Yes, Soleimani assassination was a U.S. message to Russia and China

I didn't see the January 7 Sputnik article (below) until yesterday but as I noted on the same day it was published, I believe Soleimani was killed in such showy fashion to send a message to a number of countries, including Russia and China, although I would put the most powerful European ones at the top of the list. Governments of those countries are carefully but inexorably inching away from the American orb. This is unacceptable to Washington. 

See the following article and Voltaire Network's December 31 article For the European Union, the time has come to use force: "The new European Commission has clearly stated its project in the era of US withdrawal: to restore Western Europe’s dominance over the rest of the world from the 16th to the 19th century. ..."

Thierry Meyssan, a French leftist and sometime conspiracy theorist, finds the prospect alarming because of the arguments the European powers are using to rationalize their intentions. Thierry's views run hot and cold but when all the planets are in proper alignment, in my view he is capable of pulling off an interesting analysis.  And he most certainly finds important news reports that receive no attention from the American media. 

In any case, his article is one of many signs of West Europe's determination to chart a course independent of America's. (Note The Diplomat article quoted in the following article.)  

Signs abound as well about the waning of U.S. leadership in the Middle East. The most powerful Gulf Arab governments are turning, more and more, to Russia and China for assistance.  See Yossef Bodansky's March 2019 report for Oil Price, New Middle East Alliance Shakes World Powers. (Of course the alliance is also disturbing to the West European governments.) 

The last straw for Washington was the tripartite naval drills between Russia, China and Iran. That was thumbing their noses at the United States on the world stage, at least in the Trump Administration's view. Something had to be done to put the three countries in their place. The response to the lesson from the European/British press, I note, has been to refer to Soleimani's killing as an "assassination;" e.g., this article from The Economist, Was America’s assassination of Qassem Suleimani justified?  

Assassination is a fraught term, one the U.S. rejects with regard to Soleimani. See this detailed analysis of the term from the Associated Press, published in the wake of Soleimani's killing. 

As to whether Washington is worried about America's "demise," as the following article asserts -- Sputnik is a Russian government news outlet, remember -- nobody is losing sleep over that prospect; the worry is about the waning of America's ability to control policies with a global reach and the 'narratives' that support them.  This said, there is considerable worry about Chinese and Russian de-dollarization, which the following article discusses in brief. 

One more note before I turn the floor over to Sputnik. They term the article an "editorial." Well, it's also a news report about various analyses, which granted support the Russian government's view. But it might be that Sputnik's policy is to term any article they publish an editorial if they give the author a byline, and it could be the same with RT. This was a British/European press policy, although it's now considered old-fashioned, I think. 

US Attack on Soleimani is a Signal to Russia-Iran-China Triumvirate to Cease Cooperation – Analysts

by Ekaterina Blinova

January 7, 2020

Sputnik Editorial

The US is trying to stop Eurasia's economic and political integration in order to delay its own demise, say international observers, explaining what message the US sent to the Russia-China-Iran "triumvirate" by killing Qasem Soleimani.

The assassination of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and commander of the Quds Force, in a targeted US air strike on 3 January came on the heels of joint naval exercise launched by Russia, Iran and China in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Oman.

The "growing Russia-China-Iran trilateral convergence", as The Diplomat dubbed it in late December, is seemingly hitting a raw nerve in Washington: speaking to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on 2 January, Rear Admiral Khanzadi, the Iranian navy commander, said that Washington and its allies had held an emergency meeting aimed at disrupting the drills.

US Opposes Rapprochement of Russia, China and Iran Amid Policy of 'Maximum Pressure'

"Recent violent US attacks against Iranian allies in Iraq and Syria, culminating in the killing of Iran’s Major General Qasem Soleimani, are, in the wider geopolitical sense, meant to send signals to the building Eurasian triumvirate to cease their collaborative activities, let alone longer-term strategic and Belt and Road Initiative-linked designs," says Pye Ian, an American economic analyst and private equity executive.

According to Ian, the US decision to step up pressure on Tehran might be stemming from Washington's apparent belief that Iran is "the ‘weakest link’ in the strengthening Eurasian alliance."

However, "Russia, China and Iran cannot be attacked overtly, let alone invaded, occupied or 'regime changed'," the economic analyst highlights.

Christopher C. Black, a Toronto-based international criminal lawyer with 20 years of experience in war crimes and international relations, echoes the American economist.

"It is… in response to the close relationship between Russia, Iran and China and it is no coincidence that this murder took place just as the joint naval exercises in the Persian Gulf came to an end," he said. "Further, it is a threat to Russian strategic interests in Syria and to Syria itself."

Apart from this, the move indicates that "one of the reasons for US pressure on Iran is to control the oil supply to China in order to cripple China's development," Black suggests.

Russia and its military successes in the region have become yet another irritant for Washington, according to Max Parry, an independent American journalist and geopolitical analyst.

"The US likely feels the need to reassert itself as a hegemonic power in the region, considering it is Moscow that emerged as the new honest peace broker in the Middle East with the Syrian conflict," Parry notes. "Russia completely outmanoeuvred Washington and by the end of the war, Turkey was practically in Moscow's camp. Trump has reset US foreign policy with the withdrawal from Syria and the targeting of Iran."

By killing Soleimani, the US "has completely overplayed its hand and this could be the beginning of the end for Washington because a war with Iran would be no cakewalk", he emphasises.

Eurasian 'Triumvirate' is Moving Away From the US Dollar

According to Ian, in addition to being a thorn in Washington's flesh, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran have something else in common: the three nations have increasingly been drifting away from the US dollar.

The trend followed the Trump administration's:

· unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions (JCPOA) in May 2018;

· trade war waged against the People's Republic of China by Washington since March 2018;

· series of anti-Russian sanctions imposed against Moscow under the pretext of the latter's interference in the US 2016 presidential elections, something that Russia resolutely denies.

The economic analyst explains that "the dollar’s universal confidence trick requires uniform adherence, by natural adoption or by force". While the US allies remain obedient to the dollar- dominated system, those who resisted it such as Iraq under Saddam, Libya under Gaddafi and Venezuela under Chavez "triggered some Atlanticist force, either overtly or clandestinely, in order to try and put those nations back on a compliant page."

However, "the current state of dollar printing by the US Fed ad infinitum cannot last forever," Ian stresses.

"The global East and South are already ahead of Transatlantic banking, in a sense, by shifting further out of the dollar and Treasury securities into their own, or bilateral, currency exchanges, gold, and/or domestic or collaborative cryptocurrency endeavours," he says.

Russia, China, Iran, as well as India and some other Eurasian nations are switching to trading in local currencies and continuing to amass gold at a steady pace. Thus, for instance, Russia produced over 185.1 tonnes of gold in the first six months of 2019; the country's bullion reserves reached 72.7 million troy ounces (2,261 tonnes) as of 1 December 2019. 

For its part, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has accumulated 1,948.3 tonnes of the precious metal as of December 2019, according to World Gold Council.

Ian foresees that if the world's nations continue to shift out of US Treasury obligations and choose alternative currencies for energy pricing, trading and reserves recycling, it may "cause US interest rates to fly higher, cratering consumer, institutional and public debt obligations and re-importing an obscene level of inflation back into the US".

[END ARTICLE]


Photo: AFP 2019 / ALY SONG / POOL

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