Broadcast with Chris Cook on Tuesday evening, the news broke midway that President Donald Trump had withdrawn his CBOU – Crazy Bastards Obliteration Ultimatum – and agreed to a ceasefire for two weeks of negotiations with Iran.
This news followed by several hours in New York, the double veto by China and Russia of the draft UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution on the Strait of Hormuz. This was the attempt by the US, through Bahrain and several Arab sheikhdoms, to legalize the use of force by the US and Israel in the war they launched against Iran on February 28.
A UNSC press release claimed the resolution aimed to “coordinate defensive efforts and deter attempts to interfere with international navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
This was deliberate soft-pedaling by UNSC officials.
Their description of the resolution, whose text the UNSC refuses to publish, claims the use of force proposed was “defensive”. China’s and Russia’s UN representatives criticized this as unbalanced because “it failed to capture the root causes and the full picture of the conflict in a comprehensive and balanced manner” (Fu Cong); and because it was a “fundamentally erroneous and dangerous approach” (Vasily Nebenzya). The two countries proposed that their draft resolution to come will “be concise, equitable and balanced.”
President Donald Trump has been defeated on the battlefield near Isfahan over the weekend. He was then defeated on the morning of Tuesday in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in his attempt, manipulating Bahrain, to legalize the use of force against Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
Finally, minutes short of his announced genocide deadline “before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” and “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, Trump bit his tongue on his threat: “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
Instead, Trump announced that as a favour to his Pakistan ally, Asim Munir, “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East. We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution.”
The official statement, issued in Teheran by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said that Iran is “considering announcement by POTUS about acceptance of the general framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal as a basis for negotiations”. The Iranian agreement, Araghchi went on, then preserved the new regime for the Strait “via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations.”
Trump and his tweet supervisor, Stephen Miller, then swallowed their tongue by tweeting the text of Araghchi’s tweet.
Exact and official wording of Iran’s 10-point proposal is not published. However, this summary published by the Tasnim News Agency, a platform of the Islamic Revolurionary Guard Corp (IRGC), comes close. The IRGC has added the interpretation: “By accepting these conditions as the basis for negotiations, Trump has retreated from his desperate threats and bluffs.”
Humiliation reversed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and War Secretary Peter Hegseth had repeatedly declared in their April 6 press conference, celebrating the weekend pilot rescue, that the Iranians had been “embarrassed and, ultimately, humiliated by the success of this audacious rescue mission”, and “Iran’s military, and we know this, is embarrassed and humiliated, and they should be”. With Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, Trump had declared last December: “Iran has been greatly reduced in power, prestige. I don’t want to use the word humiliation because, you know, they’re trying to build up again.”
In this discussion with Rasheed Muhammad on the Red Pill Diaries, the domestic political drivers of Trump’s aggression, and also of his retreat, have been identified. The factional lineup of Vice President JD Vance, Chief Staff Susan Wiles, White House lawyers, pollsters, and senior military officers has proved to be stronger than the Jewish faction of Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, Steven Witkoff, and Netanyahu.
Alive or dead, US Air Force (USAF) Major Amanda Ryder has just destroyed President Donald Trump’s future.
The document bag (lead image, bottom left) and documents (right) which the Iranian Law Enforcement Force (Faraja) has disclosed and published in the last twenty-four hours, are evidence of the weekend firefight and destruction of at least four US aircraft at a desert location near Isfahan, central Iran. The cache reveals top secret operational details, location maps, time logs, local intelligence sources, and objectives of a joint US-Israeli plan which was already in motion before the attack on Iran was launched on February 28.
President Trump’s public version of the mission is that it was to rescue the USAF colonel and weapons officer who had survived the earlier shooting-down of his F-15. Trump’s official calendar for the Saturday and Sunday, April 4-5, reveals that he remained in Washington instead of taking his usual weekend in Florida, but the record of his activities is unusually empty – until early on Sunday afternoon when Trump revealed by tweet that “we have rescued the seriously wounded, and really brave, F-15 Crew Member/Officer”; and then next morning: “WE GOT HIM! My fellow Americans, over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History”.
Follow where Trump was and what he said in this analysis.
Teheran has announced that Ryder’s initial mission had been for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in and around Isfahan, to capture stocks of enriched uranium and to destroy the enrichment plant and its personnel at the same time.
There has so far been no statement from the Pentagon or the USAF corroborating the identity, whereabouts, or condition of Ryder.
Independent open-source investigation, however, confirms that on May 9, 2014, Amanda M. Ryder received her Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) commission as a second lieutenant in the USAF. Her home was recorded as in Vienna, Virginia, although at the time she was studying at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. In July 2023 she was nominated for promotion to major and this was confirmed by the US Senate on July 27, 2023. Her paygrade as a major was O4.
The military identification card (lead image, top left) which has been displayed in Iran as Ryder’s is the standard form of the Geneva Conventions Identification Card. The name, rank, and paygrade displayed are standard. The lack of an issuance date at bottom, the placement of the expiration date at top, and the absence of the USAF logo differ from the standard.
Details of Ryder’s age, her family home in the Greater Washington area, and her attachment to the Air Force suggest that she may be the daughter of Major General Patrick Ryder whose long career in the USAF culminated in his posting as the Defense Department Press Secretary and Pentagon spokesman between 2022 and 2025. There is no official confirmation of the relationship.
If the identification of Ryder and authentication of the visible documents are proved, then they have enormous political significance. The Israeli B2 visa card (lead image, top right), issued for Ryder’s entry on March 20, 2026, and expiring on June 20, reveals that Ryder was based in Israel prior to the Isfahan mission; she may have flown from Israel into Iran for the weekend operation. This confirms the close coordination in operations between the US and Israel.
It reinforces the likelihood that Ryder’s mission – along with the multiple special forces units which she was flying into the Isfahan desert landing site – was in planning from as early as March 20, her arrival date in Israel – and most likely for at least a month before then. However, if the operation’s objective was to launch a surprise attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities in and around Isfahan, then its failure is likely to have motivated Trump’s escalation threats which have followed.
In retrospect, it now seems likely that Trump was following the operation from the White House Situation Room through most of the day and night of Saturday and on Sunday morning. The losses of Ryder’s aircraft, another C-130 transport and two (possibly three) AH-6 Little Bird helicopters, the substitution of evacuation aircraft, the combat, and the final rescue of the F-15 pilot are likely to have created enormous tension and fear of failure for Trump and his associates. They had reason to believe they were facing an even more catastrophic Iranian desert rescue mission as had been attempted by President Jimmy Carter in April 1980.
The political consequences of a repeat of Carter’s failure for Trump would have been dramatically obvious.The faction of White House officials and military officers who have been warning Trump against escalation of the war – Vice President JD Vance, Chief Staff Susan Wiles, Counsel David Warrington, pollster Tony Fabrizio – is likely to have reinforced their urging to Trump to get out of the war as quickly as possible, with a negotiation for smokescreen.
The faction in favour of escalation – Stephen Miller, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Benjamin Netanyahu – would have reinforced their urging to escalate, ignore the negotiations with the Iranians through the Pakistan intermediary, and prepare for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
View now or listen to this analysis of Trump as he crosses the last of his warfighting, genocide-aiming red lines.
Mohammed Javad Zarif (lead images) has grown fatter and more swollen-headed since he was replaced as Iran’s Foreign Minister in 2021, then removed as Vice President in 2025.
In Moscow, Zarif is known as a Russia-hating, backstabbing liar who negotiates with deceit and whose word is worthless. Click for more.
For Zarif to publish last week an essay titled “How Iran Should End the War – A Deal Tehran Could Take”, from the tribune of the money establishment in New York, the Council on Foreign Relations, is understandable in Moscow. This is because, comments a Moscow source in position to know, he is “registering his address in Teheran at the very least to tell the Americans to target their bombs and missiles elsewhere. He hates Russians and someone is promoting him. The US has shown what they do with discussions, plans, ideas through the negotiations,” the source said. “They have demonstrated there is zero or less regard for any idea. Trump is fixated on ‘stone age’ destruction and ‘capitulation.’ If and when he does a ceasefire, it will be so he can break it. That’s a lesson the North Koreans alone seem to have learned and not anyone else. “
This is a guarded reference to the Russian look and sound-alikes in Moscow telling President Vladimir Putin to trust President Donald Trump’s “Anchorage understandings” and to end the war on the Ukraine battlefield with schemes for US investments in exchange for Russian assets.
Just so, Zarif’s end-of-war plan includes the proposal “to further consolidate peace, Iran and the United States should initiate mutually beneficial trade, economic, and technological cooperation. Iran, for example, could invite oil companies, including interested American ones, to immediately facilitate exports to buyers. Iran, the United States, and Persian Gulf countries might all partner on projects involving energy and advanced technologies. .. Finally, Iran and the United States should announce and sign a permanent nonaggression pact. By doing so, they would commit to not use or threaten to use force against each other.”
The Russian promoting the same combination of trust in Trump, trust in money that talks through Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner – not yet in the pages of Foreign Affairs – is Kirill Dmitriev. He too is described by his Russian critics as too pro-American to be trusted.
The Iranian Prosecutor is reported to have issued a reprimand for Zarif. “According to follow-up and information from informed sources, following the publication of an article in the American journal Foreign Affairs that has been determined to be contrary to national security, Mohammad Javad Zarif has been issued a reprimand. In this regard, the Prosecutor’s Office, issuing a warning addressed to political figures and those with a public platform, emphasized: ‘During this imposed war, figures and those with a platform must not express opinions or publish material contrary to national interests, national integrity, and social cohesion, nor outside the bounds of their authority.'” The Russian Security Council is highly critical of Dmitriev but he is in no danger from the state prosecutor.
In the four days between April 1 and April 5, President Donald Trump made a record of the collapse of his mind into genocidal violence which none of his officials can dissuade, limit, control, if they try, or even conceal. Not the military experts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; not the pollsters of the White House Chief of Staff; not the lawyers of the White House Counsel; not even the spell-checkers of the Director of Communications.
Between declaring “we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong” and “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell. JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah”, Trump revealed that he thinks there can be no alternative for a state or a people or a god but submission or destruction. Theirs, or his.
In Moscow, there has been silence except for Trump’s advocate inside the Kremlin, Kirill Dmitriev. He has tweeted in support of Trump’s attacks on one of his domestic bugbears, the New York Times, and one of his foreign ones, Europe.
By an accident of the calendar, this year’s Good Friday follows just two days after April Fools’ Day.
It is no accident that the Trump Administration has put its Arab and European allies for the war against Iran on the battlefield of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in order to legalize the use of military force (more military force) in the Strait of Hormuz.
In President Donald Trump’s April 1 speech, he announced: “I have a suggestion. No. 1, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And No. 2, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before. Should have done it with us as we asked. Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done, so it should be easy. And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally. It’ll just open up naturally.”
He explained what he meant by “naturally”: “we are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing.”
A few hours later, Trump celebrated with a video clip of a new US attack on the Karaj bridge near Teheran. “The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again — Much more to follow! IT IS TIME FOR IRAN TO MAKE A DEAL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE, AND THERE IS NOTHING LEFT OF WHAT STILL COULD BECOME A GREAT COUNTRY!”
The UNSC secretariat is not publishing the text of the Hormuz Strait resolution, fronted by Bahrain, currently occupying the UNSC chairmanship, in order to implement Trump’s“suggestion No. 2” – a military operation to force the Hormuz Strait open against Iranian defence.
Following Trump’s speech, French President Emmanuel Macron went public with a direct attack on Trump’s Hormuz plan. “There are those who advocate for the liberation of the Strait of Hormuz by force through a military operation, a position sometimes expressed by the United States. I say sometimes because it has varied, it is never the option we have chosen and we consider it unrealistic. It is unrealistic because it would take an inordinate amount of time and would expose anyone crossing the strait to coastal threats from the (Iranian) Revolutionary Guards, who possess significant resources, as well as ballistic missiles, (and) a host of other risks. What we say from the beginning is that this strait must be reopened because it is strategic for energy flows, fertilisers and international trade, but that it can only be done in consultation with Iran. So, first and foremost, there must be a ceasefire and a resumption of negotiations.”
Russian representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, said Moscow supports Arab state engagement in end-of-war negotiations, but he implied Russia is not supporting the use of force. “We support the adoption by the UN Security Council of presidential statements regarding cooperation with the Arab League. We always take a constructive approach to these documents and view them as an integral part of cooperation between the Security Council and the League… What is also crucial amid the current escalation in the region, triggered by the US-Israeli aggression against Iran, is the calibrated stance of the Arab States.”
By calibrated, Nebenzya meant balanced – not unbalanced against Iran.
Russia’s deputy UN representative, Anna Evstigneva, told Chinese television on March 28 that Russia and China are together in opposing Bahraini-American proposals which are “one-sided and biased, because they put the whole blame on Iran and its strikes on Gulf countries – there are actually American military facilities there. We told them from day one that we saw the draft this way. Russia and China presented amendments to make the text balanced. But unfortunately, the penholders, as we call them in the Security Council – the authors of the text – did not take them on board. So, we had to abstain.”
She was referring to UNSC Resolution 2817 voted on March 11. Its language condemned Iran but didn’t propose to use force. The anti-Iran alliance, according to the resolution, “condemns any actions or threats by the Islamic Republic of Iran aimed at closing, obstructing, or otherwise interfering with international navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, or threatening maritime security in the Bab Al Mandab.”
Will Russia and China abstain or veto the new UNSC resolution, and what exactly do the words say and mean?
Russian public opinion is swinging decisively in favour of Iran and hostility towards the US and Israel is growing, according to the latest nationwide opinion poll conducted by the Levada polling group of Moscow between March 18 and 26, 2026.
Sympathy for Iran is expressed by 40% of the nationwide sample; this percentage is accelerating with time and with state television news broadcasts reporting Iran’s fightback, its successful attacks on US bases in the Gulf states, and unprecedented strikes against Israeli targets. During the June War against Iran last year, by contrast, 29% of Russians supported Iran. This shift in public opinion has occurred among those who said they were uncertain or undecided last June.
The longer the war continues, the stronger Russian public support for Iran is likely to become. A parallel swing of Russian support for the Palestinians of Gaza occurred following the Hamas breakout of October 7, 2023, as the Israeli destruction of Gaza over the past three years failed to stop the resistance.
Positive sentiment towards Israel and reluctance to criticize the Israelis, which continues to be demonstrated in public by President Vladimir Putin, has been measured this month at just 2% of the country – one Russian in fifty. During the June War, Levada counted 3%; the difference is statistically insignificant.
No European public, no American opinion poll, and no BRICS member state shows such a low level of support for Israel as this.
The Levada poll also reveals that, notwithstanding their growing sympathy for the Iranian side and against the Americans and Israelis, the majority of Russians wants to stay out of the conflict.
“In the current conflict,” the Levada report, released on March 27, says, “about 40% of Russians sympathize with Iran, while only 2% speak of their sympathies to Israel and the United States. At the same time, half of the respondents (53%) do not express sympathy for any of the parties to the conflict. Compared to last year’s events, the level of support for Iran by respondents has increased modestly. In addition, it is worth noting that, as in other conflicts in the region, a significant number of Russians remained neutral and did not support any of the parties to the conflict.”
The shift in pro-Iranian opinion among Russians is concentrated among men rather than women; those aged 55 and older; the university educated; Muscovites; and those who report relying on television for their news. The pro-Israel Russians are mostly under 25, pro-American, and are oriented to internet news sources.
The news broke shortly after today’s Dialogue Works podcast went to air.
This is China’s attempt to take from Iran its two trump cards in defending itself from the US, Israel and their allies:
First card — Iran’s right of self-defence and retaliation against each and every base, including radars, logistics, intelligence, operational plans, military staffs and financing, which are being used to run the war on Iran.
Second card — counter-sanctions against the energy, other exports and food, tourism and other imports of all the states allied in the war against Iran, including India, Cyprus, UK, and the European states. The closure of the Hormuz Strait to these war-making countries, and the imposition of a permissions regime for neutral and friendly states, are part of Iran’s defence. They are also a counter to the scheme of sanctions against Iran’s economy and asset seizures which has been kept in place by the anti-Iran alliance for forty years, and which were reinforced through the United Nations Security Council snapback mechanism in 2025.
In camouflage for what China is doing against Iran, it has just announced its support “to strengthen the primacy of the UN.”
This is Point 5 in the “Five-Point Initiative of China and Pakistan” which was published following talks in Beijing between Wang Yi, China’s Politburo member and Foreign Minister under President Xi Jinping. Read the full text.
Point 1 calls for “immediate cessation of hostilities”. This is the ceasefire which has been repeatedly dismissed by Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei’s Five-Point term sheet of March 12.
Point 2 claims “dialogue and diplomacy is [sic] the only viable option to resolve conflicts”. After the record of negotiation by the US before the June 2025 war and now the February 28 war, this statement is false on the evidence. Also, it is a claim that is contradicted by China’s position on the future of Taiwan as non-negotiable.
Point 3 declares that “the parties to the conflict [should] stop attacking important infrastructure, including energy, desalination and power facilities, and peaceful nuclear infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants.” This is China’s alibi for Israel to retain its Dimona and Sdot Mikha facilities for enriching uranium for bomb and missile warheads aimed at Iran; and for Iran to disarm itself in the face of the global alliance committed to regime change in Teheran. By omission, China has now accepted that assassination of Iran’s leaders, scientists and military commanders by the US and Israel, aided and endorsed by the Arab sheikhs, should be accepted by Iran in the peace talks to follow – without the penalties and reparations declared in Khamenei’s Five Points.
Point 4 of the Beijing paper is headed “security of shipping lanes”. Drafted by Wang, this is designed to open the Strait of Hormuz to the financial profit of all states, starting with China, but with the exception of Iran. There is no mention of the closure, let alone opening, of all the world’s seas and straits to Iran’s shipping.
“The Chinese have an annoying habit of believing everyone else is an idiot,” responds a Moscow source in a position to know.
He interprets Wang’s motive — and behind him President Xi — is to secure short-term oil and gas supplies at lower cost; and in the medium term, ahead of the rescheduled talks with President Donald Trump in China in mid-May, to reduce the escalation of the US war plan against China. “I’m also beginning to suspect that Xi’s purges of the military have a lot less to do with the corruption that’s been announced than with repression of those unhappy with the comfortable elites around him [Xi] selling out to the US.”
The source also points to Wang’s statement of March 8, declaring that China is “a sincere friend and strategic partner” — not to Iran under attack but to all “Middle Eastern countries” including the Arab states and Israel. “This is a war that should not have happened…Wilful use of force does not prove one’s strength.” By omitting to identify the US, Israel and their allies in the attacks commencing on February 28, Wang, according to the interpretation in Moscow, is sacrificing Iran for Xi’s and Wang’s calculation of their own advantage.
Since last December senior Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Kremlin national security advisor Yury Ushakov, have been expressing doubt in the “sincerity” of the Xi-Wang friends.
The suspicion in Moscow is that China is betraying its commitments to Iran under their 2021 agreement – without going as far in the betrayal as the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s explicit and secret support for the US and Israel’s war. This means that two of the foundation states of BRICS have defaulted on the collective security the organization has promised.
That leaves Russia. Listen or view the hour-long discussion with Nima Alkhorshid, broadcast at 7 in the US morning, 2 in the Moscow afternoon.
The weapon was first used at least forty thousand years ago, not only by Australian aboriginals (lead image, left) but also by ancient Egyptians and native Americans like the Navajo. Even the Poles are known to have mastered the technology of shaping mammoth tusks and throwing them at people whose meat they wanted to steal.
In the new Red Pill Diaries podcast with Rasheed Muhammad, we open with the collaboration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) and his foreign minister in the US plan of attack on the Iranian Navy squadron seeking safe harbour for several days before the war was launched on February 28, and before the frigate, IRIS Dena, was sunk on March 4. The evidence is presented of US planning, Indian collaboration, and Sri Lankan delay which combined to expose the Dena to lethal ambush when it was just nine nautical miles and eighteen minutes from safety.
The immediate lessons: Modi’s prejudice against Iran has triggered the biggest over-estimation of US and Israeli power in Indian history; India’s conduct has ended BRICS as a multipolar collective and alternative to the US empire; Iran’s new Hormuz Strait regime is penalizing India in favour of Pakistan and severely damaging India’s economic growth; Indian state elections in April will decide the political penalty which Modi and his BJP party must pay for losing the war they expected to win; and finally, the value to India’s military establishment of Israel as a weapons supplier, intelligence source and political ally is now less than zero.
The medium term lesson: Russia is emerging as the only credible force capable of supporting the balance of defence and deterrence in the Middle Eastern wars the US and its allies aim to fight.
The long term lesson: beware of the boomerang which the US, Israel, their Arab allies, and India threw at Iran because it has now returned to strike them more powerfully than any other in their arsenals. It’s also a stealth weapon which they failed to see coming and duck.
The survivors of the US attack and sinking of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena on March 4 are direct witnesses of exactly what happened — not only in the hours and minutes before the attack, but also in the days preceding –at least a week — when Iranian officials were requesting sanctuary from the Sri Lankan and Indian governments; and also in the days following the attack – now almost a month ago — when Sri Lankan and Indian officials have prevented the witnesses from speaking in public.
The story of the plan of US attack and the evidence of the culpability of Sri Lankan and Indian officials was told here, and the Twitter stream which has followed.
This was not a report on whether the UN Charter, the international law on surprise attack, the rules of war and the Geneva Convention code of naval conduct were violated by the USS Charlotte in the submarine-launched torpedo firing without advance warning to its target; nor whether the Dena was armed or unarmed.
A US military assessment has concluded: “The sinking of the IRIS Dena was legal under the law of naval warfare, the submarine was neither required nor equipped to rescue the sailors it left in the water, and Congress had every opportunity to stop the war but voted against it. What remains harder to explain is why the U.S. left its premier submarine-hunting aircraft to fly drills alongside the Dena one week before a submarine killed her.”
Instead, the Dances with Bears report of March 24, and earlier ones, were presented to show Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of External Relations, Subramanyan Jaishankar, had declared themselves on the side of the US and Israel against Iran before the latter launched their war on February 28. In their conduct of the negotiations with Iran over the Dena and its two escorts, before the attack and since then, the Indians have demonstrated they were not neutral.
Their attempts to retrieve this neutrality have followed after — but only because — the short war and defeat of Iran which they expected have failed; and after Iran’s fight-back put Indian workers, businessmen and offshore financial operations in the Gulf states at risk, and stopped essential supplies of oil, gas and fertilizer on which the Indian economy depends. No Indian mainstream or alternative medium has been found which has reported this evidence and discussed the implications of Modi’s abandonment of India’s neutrality.
There has been more public debate of Sri Lanka’s neutrality and criticism of the conduct of President Anura Dissanyake. In EurAsia Times, an Indian analyst Sumit Ahlawat reported on March 26 under the headline “Iranian Sailors Trapped in Sri Lanka: Tehran Demands Return, US Pressure Mounts — Can Colombo Stay Neutral?” He reports from an interview with Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath that currently, 252 Iranian sailors remain in Colombo’s “custody” – 15 on board the escort IRIS Bushehr, which was given safe harbour in Colombo, then Trincomalee, after the Dena’s sinking; the remaining 204 of the Bushehr crew at a Sri Lankan Navy camp, and in a separate Sri Lankan Air Force camp, the 32 survivors of the Dena.
There remain discrepancies in the official statements and press reports of how many Bushehr crew remain in Sri Lanka. Altogether, the Iranian total is either 251; 252; or 253, depending on source.
“They are not prisoners,” Foreign Minister Herath was quoted as saying. “But that doesn’t mean, give them all freedom.” The Iranians are being held incommunicado, allowed to telephone their families in Iran under strict supervision, but prevented from speaking to the Iranian media or the local press. In isolation from their fellow Iranian crew members, the special conditions of the Dena crew in Sri Lanka have not been reported.
Herath has admitted there is intense US government pressure not to allow the repatriation of the Iranian crews. The pressure includes the threat to reverse the trade tariff and other concessions which the Trump Administration gave Colombo last year after first penalizing the country’s exports with a prohibitive 44% tariff.
There has been sharp criticism from the Sri Lankan Navy of President Dissanayake’s calculated delay in allowing the Dena, the Bushehr, and the third vessel in the squadron, IRIS Lavan, to make safe harbour, despite their request before the Dena attack. “ ‘We did not take any prompt action,’ said former Sri Lankan Navy chief, Rear Admiral (ret) Sarath Weerasekara, in an interview with a London newspaper on March 16. “‘We could have saved those lives also. This has been discussed in the [Sri Lankan] Security Council and yet no action has been taken.’ In the aftermath of the attack, Sri Lanka agreed to allow Bushehr to dock late on 4 March, amid fears it too would be hit.”
There has been no investigation in India of the comparable delay by Modi’s National Security Council. Retired Indian admiral-rank officers have been critical in public of the US for attacking the Dena and for not assisting in the rescue of survivors; they are either unaware of the Modi decisions which exposed the Dena, or unwilling to express the dismay and criticism of Modi which are circulating in the Navy Headquarters staff in Delhi and at Eastern Command of the Indian Navy, which had hosted the Dena squadron at Visakhapatnam between February 15 and 25, before it set sail on its final voyage.
Because Russia is allied with Iran, providing both humanitarian and military assistance since the US and Israeli attack began, there have been official statements almost daily from Moscow on the targeting of Iranian civilians and the nuclear reactor complex at Bushehr, where Russian technicians continue to work, following their partial evacuation. Although the Russian Navy frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov participated with the Dena in the naval exercises at Visakhapatnam in mid-February, there has been no official Russian comment on the sinking of the Dena.
The most detailed Iranian comments have come in a 40-minute press conference in Colombo by Iran’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Alireza Delkhosh. He reveals that the first request for sanctuary for the Dena, Lavan and Bushehr was initiated by Iran before the vessels left Visakhapatnam on February 25. That is before the February 26 date which President Dissanayake has claimed in his press and parliamentary statements.
It also raises the question — did the Iranians also ask the Indian Government for safe harbour at the same time?
The Delkhosh disclosure means that the Iranian squadron set sail from the Indian port on February 25 without orders to return to the home port of Bandar Abbas. The Indian Port Clearance Certificate required to have been filed before February 25 must therefore show the planned voyage destination. This document remains secret. The subsequent course the Iranians took southward through the Bay of Bengal may have been extended eastward and slowed down because of the delays in Sri Lankan and Indian permissions.
That delay is the political crux of this story. Its outcome was the killing of the Dena and of the neutrality of the Indian and Sri Lankan politicians involved.
