By John Helmer, Moscow, with Sahar Dadjoo, Teheran  @bears_with As tensions persist between Iran and the United States amid intensified military signaling and renewed talk of negotiations, critical questions remain about Washington’s real strategy and the risk of a broader regional conflict. In this context, Tehran Times spoke with John Helmer, a veteran journalist and geopolitical […]

by Editor - Friday, February 6th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with In Jeffrey Epstein’s decade between 2009 and 2019 he tried ever so hard to meet the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. That’s to say, between Epstein’s release from prison on his Florida state conviction and sentence for procuring a minor for prostitution and for soliciting a prostitute, and then his re-arrest […]

by Editor - Thursday, February 5th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Three out of four Russians expect victory in the Ukraine war. Even more of them trust the Russian Army to achieve it – the sooner the better, the voters think. Four out of ten Russians believe that the Special Military Operation will end this year; in the same proportion, they also […]

by Editor - Thursday, February 5th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The yanko and jingo-centric podcasters are being overtaken by the political realism of events. This is forcing a change of calculation in how the apparently powerless can and do defeat the apparently omnipotent without beating their chests, flogging their backs, or putting their adversaries’ heads in baskets. Bribery of President Donald […]

by Editor - Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Nuri al-Said, the long-serving but ill-fated Iraqi prime minister of the 1940s and 1950s, once said that you can rent an Arab but you can’t buy him. On July 15, 1958, he ended up shot by an Iraqi Army coup, buried, dug up, and his corpse mutilated as it was dragged […]

by Editor - Monday, February 2nd, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Realism in politics is M +V+ B = P. That’s to say: Money plus Votes plus Bullets equal Power.  The equation is simple arithmetic – everyone can count.   But almost everyone can count on missing one or more of the variables —  usually all three of them —  so power is very […]

by Editor - Sunday, February 1st, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with On January 27 President Donald Trump (lead image) announced: “In June, we obliterated Iran’s nuclear capacity in Operation Midnight Hammer. You saw that. People have been waiting for 22 years to do that, and we were right at the end. They were about a month away from having a nuclear weapon. […]

by Editor - Friday, January 30th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Trump Administration and its NATO allies are clear: They will escalate their war against Russia at sea, deploying their navies to enforce trade blockades, ship sabotage and seizures, and the closure of sea lanes, and to launch “pre-emptive” attacks before their targets can defend themselves. This is sea war to […]

by Editor - Thursday, January 29th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with For the first time since the negotiations to end the Ukraine war began, President Vladimir Putin has sent as the chief Russian negotiator a General Staff officer and military intelligence chief, Admiral Igor Kostyukov. The two Russians who have been closest to Putin, Vladimir Medinsky and Kirill Dmitriev, are not at […]

by Editor - Sunday, January 25th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with It is possible that after four hours of talking until almost 4 in the morning, Yury Ushakov, the Kremlin equivalent of the US National Security Advisor, was so tired he omitted to report in his read-out a novel part of the negotiations. Ushakov’s read-out runs for 730 words; it was posted […]

by Editor - Thursday, January 22nd, 2026
No Comments »