“TACTICAL ALLIES”

Who, why and from where did the attacks in Iran come?

By Sir Charlattam

As we had predicted a few months earlier, the US was seeking to expand its theatre of operations against Russia by using its allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The drone incursions between 28 and the night of 29 January over Iranian skies in an attempt to destroy several defence installations bear witness to this prediction. In Esfahan, a massive explosion was recorded at a military factory, apparently by a Drone armed with suicide explosives. Other drones targeting similar buildings were shot down before reaching their targets. According to the Western media and reports in the Gulf Arab media (especially Emirati), the attacks wreaked havoc in depots and factories of drones supplied to Russia, suggesting with incisive intent that it was Israel that carried out these actions, but was it really an Israeli action?

For Tehran this attack (in violation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter) was not Israeli. That does not mean that Israel did not have the capability or at least the intention to do so, but the targets targeted are certainly not in its interest. Whatever explanations Iranian officials gave to support this conclusion, it was the words coming out of the Pentagon and the State Department that confirmed it. An anonymous US official pointed to Israeli involvement in the affair and this was picked up by the less than credible “The Wall Street Journal” but it is clear that this rumour may be a smokescreen.

From the wreckage of the drones that the Iranians were able to recover in the vicinity, they were small quadcopters that operate over short distances, which means that the attackers were operating them remotely inside Iranian territory.

First, it is noted that the Western media have tried to magnify these attacks as if they had degraded Iranian capabilities by hitting sites of high strategic value, but in reality this has not been the case. Iranian officials have claimed that the damage was insignificant compared to Western media exaggerations, including that the production lines of the “SHAHED-136” drone, used by Russia with destructive precision, were not affected. This was clearly a psychological action aimed at creating confusion and panic, especially in Russia.

But if this was not the case, who would have carried out the attack and how? To begin with, we should not rule out Israeli involvement, which is not the same as them being the sole perpetrators. The relationship between Israel and the US is symbiotic and that is why their involvement cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, Tel Aviv would not carry out such an attack without Washington's authorisation. It is well known that member governments of the self-styled "free world" (a term that comes from the Cold War), can break the law and commit all sorts of crimes on other people's soil. The CIA and their British colleagues in MI6, not to mention the Israeli Mossad (in the case of the Baruch Ben-Yosef assassination), can blow up buildings and kill with impunity in other countries and not be declared as acts of terrorism.

If we are in the midst of a struggle for a truly multipolar world that respects international law (not US unilateral rules), these acts should be prosecuted in international criminal courts as the crimes they have always been.

Moving on, let's look at who would benefit from cutting off the production of these attack drones. The first of these is undoubtedly the regime in Kiev, although that does not mean that a cell of the SBU has mounted this operation. But it is known that this intelligence agency is currently under the complete control of the CIA and British MI6 who have already been caught mounting terrorist attacks inside Russia and Belarus. But how decisive and crucial is the role of these drones for Washington to risk opening a war front in the Persian Gulf? If we look at it from an economic angle, Russia causes more damage with this cheap vector (20,000 US$ per unit) than the US can protect with a Patriot battery.

In addition, the Ukrainians and their NATO backers have been constantly frustrated to see the Russians use the “SHAHED” with enviable accuracy to destroy -in addition to electrical installations- tons of material intended to enter by train from Poland and Romania.

Those who carried out these attacks, and according to the details of the drones they used, would not have been launched from another country but from within Iranian territory itself, controlled from a laptop or even a mobile phone. As we have seen in other cases, the easy access to this type of drones for civilian use or even the use of homemade drones makes it possible for an attack team equipped with software and moving in the vicinity of the targets with a vehicle, allowing for a surprise that is very difficult to anticipate.   

In conclusion, it can be intuited that those who actually carried out these attacks were cells of CIA-directed assets with Israeli cooperation operating from within (Al Ahwaz or MAK extremists) that could well have started from Iraqi Kurdistan where the Americans and Mossad have bases of operations. If so, this is a clear expansion of the theatre of operations of the war in Ukraine that could quickly spread to other countries.

Ultimately, what is becoming clear is who is who in this war and that beyond the supposed underlying ideological contradictions, geopolitical interests and opportunism matter more.