John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY FINIAN CUNNINGHAM IN RUSSIA TODAY
“Why the US really accuses Russia & China of weaponizing space”
I think it is interesting in this context to note Iran's release of photos from its new spy satellite. Clear, high-altitude shots of America's huge airbase, Al Udeid in Qatar, the largest in the Middle East.
Just a short time ago, an American senior military man dismissed Iran's satellite achievement, calling it a tumbling tin can with a webcam in orbit. Oh, how wrong he was.
We also see the remarkable recent videos of Iran's launching a couple of its new buried cruise missiles, a genuine and surprising innovation. With no evidence of anything even being there, suddenly smoke and flames erupt and a missile shoots up through the earth as though it were rising from water. Nothing like it seen before. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8572527/Iran-launches-underground-ballistic-missiles-day-attacking-mock-aircraft-carrier.html
The Iranians are very resourceful people, never to be underestimated. I recall that around the time of the country’s revolution in 1979, many bagfuls of shredded American documents were discovered at the embassy. The Iranians – of course, famous for beautiful hand-made Persian carpets – called in some of their best carpet-weavers in an effort to reconstruct the documents.
With an effort that would have strained the eyes and patience of most people beyond endurance, they succeeded in reconstructing them, much to the consternation of the United States because the documents revealed embarrassing secrets.
I cite the anecdote because the effort shows great imagination, skill, and perseverance under extreme circumstances. Shortly after its revolution, Iran was put through a terrible war – the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 – a war encouraged by the US to punish Iran and a war which saw heavy use by Iraq of poison gas weapons secretly supplied by the US or its allies. About a million Iranians and half a million Iraqis died in the war.
Since then, the US has kept almost constant pressure on Iran in one form or another. It hates Iran for embarrassing it during the revolution and for upsetting the comfortable local arrangement it had with the Shah, a much-hated figure in Iran who ruled brutally from 1953 when he was installed after a coup against the country’s elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The US also dislikes Iran because its size – a population the size of Germany’s – plus its vast oil and gas reserves make it the region’s natural leading country, something American imperial interests – Israel with the Pentagon and the CIA – much resent.
And in recent times, Iran has come under “maximum pressure,” the sociopathic Trump’s phrase, one much reminiscent of something from Mussolini. Terrible sanctions and threats and deprivation suddenly launched against a people who for four years dutifully fulfilled all international obligations under the Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a document Trump just decided arbitrarily to tear up.
Every expert and statesman confirmed that Iran had met its obligations, but that wasn’t enough for Trump. He was in search of huge campaign donations for the 2020 election, and the people who could supply them wanted Iran hurt. One of them actually has been quoted suggesting the use of nuclear weapons on Iran. These donors are American oligarchs obsessed with Israel and with the idea that Iran is Israel’s enemy, a notion Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has relentlessly promoted for all of his fourteen nasty years in office.
Iran’s demonstration of new military capabilities is all the more remarkable in light of this terrible history following the revolution. Once again, the rug-weavers have shown what they can do. The extent of their achievement under harsh, imposed conditions displays remarkable organization and talent and persistence.
They have put a satellite into orbit and built the large rocket that carried it there. They have created an entire family of missiles – ground-to-air, ground-to-ground, and ground-to-ship – and have demonstrated their precision a number of times, including the time they downed America’s largest and most sophisticated drone, one the size of an airliner, at night illegally flying over Iranian territory.
They have built three very large underground missile facilities, factories and storage areas. Now, they demonstrate the launch of missiles through ground where there is no structure of any kind visible. They are clearly in a position to rain precision missiles by the thousands on American bases in the region and on Israel, a country which never stops making public threats and has engaged in many acts of sabotage and terrorism against Iran.
Iran has created its first jet fighter, and it has a more advanced one in development. It has built some remarkably sophisticated drones, including one based on reverse-engineering an intruding American drone they managed somehow to force to the ground.
A truly remarkable set of achievements, done by a country under the most severe sanctions and threats. I think it likely only these weapons prevent a war being started by the US and Israel, both of whom have powerful political forces at work pushing in that direction.
Modern Iran has started no wars or aggressions – clearly quite the opposite of the case for the US. It works with Russia in Syria, by invitation of the Syrian government, to fight the kind of terrorist mercenaries America and a few of its allies, very much including Israel, put there to topple another government they don’t like, as they toppled the governments of Iraq and Libya, both instances of colossally stupid policy since the results proved counterproductive.
Libya, once a well-run and peaceful country, remains a chaotic wreck nearly ten years after being invaded, and its future is uncertain. The disappearance of an efficient, coherent government in Libya contributed much to the stream of hopeless refugees that has troubled Europe.
The terribly bloody and totally illegal American invasion of Iraq – with at least a million deaths and countless injuries and immense infrastructure damage – actually strengthened Iran’s position in the region. It removed an Iraqi government that had been very hostile to Iran. The current Iraqi government, while still under American pressure, is friendly with Iran, and they are doing some large projects together.
The Iraqi government has formally told the remaining American military to leave. So far, America refuses, but that can’t go on forever.
That’s how it is when you try playing God, as America has done so many times. It frequently goes wrong just in geopolitical terms, never mind morality or principles, things America always ignores in foreign affairs.
Technology makes it possible sometimes for some nations to compete militarily even against a giant like the US.
America holds no exclusive on daring new military weapons. It may be almost the opposite in some instances because America is so weighed down with countless bases, at least 800 of them, huge fleets worth tens of billions of dollars, plus huge bureaucracies burdened with tradition-bound thinking. Others may be more agile in new areas. And if they are under constant threat the way Iran has been, they again may prove the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention. Desperate people do sometimes work miracles.
After all, Russia and China, and perhaps soon Iran, have the missiles to sink an entire American fleet sent against them, and in fairly short order. That’s tens of thousands of men and hundreds of billions of dollars in equipment – ships and the costly aircraft they carry - lost in a brief time.
Technology can act as an equalizer. Little David’s slingshot bringing down Goliath.
