agencies. Among other notables, his audience included Prime... Read More
The Russia-Iran strategic partnership - with China in the wings - is laying an elaborate, Sun Tzu-tinged trap for the Hegemon in West Asia. Apart from Israel, there is no entity on the planet capable of switching the focus, in a flash, away from the west's spectacular debacle in Ukraine. The warmongers in charge of... Read More
Two weeks after the Hamas breakout assault on Israel on 7 October, a clearer picture of what happened – who died, and who killed – is now beginning to emerge. Instead of the wholescale massacre of civilians claimed by Israel, incomplete figures published by the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz show that almost half the Israelis killed... Read More
Is it possible that the philo-Semitic Russian President Vladimir Putin is slowly but surely re-evaluating his geopolitical assessment of Israel? To call this the key riddle in Moscow's corridors of power is actually an understatement. There are no outward signs of such a seismic shift – at least when it comes to the officially “neutral”... Read More
Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was meticulously planned. The launch date was conditioned by two triggering factors. First was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flaunting his 'New Middle East' map at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he completely erased Palestine and made a mockery of every single UN resolution on the subject. Second... Read More
The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a massive public diplomacy op launched at the recent G20 summit in New Delhi, complete with a memorandum of understanding signed on 9 September. Players include the US, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the EU, with a special role for the latter’s top three powers Germany, France, and... Read More
VLADIVOSTOK – Russian President Vladimir Putin opened and closed his quite detailed address to the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok with a resounding message: “The Far East is Russia’s strategic priority for the entire 21st century.” And that’s exactly the feeling one would have prior to the address, interacting with business executives mingling across the... Read More
Samarkand, Uzbekistan - The historical Heartland – or Central Eurasia – already is, and will continue to be, the prime battlefield in the New Great Game, fought between the United States and the China-Russia strategic partnership. The original Great Game pitted the British and Russian empires in the late 19th century, and in fact, never... Read More
As the BRICS approach the most important summit in their history on August 22-24 in Johannesburg, South Africa, some fundamentals need to be observed. The top three BRICS cooperation platforms are politics and security, finance and the economy, and culture. So the notion that a new BRICS gold-backed reserve currency will be announced at the... Read More
The 23rd summit of the heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), held virtually in New Delhi, represented History in the making: three BRICS (Russia, India, China), plus Pakistan and four Central Asian “stans” (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan), finally and formally, welcomed the Islamic Republic of Iran as a permanent member. And... Read More
The first draft of the extraordinary events that took place in Russia on The Longest Day – Saturday, June 24 – leads us to a whole new can of worms. The Global Majority badly wants to know what happens next. Let’s examine the key pieces in the chessboard. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is cutting to... Read More
The collective west was dying to bury him – yet another strategic mistake that did not take into account the mood of Turkish voters in deep Anatolia. In the end, Recep Tayyip Erdogan did it – again. Against all his shortcomings, like an aging neo-Ottoman Sinatra, he did it “my way,” comfortably retaining Turkiye’s presidency... Read More
Make no mistake about what the G7’s Hiroshima Communique is all about. The setting: a city in neo-colony Japan nuclear-bombed 78 years ago by the United States, for which it made no excuses. The message: the G7, actually G9 (augmented by two unelected Eurocrats) declares war – hybrid and otherwise – against BRICS+, which has... Read More
West Asia is a region that is currently experiencing a great deal of geopolitical activity. Recent diplomatic efforts, initiated by Russia and overseen by China, secured a long-elusive Iranian and Saudi Arabian rapprochement, while Syria’s return to the Arab League has been welcomed with great fanfare. The diplomatic flurry signals a shift away from the... Read More
It is now established that the US dollar’s status as a global reserve currency is eroding. When corporate western media begins to attack the multipolar world’s de-dollarization narrative in earnest, you know the panic in Washington has fully set in. The numbers: the dollar share of global reserves was 73 percent in 2001, 55 percent... Read More
The idea that History has an endpoint, as promoted by clueless neoconservatives in the unipolar 1990s, is flawed, as it is in an endless process of renewal. The recent official meeting between Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Beijing marks a territory that was previously deemed unthinkable... Read More
What has just taken place in Moscow is nothing less than a new Yalta, which, incidentally, is in Crimea. But unlike the momentous meeting of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in USSR-run Crimea in 1945, this is the first time in arguably five centuries that no... Read More
The headquarters of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) in Moscow, linked to the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is arguably one of the most crucial nodes of the emerging multipolar world. That’s where I was received by Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics Sergey Glazyev – who was previously interviewed in detail by The Cradle – for... Read More
The 12th “Middle East Conference” at the Valdai Club in Moscow offered a more than welcome cornucopia of views on interconnected troubles and tribulations affecting the region. But first, an important word on terminology – as only one of Valdai’s guests took the trouble to stress. This is not the “Middle East” – a reductionist,... Read More
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s much awaited address to the Russian Federal Assembly on Tuesday should be interpreted as a tour de force of sovereignty. The address, significantly, marked the first anniversary of Russia’s official recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, only a few hours before 22 February, 2022. In myriad ways, what happened... Read More
The visit of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Beijing and his face-to- face meeting with counterpart Xi Jinping is a groundbreaking affair in more ways than one. Raisi, the first Iranian president to officially visit China in 20 years, led an ultra high-level political and economic delegation, which included the new Central Bank governor and... Read More
The agreement between the Central Banks of Russia and Iran formally signed on 29 January connecting their interbank transfer systems is a game-changer in more ways than one. Technically, from now on 52 Iranian banks already using SEPAM, Iran’s interbank telecom system, are connecting with 106 banks using SPFS, Russia’s equivalent to the western banking... Read More
Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall. Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the... Read More
Let’s start with three interconnected multipolar-driven facts. First: One of the key take aways from the World Economic Forum annual shindig in Davos, Switzerland is when Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan, on a panel on “Saudi Arabia’s Transformation,” made it clear that Riyadh “will consider trading in currencies other than the US dollar.” So is... Read More
A former US intelligence official has confirmed that the shambolic Maidan remix staged in Brasilia on 8 January was a CIA operation, and linked it to the recent attempts at color revolution in Iran. On Sunday, alleged supporters of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, bypassing flimsy security... Read More
The year 2022 ended with a Zoom call to end all Zoom calls: Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping discussing all aspects of the Russia-China strategic partnership in an exclusive video call. Putin told Xi how “Russia and China managed to ensure record high growth rates of mutual trade,” meaning “we will be able to... Read More
It would be so tempting to qualify Chinese President Xi Jinping landing in Riyadh a week ago, welcomed with royal pomp and circumstance, as Xi of Arabia proclaiming the dawn of the petroyuan era. But it’s more complicated than that. As much as the seismic shift implied by the petroyuan move applies, Chinese diplomacy is... Read More