by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

When your enemy dupes you into compounding your mistakes, without achieving your military objectives, he is leading you into an escalation of force which will defeat you, sooner or later. Later is more costly, defeat more ruinous, so the Arab-Iranian alliance against Israel and the US is waging the long war they were never before believed capable to fight.  

No matter how much force you use, every US Army manual on winning battles and wars says the same thing.   Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, the British Army strategist of a generation ago, advised that “for success two major problems must be solved — dislocation and exploitation. One precedes and one follows the actual blow — which in comparison is a simple act.”

Today is Tuesday morning — and it is already plain on the Middle Eastern battlefield that the Anglo-American air attacks against Yemeni targets on Friday and Saturday have “dislocated” none of the capabilities of the Ansarallah government in Sanaa and the Houthi military units.  

For exploitation after the air strikes, the initiative has remained instead with the Houthis: they  are continuing their attacks on the US Navy fleet in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, keeping them on guard, but demonstrating they are ineffectual to protect US and Israel-connected shipping now diverting from the area.  “War is a two-party affair,” old Liddell Hart had said, “in order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.” In the Middle East the enemy has been taken off his guard. That’s to say, the Israelis, the Americans, and the British.

Minutes after midnight on Tuesday, Moscow time, Russian military bloggers began relaying the news from Iran and Yemen of new missile attacks against a Greek-American owned bulker in the Gulf of Aden during the afternoon, and hours later at night, a US mercenary forces unit, a US consulate building, an Israeli base, and the home of a leading oil trader in the Kurdish city of Erbil in northern Iraq.

According to Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad Telegram platform, “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has officially announced that the ballistic missile attack on US and Mossad bases in Iraq was carried out in response to the bloody terrorist attack in Kerman during commemorative events dedicated to Qassem Soleimani.  Local sources in Erbil report at least 8 rocket strikes… At the moment, what is known is that there have been strikes against the following targets by IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] missiles: 1. The American base at Erbil airport. 2. The U.S. Consulate in Erbil. 3. The local headquarters of the Kurdish security service. 4. The private residence of a local businessman [Peshraw Dizayee] associated with the Mossad.  There is a high activity of ambulances in Erbil. There is no clarity about the victims, but it is obvious that there will be numbers of them.”   

US media reporting after several hours of delay claimed there had been explosions near the US consulate in Erbil but “ ‘no US facilities were impacted. We’re not tracking damage to infrastructure or injuries at this time,’ a U.S. official told ABC News.”  On the contrary, Rozhin reported, “according to one of my friends who lives in the centre of Erbil, the blow fell not on the current consulate, but on the new one, which is just being built. There was everything in scaffolding and construction cranes. Eyewitnesses say that they were building something grandiose.”

During Sunday afternoon, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed reported Houthi drone or missile attacks targeting the US Navy destroyer, USS Laboon, which claims to have assisted a USAF fighter to intercept them before they reached the destroyer.  CENTCOM also reported Houthi launches “toward the southern Red Sea commercial shipping lanes.”   

CENTCOM is saying nothing at all about the fate of the two US Navy F-18 pilots, shot down by Houthi air defence during the first raid on Friday morning and missing at sea since then.   Pentagon concealment of the shoot-down —  the first air battle success of its kind– has been camouflaged by a half-dozen press releases about the hospitalization and health of the Defense Secretary, General Lloyd Austin.     “I continue to recuperate and perform my duties from home,” Austin  has claimed.   

According to US Army Lieutenant General Douglas Sims (lead image) who heads the staff advising the Joint Chiefs of Staff on operations:  “The hope would be that any real thought of [Houthi] retaliation is based on a clear understanding that, you know, we simply are not going to be messed with here…I know we have degraded capability.  I don’t believe that they [Houthis] would be able to execute the same way they did the other day.  But we will see.”    In less than 72 hours what Sims could see has had to be concealed from everyone else.

Not in Moscow.

“The Americans need controlled instability to realize their own plans,” Konstantin Dolgov, once a senior Russian diplomat  and now a senator, told Vzglyad. “But this instability has long been out of Washington’s control.”  

Yesterday, January 15, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and announced “coordination at all levels, emphasizing the unwavering mutual commitment to the fundamental principles of Russian-Iranian relations, including unconditional respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and other principles of the UN Charter, which will be confirmed in the upcoming ‘big’  interstate agreement between the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran.”  

“All levels” includes military coordination. It also means coordination with the Ansarallah representatives in Teheran.

As for the Houthi operations in the Red Sea, Lavrov and Amir-Abdollahian explicitly linked them to the Israeli-American blockade of the Palestinians in Gaza, calling for “an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and unhindered humanitarian access to the enclave to provide urgent assistance to the affected civilian population.”

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by Editor - Tuesday, January 16th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Russianness is now banned in many parts of the unfriendly world.

In Australia the banning started in earnest when the Ukraine war commenced in 2014. Already I had been banned by the state’s Australian Broadcasting Commission, then the commercial mainstream press from 2013. Just before, on September 9, 2012, 3MBS, a public subscription classical music station in Melbourne, invited me to talk about Russia and play my selection of Russian music.  This broadcast, the words in English and the Russian music, can never be heard in that country again.

Much is said in this broadcast, and more played, of the Russian experience of foreboding, of personal loss,  though not of national defeat. Defeat is what the unfriendly countries are inflicting on themselves.

Think about what this means now, wherever you are.  

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by Editor - Monday, January 15th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Not since Moses held out his hand and got the Israelites’ god to blow an easterly wind to part the Red Sea, has there been such a prodigious feat on that stretch of water. In the hours following the US and UK bombing and missile attacks on Yemen on Friday morning, the Kremlin ordered that a fence be constructed in the middle of the Red Sea on which President Vladimir Putin (lead image) has told Russian officials to sit.

The Kremlin order required the Foreign Ministry to reserve its condemnation of the attacks for the US and UK; ignore the Arab-Iranian alliance against Israel; and drop mention of Russia’s  earlier commitment to regional Arab-Iranian negotiations with Ansarallah in the Yemen.

The reason is that President Putin refuses explicitly to attack Israel’s blockade of Gaza and genocide of the Palestinians,  which are the declared targets of the Houthi operations and of its political strategy.  Instead, Putin authorized his spokesman Dmitry Peskov to announce: “We have repeatedly called on the Houthis to abandon this practice because we believe it is extremely wrong”.

This was not a repeat. It is the first time since the start of the Palestine war on October 7 that a senior Russian official has characterized the Houthi operations in support of Hamas, or called on the Houthis to desist.

Putin’s fence-seat has also required the Russian Navy squadron to remain at its Syrian base at Tartous, and to limit its naval intelligence-gathering to the eastern Mediterranean, not the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, or the Arabian Sea moving east. The upgraded Kilo-class submarine Ufa, which had been expected to transit the Suez Canal and head east to a planned Pacific Fleet deployment,  has been ordered to remain at berth at Tartous. No fresh Russian Navy reinforcements have entered the Mediterranean from Russia’s northern fleets, nor from the Pacific Fleet which were last seen in India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh in November.  

Instead, the exit westward through the Gibraltar Strait of the fleet oiler Yelnya on December 29, followed by the fleet repair vessel PM-82  are signals the Kremlin has ordered the Navy to keep its distance from both war zones.

The General Staff and Defense Ministry are keeping public silence on the Anglo-American operations in the Red Sea as they were monitored in preparation; tracked on launch; and their results recorded on the ground.   Instead, the Russian military bloggers led by Boris Rozhin of Colonel Cassad, the Militarist, and Rybar run by Mikhail Zvinchuk were reporting the aircraft and missile raids from 0130 Moscow time, several hours before the Associated Press, Reuters, and other western news agencies began their coverage. The milbloggers then followed the operations through the pre-dawn hours while the Anglo-American media remained silent.  Almost in real time, the Russian sources were reporting the collaboration of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE),  and Qatar for airspace transit and US airbase attack launches; as well as the role of the Cyprus airbases for the British aircraft load and launch operations.

Within 90 minutes, Militarist reported “Yemeni sources: there is nothing new in their attacks, the same facilities that were bombed on March 26, 2015 were hit.”  That was at 03:13 Moscow time. Fourteen minutes later Militarist reported that, according to an “official representative of the Houthis: ‘An American F-22 fighter jet was shot down over Sanaa.’”  (Min 03:27). These aircraft are based at the US Air Force base at Al-Dhafra in the UAE.  

No western media report of the first-ever Houthi success against a US warplane has subsequently appeared until the US Central Command (CENTCOM) issued a press statement, almost a day late, that “two U.S. Navy Sailors [are] missing off the coast of Somalia…Out of respect for the families affected, we will not release further information on the missing personnel at this time. The sailors were forward-deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet (C5F) area of operations supporting a wide variety of missions.”  If the “sailors” are in fact US Navy pilots, then the aircraft which the Houthis hit, forcing it to ditch in the sea, was likely to have been an F/A-18 from the USS Eisenhower.  

By the time Moscow was fully at work on Friday morning, Rozhin concluded the raids had been a failure. Iran and Ansarallah hold the operational initiative, he said, and they are calling the US bluff.

“Previously, Iran could only block the Persian Gulf, which threatened a direct clash with the United States, as it was, for example, in the late 80s. Now [Iran] can block the Red Sea with the hands of the Houthis without risk to itself, offering the United States a hopeless war with the Houthis, whose religious concept includes a direct war with the United States and Israel.”  (Min 18:49).

“The United States understands the game that Iran is playing, so they want to limit themselves to a demonstrative and ineffective PR strike, which should at least save the hegemon’s face and prevent Iran from dragging [Washington] into an exchange of blows with the Houthis. Therefore, even during and after the strikes, the United States declared its limitations and unwillingness to continue. But now the Houthis have the initiative, and they can force further steps by the United States, which they [White House] would like to avoid. To do this, it will be enough for them to hit several ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the next couple of days. This is exactly what Iran’s response may be, followed by a reaction to the expected actions of the United States, while the reaction, as usual, will affect the actions of Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria.”

This was also the General Staff assessment reported to Putin.

Peskov’s attack which followed on the Houthis wasn’t so much a lie as “empty, nothing”. “I do not think he is lying,” a Moscow source commented. “Peskov is reaffirming what Putin told Keir Simmons [NBC interview, June 24, 2021] – we are not giving high-tech weapons to Iran and especially to a non-state player like Hezbollah or the Houthi. Yemen has been a fratricidal conflict – the Soviets and Russians have always steered clear of Shia-Sunni wars. But the Houthis have changed their status within a matter of weeks after October 7. The Kremlin too has been taken by surprise by the turn of events. [Since October 7] discussions would have taken place with Teheran and messages would have been sent through Iran with embassy-level contact [with Ansarallah] in Teheran.”

Rozhin has also reported the Russian military situation assessment that the Anglo-American  targeting intelligence had been outdated,  leading to bomb and missile hits on targets of no military value to the Houthi campaign against Israel-connected shipping.  “The images confirm the fact of strikes at several Houthi sites. But the choice of targets raises certain questions: in particular, both the airports and harbours that came under attack were so badly damaged during the bombing of the UAE from 2015 to 2021 and have not been used for obvious reasons for a long time.”  

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by Editor - Monday, January 15th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

In a country which is collaborating in genocide, an ancient story of God-ordained slaughter, heroic soldiers, and pitiless blood lust is bound to be required reading in schools and universities, quoted by politicians, even churchmen, and celebrated as one of the greatest epics ever told.

Robin Lane Fox, an ancient Greek historian at Oxford University and the horticulture columnist for the Financial Times, has just published his 400-page proclamation that Homer’s Iliad is just so. This is a stunning defiance of the world around Fox which no gardener worth his salt would dare to claim about his garden.

Now that the English, Americans and others (including the Greeks) are about to commence their  third year of attempting to annihilate Russia on the battlefield, supplying the weapons, troop training, special forces, money, and propaganda; and the same alliance is assisting Israel in its attempt to do the same thing to the Palestinians, it’s time to ask how Homer’s Iliad  is to be interpreted  – and then  if correctly understood, whether it is uncivilized, brutish and immoral to think like Fox urges his readers to do.

From the Greek siege of Troy and their total destruction of the city and the Trojans, there is not so far to travel to Gaza – in geography and morality.

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by Editor - Sunday, January 14th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

We will be silent from January 1 until January 15, but not deaf or blind.

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by Editor - Friday, December 29th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Since the start of Israel’s genocide of Gaza, it has been the claim of the Israelis, their lawyers,  and allies that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, so they say that killing them all is neither a genocide nor a war crime.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said it in India in October.   US Congressman Brian Mast said it, following the Israeli lead.    The US Navy analyst who spied for Israel and served half a life in US prison for his treason has declared it in print.   A French-Israeli lawyer has argued the legality on French television.  

The reply the Arab militaries fighting against Israel have made is that there is no innocent oil tanker or container ship moving within missile or drone range of Israel, the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean unless it can prove it. This answer by the Ansar Allah government of Yemen, aka the Houthi military, is that they will attack any vessel which they know to be owned or controlled by Israel through its shipping families, companies, and their cutouts.

As a result, Houthi drone and missile attacks have exposed the elaborate scheme of corporate camouflage and false-flagging which Israel has been employing to conceal the vessel identities  and movement of its international shipping operations. The Anglo-American maritime industry media, privy to these secrets, have not published them. The mainstream western press remains in the dark.

In today’s Gorillla Radio podcast, this isn’t dark any longer. Not genocide in Gaza but money in shipowner pockets is blowing the gaff.

There is much more at stake. The effectiveness of the Houthi ship targeting campaign has so threatened the movement of vital cargoes into and out of Europe that shipping, port, and military officials in France, Italy, Spain, and Greece are now trying to avert a commercial disaster for themselves by arranging secret safe-passage deals with Yemen and Iran in exchange for which they are applying a blockade on Israel’s cargoes, vessels and ports.

This is the secret which is torpedoing the Pentagon’s multinational Red Sea naval escort plan, called OPERATION PROSPERITY GUARDIAN. As the secrecy of Israeli shipping companies spills out, along with the secret dealmaking of the international shipowners with the Houthis,  American shipowners are already complaining bitterly at being cut out of the profits.  “If the main beneficiary of the operation,” editorializes gCaptain of California, a leading US maritime platform, “is one of the largest shipping corporations in the world [Denmark’s Maersk], then there is a question of whose prosperity is Operation Prosperity Guardian truly guarding?”  

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by Editor - Wednesday, December 27th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The message delivered last week to French President Emmanuel Macron was a dramatic one: Never mind Israel throttling the Palestinians, Macron was told, the Houthis and their Arab and Iranian allies are capable of throttling France.  

Macron shot the messenger.

Bernard Émié  was fired last Wednesday, December 20, and Nicolas Lerner put in his place. The announcement — the first time there’s been such a switch between the traditionally competing foreign and domestic  intelligence chiefs — was made in a tweet by the French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu. Émié has been the head of France’s foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE (Directorate-General for External Security), since 2017. His replacement is Nicolas Lerner, head of France’s internal security agency, the DGSI (Directorate-General for Internal Security), since 2018.  

By coincidence on the very same day of Émié’s sacking, Lecornu took a telephone call from Washington.

US Secretary of Defense General Lloyd Austin told Lecornu “the Red Sea is vital for global commerce, noting that the scale and increasing frequency of these attacks constitute a significant international problem that must be addressed.  The United States and France are both making significant contributions to stability in the region and seek further collaboration on bilateral and multilateral solutions. Secretary Austin thanked France for its support to the 44-nation joint statement condemning the Houthis’ illegal attacks on international shipping.”  

This is the Pentagon “readout”. The meaning is the opposite.

France is pulling its naval forces in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden out of Austin’s military operation and of targeting by the US and Israel of Houthi units on the Yemen shore, as well as of the Iranian  intelligence vessels, MV Behshad at anchor in the Red Sea,    and the MV Saviz in the eastern Indian Ocean (Arabian Sea).  

In fact, the elimination of Émié, according to French intelligence sources, signals that US backing for Israel’s genocidal operation against the Gaza Palestinians, and the expansion of the war by the Houthis of Yemen and Hezbollah of Lebanon, are driving French national interest calculations in the opposite direction from the Americans and Israelis. Émié is a former French ambassador to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Algeria, and the French Foreign Ministry’s chief policymaker for the Arab world for several years before he was appointed to run the DGSE in 2017.  

Lerner, by contrast, has no direct Arab experience.   A university classmate of President Macron’s, his career has been limited to police operations in the south of France, Corsica, and Paris, and then in the private office of the Interior Minister as Macron chopped the ministry’s head three times in eighteen months.   

The French press are struggling to explain what has happened to the heads of their intelligence services. According to the state press agency AFP and Le Monde, “Emié launched reforms within the DGSE and saw the agency’s budget increase. He is said to have improved relations with the domestic security agency. But many have criticised the DGSE under him for failing to foresee the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and a string of military coups in former French colonies Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.”   A rightwing, bank-owned regional newspaper, L’Est Républicain, claims:  “Bernard Emié and his successor Nicolas Lerner contributed to improving the often tense relations between the DGSE and the DGSI, the replacement of the former by the latter confirming links described in the intelligence community as very regular and professional.”  

Defense Minister Lecornu has been struggling with Macron’s pro-US, pro-Israel, anti-Russian line as the war in Gaza has been escalating. Towards Israel, Lecornu said the week after the Hamas operation began in October, “the bulk of the support we’re providing today is intelligence. The intelligence provided is provided as part of the regular partnership between our two countries. Unfortunately, we have a long history in the fight against terrorism, and our intelligence services have particularly powerful resources and sensors…Iran poses undeniable security challenges, both in its support for Russia in the war in Ukraine and on the issue of nuclear proliferation. Today, the priority is to avoid escalation. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people from these atrocities. However, this response must be proportionate and consistent with the laws of war. We emphasize that no other actor hostile to Israel should seek to take advantage of the situation…There is a very difficult situation in the Gaza Strip. France has nothing to be ashamed of, it has always been one of the most reliable countries in terms of aid and support.”  

Since October, French intelligence sources have been trying to pacify the deeply distrustful Hezbollah; devise a seaborne aid plan for Gaza over Israeli objections; and protect French shipping lines and export-import interests now suffering from the Houthi cutoff of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.  If the sea war escalates to the Gibraltar Strait, the risk to France is that Marseille would be cut off from its Arab and African oil sources simultaneously; the port of Marseille accounts for more than a third of France’s crude oil import supply and petroleum refinery capacity.  

And not just oil.  Most of France’s container imports originate from China, South Korea, Japan, India and the United Arab Emirates,  which unload in Marseille from vessels moving across the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal.

An oil cutoff from all directions during 2024, accompanied by a container blockade in the east,  would be a fresh disaster for the rightwing succession assembling to replace Macron in the 2027 presidential election.  

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by Editor - Tuesday, December 26th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

From the minute after the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and the UK Maritime Trade Organisation (UKMTO) learned that the oil tanker MV Chem Pluto had been hit by an exploding drone in the Indian Ocean 1,600 kilometres east of the Red Sea and Yemen coast (lead image, left), they also knew why. Through a joint venture between a Japanese and a Singapore holding company operating through a Dutch management cutout, the vessel is owned by Idan Ofer, an Israeli shipping magnate  (lead image, right).

The Chem Pluto strike is the second by a drone against one of Ofer’s vessels in the Indian Ocean. The first strike was on November 24, when the container carrier CMA CGM Symi was targeted in the northeastern sector of the Indian Ocean.  The Symi is owned by Ofer’s Eastern Pacific Shipping in Singapore.   

On December 18, drone strikes were reported by CENTCOM   against the Swan Atlantic oil tanker and the bulker MV Clara. The first vessel is owned by a Norwegian company but management, with hidden equity, belongs to the Israeli Zodiac group, owned by Idan Ofer’s brother, Eyal Ofer.   The second vessel, the Clara, is owned and managed by a German company, Johann MK Blumenthal; no Israeli trace has been found to date,   but the Houthis have yet to make a mistake in spotting and hitting Israeli ships.

On November 19 they did more than that. On that day an Israeli-owned  car carrier, Galaxy Leader, was captured by Houthi commandos in the Red Sea. Follow their operation as they filmed it;  here is the vessel now receiving tourists at anchor off Al-Salif port, Yemen.  Ownership by the Israeli Abraham Ungar was concealed behind a Japanese ship management entity and a company registered under the Isle of Man-headquartered Ray Car Carriers, which in turn is owned by a Tel Aviv company called Ray Shipping.  

Houthi political and military spokesmen have repeatedly made clear they are attacking Israeli shipping, as well as vessels of any nationality trading in and out of Israel’s ports.  “Israeli ships are legitimate targets for us anywhere… and we will not hesitate to take action,” Major General Ali Al-Moshki, a Houthi military official, said on the group’s television station on November 20, following the capture of the Galaxy Leader.  

 “If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” a Houthi press statement declared on December 9.  

CENTCOM and Pentagon releases to the press have also claimed to have intercepted Houthi drone and missile attacks on US warships in the Red Sea attempting to protect the Israeli-owned or Israel-bound shipping.

Less successful in hitting Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat, the Houthi campaign has been effective in cutting off the port by striking at vessels in the Red Sea, and then extending the range of strikes to the eastern Indian Ocean. Eilat accounts for 45% of car imports to Israel and 5% of all the goods imported to Israel by sea. The Houthi campaign has cut Eilat’s port revenue by 80% since October 7.  

The impact has expanded to all shipping in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean if their management and ownership are based in the US and the European states allied with Israel in the Gaza war, and also with the US in the war against Russia in the Ukraine.

It is this coalition of states which US Secretary of Defense General Lloyd Austin attempted to rally for naval convoy and counter-threat operations on December 18, calling the plan  OPERATION PROSPERITY GUARDIAN.  

This operation is now coming apart in recriminations because commercial vessel owners in France, Spain, and Italy have accepted that if they negotiate Israel-boycott deals directly with the Houthis, they can continue to operate through the Red Sea.  They resent the commercial competition from Russia and China which are operating oil tankers and dry-cargo carriers without hindrance or threat.  

The obviousness of the targeting by the Houthis, and of Houthi deal-making by the Russians and Chinese, are being concealed, however, in the US and UK maritime industry media and the mainstream press. They are advocating maximum use of force by the Israel and US-led operation in the region to attack both Houthi and Iranian targets.  

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by Editor - Sunday, December 24th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The Iranian intelligence vessel, MV Behshad, at anchor in the Red Sea, is a honey trap intended to lure both the Israelis and US Navy into an attack, according to Russian and other sources.  

The French and Spanish navies appear to anticipate or to know: they have announced they will not operate their warships in the area under US command. Instead, the French have said they will restrict their operations to guarding their own French-flagged vessels and cargoes.   The French Navy also appears to have agreed to clear the backlog of Maersk container vessels trapped and no longer under way in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden.  

The French and similar disclaimers from Spain and Italy follow maritime media reports of acrimonious disputes between the Europeans and the US over the US priority to attack the Houthis and save Israel.

The Europeans, including the Italian and Greek navies, which have also announced they are sending warships, are following the Russian lead in secretly working out an accommodation with Iran and the Ansar Allah (Houthi) leadership for safe passage through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in exchange for agreement to boycott Israel. In defence of their economies and shipping, support from the European allies is dwindling for Israel’s war against the Palestinians; there is no support for Israeli and American threats to expand the war against Iran and the Houthis.

The Pentagon and White House-led plan to save the Israeli port of Eilat and the Israeli economy from the long-war attrition strategy of the Arabs is collapsing. US maritime sources report “the precarious situation of US-flagged ships stranded with military cargo near the Red Sea is at the center of this coalition angst. The French want to prioritize their ships while US-flagged ships – which the US Navy is obligated to defend – are inexplicably a lower priority for the US.  This urgent matter, highlighted by the recent rocket attack on a US-flagged tanker in Israel, starkly exposes the vulnerability of these vessels due to the alarming absence of adequate military protection. This critical situation not only threatens the safety of these ships but also raises profound questions about the United States’ resolve to safeguard its maritime assets, a commitment that seems to be wavering dangerously.”  

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the decision to attack vessels in the Red Sea region is “a completely Yemeni decision in support and defence of Gaza.” He added there is no need for the US coalition operation. If “they stop supporting the murderous Israeli regime and they will see a safer region and a better situation even for the transfer of energy.”  

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by Editor - Saturday, December 23rd, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

A Russian military blog post posted on Thursday, December 21 at 11:33 Moscow time, has revealed the hitherto secret positions of all warships in the area which the Pentagon has announced for its OPERATION PROSPERITY GUARDIAN.

The fresh data and the open map (lead image) were not available when yesterday’s report was published at 09:32 Moscow time of Russia’s “two-track” strategy for opposing the US and NATO,  and for protecting Russian oil shipments while  the Houthi drone and missile operations are under way against Israel.   

No Russian Navy vessel is in the area at present although Russian crude oil cargoes are moving through the Red Sea with Iranian and Houthi agreement. Because these ship movements are defying US and NATO sanctions, it has been decided in Moscow to negotiate safe passage with Iran and Yemen rather than deploy the Russian Navy to protect them. However, the new combined US and NATO operation, targeting the Houthis and their Iranian support and supply systems,  increases the possibility of a direct American, allied, or false-flagged attack on a tanker carrying Russian oil.  

In yesterday’s morning report, I indicated that “the current whereabouts of the [Chinese] warship group has not been reported in the open press.”

The Russian source map is now reporting that the Chinese Navy’s 45th Escort Task Force, comprising the Type-052 destroyer Urumqi,  the Type-547 frigate Linyi,  and supply ship Dongpinghu were at  berth at the Chinese base at Djibouti as of Wednesday, December 20.

The Russian map also reveals that the Iranian vessel MV Behshad is in a standing position in the Red Sea (lead image, top left of map). According to the Russian source, it is operating as an electronic surveillance, command and control centre to monitor friendly state ship movements – Russian, Chinese, Indian – and also  hostile vessels of the US, British and French navies, tracking their positions; and relaying the data to Iran and probably to shore positions in Yemen. Although US media and Pentagon statements accuse the Ansar Allah government in Yemen and Houthi forces of acting as Iranian proxies in the war against Israel, there has been no disclosure before now of this vessel in the Red Sea.

According to the western vessel tracking service VesselFinder, the Behshad is a “general cargo ship” flagged by Iran.  It reportedly sailed from the port of the Iran Shipbuilding and Offshore Industries Complex (ISOICO) to reach its current position, which VesselFinder confirms in the southern half of the Red Sea as of fifteen minutes ago. The western source reports the vessel is at anchor in 6.5 metres of water.  

In the Pentagon announcement of December 18, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin claimed that “Operation Prosperity Guardian is bringing together multiple countries to include the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain, to jointly address security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, with the goal of ensuring freedom of navigation for all countries and bolstering regional security and prosperity.”   The new  Russian intelligence now makes clear that the UK, France and Spain are already in the region, with the US.

After Austin’s statement, his Italian counterpart announced that Italy is dispatching a frigate “to protect the prosperity of trade and guarantee freedom of navigation and international law…to increase the presence in the area in order to create the conditions for stabilization, avoid ecological disasters and also prevent a resumption of the inflationary push.”  

The Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias followed the Italian to say that Greece too is sending a frigate to join the US operation. Dendias is claiming the reason is that Greece is “the country with the largest ocean-going fleet [and so] has a primary interest in preserving the freedom of maritime zones and protecting the lives of seafarers.” What he means is that the involvement of Greek shipowners in the sanctions-busting Russian oil trade  has been so profitable,  Dendias wants to protect  the Greek tankers and their owners; and at the same time avoid the embarrassment of being so disloyal to the US and European Union sanctions regime. 

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by Editor - Thursday, December 21st, 2023
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