[this analysis was written for the Unz Review]

This Spring saw a sudden increase in the volume of articles in the so-called “alternative media and blogosphere” about Putin “selling out” Syria or Iran to the Israelis and their US patrons, or both. What was particularly interesting about this campaign is that it was not triggered by any kind of event or statement by Putin or any other senior Russian decision-makers. True, Israeli politicians made numerous trips to Russia, but each time they walked away without anything tangible to show for their efforts. As for their Russian counterparts, they limited themselves to vague and well-intentioned statements. Nonetheless, the “Putin sold out to Netanyahu” campaign did not stop. Every meeting was systematically interpreted as The Clear Proof that the Zionists control the Kremlin and that Putin was doing Netanyahu’s bidding. The fact that this campaign began ex nihilo did not seem to bother most observers. Soon I started getting steady streams of emails asking me to react to these articles. My reply was always the same one: let’s do the opposite of what these supposed “specialists” are doing and wait for the facts to come out and only then form an opinion.

Truth be told, I had already tackled that canard in my article “Why is Putin “allowing” Israel to bomb Syria.” I also had tried to debunk some of the most persistent and toxic falsehoods about Russia and Israel in my article “Putin and Israel: A Complex and Multi-Layered Relationship.” I also wrote an article entitled “Is Putin Really Ready to “Ditch” Iran?” trying to debunk that stupid theory. Finally, I even tried to compare and contrast the Russian approach towards Israel (which I qualified as “self-interest”) with the attitude of the “collective West” (which I qualified as “prostitution”) in an article entitled “Russia, Israel and the Values of “Western Civilization” – Where Is the Truth?”.

I was naïve to think that any of my arguments would elicit any doubts amongst the “Putin is a traitor” crowd. After all, if being wrong for years could not convince them otherwise, no rational argument would.

Then, news agencies began to report that General Nikolai Patrushev, the Director of the Russian Federal Security Service and the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, would travel to Israel to meet with John Bolton and Bibi Netanyahu. At this point, the steady stream of concerned emails suddenly turned into a deluge! After all, why would such a high-ranking (and rather secretive) Russian official travel to Israel to meet two of the worst and most evil politicians of the Anglo-Zionist Empire? Surely, he had something important to say, no? The consensus (of sorts) was that Patrushev would sell out Iran and Syria in exchange for some (entirely theoretical, quite unlikely and inevitably vague) “concessions” on the Ukraine, Crimea or sanctions.

My reply remained the same. Let’s wait until these folks actually meet and let’s see if their meeting brings about something significant (as a rule, I find getting facts an essential first step before engaging in any analysis; apparently, my detractors feel otherwise).

So, again, I decided to wait.

Then something weird happened: the meeting took place, it was even reported (albeit mostly in general terms), the participants issued their statements and… …nothing. The outcome of the “Jerusalem summit” was greeted by a deafening silence and a few vapid commentaries. My first hunch was that, as the Russian saying goes, the “mountain had given birth to a mouse” and that nothing of importance came out of the summit. Boy, was I ever wrong!

The official Russian position on Iran

The summit *did* indeed produce something of vital significance, but for some reason, the most senior-official statement on Iran that any Russian decision-maker ever made received very little attention. Unless you happened to be a Saker blog reader, you would never find out about it.

See for yourself and click here: http://thesaker.is/russias-patrushev-holds-press-conference-following-russia-us-israeli-talks/ for both the video and the transcript.

To my knowledge, this is the only full-length English language transcript of Patrushev’s statement. (Ruptly posted a video dubbed in English, but it was hardly noticed. As for the transcript, to my knowledge it was never reposted in full).

Which is too bad, since the following words have now been spoken by one of the most authorized and high-ranking Russian officials to date: (emphasis added)

“We have emphasized an importance of easing of the tensions for the country (Syria) between Israel and Iran, by the way of implementation the mutual approaching steps. We have made an emphasis that Syria must not be turned into an arena for geopolitical confrontation. We have also highlighted the need for the international community to help Syria to rebuild its national economy. Among other things, Syria should be free of illegal trade restrictions, unilateral sanctions, as well as sanctions on economic operators that help Syria to rebuild. They also have to be free from all sanctions.

We also turned everyone’s attention to the relations of Syria and other Arab states that should be normalized again. Syria is once again should be a full-fledged member of the Arab League. Also, we pointed out an importance of establishing the contacts of Syrian government with its Kurdish ethnic minority. We stated of importance to unite the efforts to eliminate all remaining in Syria terrorists. We called for immediate disruption of all channels through which terrorists might be able to obtain weapon grade chemical materials and their precursors.

Russia, the United States and Israel should join their efforts to help peace to return to Syria.


This is why we believe that it is inadmissible to describe Iran as the major threat to the regional security and, moreover, to put it on par with the Islamic State or any other terrorist organization, Especially, since Iran contributes substantial efforts to bring peace to Syria and to stabilize the situation in Syria.

We have called on our partners to show restraint and readiness for reciprocal steps, which must serve as the basis for the consistent advancement towards the easing of tensions in the Israeli-Iranian relations”

To my knowledge, this is the very first time that Russia has officially declared Iran not only as a partner but as an ally! A few days later, President Putin confirmed that this was an official position which had his imprimatur when he stated in his interview to the FT that:

“We have established sufficiently good business-like relations with all regional countries, and our positions in the Middle East region have become more stable. Indeed, we have established very good, business-like, partner-like and largely allied relations with many regional countries, including Iran, Turkey and other countries”

This is absolutely huge, especially considering that, unlike Eltsin’s “democratic” Russia or western politicians, Putin does not abandon his allies (if anything, he sometimes defends them for too long even when they have been found guilty of dishonorable actions). Let me repeat this:

Russia has declared that Iran is her *ally*.

The official Russian position on Syria

Next, let’s parse the Patrushev statement once again for some specifics about Syria:

  1. Israel does not get to impose its will upon Syria. (“Syria must not be turned into an arena for geopolitical confrontation “).
  2. All sanctions against Syria must be lifted. (“Syria should be free of illegal trade restrictions, unilateral sanctions, as well as sanctions on economic operators that help Syria to rebuild. They also have to be free from all sanctions“).
  3. The Arab League must fully reinstate Syria. (“Syria once again should be a fully-fledged member of the Arab League”).
  4. All the remaining terrorists in Syria must be eliminated. (“unite the efforts to eliminate all remaining terrorists in Syria”).

It sure looks to me that Russia’s commitment to Syria’s integrity and freedom is as strong as ever.

Does that look to you like Russia and Israel are working hand-in-hand in Syria?

If so, please read the following for a quick reality check (excerpt from this article):


  6. Break up Syria along ethnic and religious lines.

That was an ambitious plan, but the Israelis felt pretty confident that their US vassal-state would provide the resources needed to achieve it. Now this entire plan has collapsed due to the very high effectiveness of an informal but yet formidable alliance between Russia, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah. To say that the Israelis are seething with rage and in a state of total panic would be an understatement. Do you think I am exaggerating? Then look at it from the Israeli point of view:


The simple truth is that Russia foiled *ALL* the Israeli plans for Syria. All of them!

This is an extremely important statement. It is also a somewhat ambiguous one since “ally” means different things to different people. The Allied Powers during WWII included the Anglo nations and the Soviet Union, which did not prevent the western powers to plot and conspire to attack and destroy their putative “ally” (who happened to have destroyed about 80% of the Nazi war machine).

[Sidebar: for those who need a reminder of how the West treats its allies, here is a small memento with three examples of how the West planned to “solve the Russian problem”:


I could also list all the so-called “allies” the West has ditched, betrayed and even murdered since WWII, but that would take too many pages]

So what does Russia mean exactly when she says that Iran is her “ally”?

Patrushev uses the words партнер (partner) and союзник (ally). Just as in English, the word “partner” evokes some community of interests and collaboration but is generally value-neutral. This is why Russian politicians sometimes even speak of countries hostile to Russia as “partners.” Not only are they sarcastic, but “partner” does not invoke any particular feeling or moral obligation on anybody’s part. Partner is just a polite word, nothing more.

The word “ally,” however, is a much stronger one which implies not only common interests but also a real, sincere friendship and a common stance against a common enemy. Unless it is used sarcastically, the term “soiuznik” strongly implies a mutual moral obligation.

It remains unclear what that really means in the case of Iran and Russia. Theoretically, having a common enemy attack one of the members of an alliance (“soiuz”) could mean that Russia would intervene and offer military support or even directly intervene herself. I doubt that Patrushev (or anyone else in the Kremlin) has this kind of intervention in mind, if only for one reason which is that there would be very little, if any, popular support for a war against the USA for the sake of Iran. A much more realistic interpretation of Patrushev’s words would be that:

  1. Russia will not “sell-out” Iran to anybody in any way, shape or form.
  2. If Iran is attacked, Russia will offer her total support short of any direct military intervention.

Total support short of any direct military intervention is what the USSR offered the DPRK and, even more so, to Vietnam, and in both cases, the West was eventually defeated. Also, “short of any direct military intervention” does not mean “no military aid”: sending military equipment and instructors, is also below the threshold of “direct military intervention,” as would be the case with political and economic support. Furthermore, Russia has formidable intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities which could play a crucial role in helping Iran resist an AngloZionist attack (look at what Russian radars, electronic warfare, and battle management systems have done to the effectiveness of US and Israeli attacks against Syria!).

Let’s also remember the nature of the Iranian theater of military operations: Iran is a huge country with a very large population (80M+). What this means is that Iran cannot be taken over in a ground invasion. That, in turn, means that the resistance of the Iranian people will never be crushed. And that, in turn, means that there is no need for Russia to prevent a military takeover of Iran. All Russia needs to do is to give Iran the means to effectively resist and the rest will happen naturally (just like Hezbollah did in 2006 against Israel when Iran did not intervene directly and militarily, but simply gave Hezbollah the means to beat back the “only Jewish democracy in the Middle-East”).

Besides, Iranians are fiercely patriotic, and they would probably not welcome any visible Russian military intervention in their country anyway (they won’t say “no” to covert aid, especially not the IRGC). This is a wise approach, especially when compared to cowardly little statelets which always want one occupier to boot out a previous occupier (think Poland, the Baltic statelets or the Nazi-occupied Ukraine nowadays).

Finally, Russia is not acting by herself or in a vacuum: the Chinese have made numerous statements (see here, here or here) showing that Iran also has their backing, which resulted in a state of consternated shock amongst MAGA fanboys. The fact that the US’s “European allies” seemed to be getting cold feet about this entire project (attacking Iran on behalf of Israel, blowing-up the entire Middle-East while bringing down the world economy) only adds to their distress.

[Sidebar: the USN should rent out a few transport/amphibious assault ships, fill them up with Polaks, Balts, Ukies, and Georgians and send them to fight for “the USA” (i.e., for Israel, of course). After all, these folks are locked in a desperate competition to see who of them can brown-nose the Empire the deepest, so why not give them a way to prove their unfailing loyalty to “western values” and the rest of the propaganda nonsense the legacy corporate Ziomedia feeds us (and them!) on a daily basis]

Will any of the above affect the “Putin is a traitor” or “Putin works for Bibi” crowd?

Facts? No! Who needs facts?

No, most probably not. What they will do is just ignore Patrushev’s very official statement just like they have ignored all the facts since they began predicting a “Grand Russian Betrayal” for no less than 5 years now, even if proved wrong every time: remember their whining about Syria “losing” its (utterly useless, dangerous and expensive to destroy) chemical weapons? What about their whining about Russia not doing enough for Novorussia? Or their whining about the Russians being “soft” on Israel after the Israelis caused the loss of a Russian recon aircraft? All these folks who present to us the “proof” that Putin, Bolton, and Netanyahu are “in cahoots”, and have predicted that Patrushev would “sell out” are now very busy looking somewhere else for evidence of Russia’s subservience to Israel.

At the time of writing (July 2nd), the Israelis have yet again conducted an airstrike on Syria, killing four people including a baby. The MI6 sponsored “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” reported that “at least ten targets were hit in Damascus while a scientific research center and a military airbase were attacked in Homs.” Sounds quite impressive, no?

Actually, no.

For one thing, to evaluate the effectiveness of an airstrike, you don’t list targets, you make a bomb damage assessment (BDA) to ascertain what in reality sustained a hit, and how severely. Now, the Zionist propaganda always issues triumphant reports about how the invincible Israeli air force can make minced meat out of any Russian (or other) air defense system. Some, for example, have already concluded that the Israelis have “neutralized” the S-300 system while others go even further and claim that Russia either “approved” the Israeli attack or even “coordinated” it!

The Russian military has a saying “гражданский – это диагноз” which can be roughly translated as “civilian – that is a diagnosis.” In the case of these ignorant and even silly articles about the Russian air defenses in Syria (“the S-300 don’t work!!!”), that is precisely the case: these are civilians who have no understanding whatsoever of military matters in general, and even less so of air defense topics.

In my article “S-300 in Syria – a Preliminary Assessment,” I explained that:

Sooner or later, however, we can be pretty confident that both the Israelis and the US will have to try to strike Syria again, if only for PR purposes. In fact, this should not be too difficult for them, here is why: First, and contrary to what is often claimed, there are not enough S-300/S-400’s in Syria to indeed “lock” all of the Syrian airspace. Yes, the Russians did create a de-facto no-fly zone over Syria, but not one which could withstand a large and determined attack. What the combined Russian and Syrian forces have done so far is to deny some specific segments of the airspace above and around Syria to the AngloZionist aggressors. This means that they can protect some specific, high-value targets. However, as soon as the US/Israelis get a feel for what has been deployed and where, and how this entire integrated air defense network works, they will be able to plan strikes which, while not terribly effective, will be presented by the propaganda machine as a major success for the AngloZionists. (…) So, all the AngloZionists really need to do is to be very careful in their choice of paths of approach and choice of targets, use low-RCS aircraft and missiles under the cover of a robust EW engagement and then use a large enough number of missiles to give the appearance that the Empire has defeated the Russian and Syrian air defenses.

This is *exactly* what we are witnessing now. How do we know that? After all, we don’t have access to classified BDAs. True. What we can do is use Christ’s wise words and “judge a tree by its fruits” and notice that no amount of Israeli airstrikes in Syria have made any difference. Not only that, but we also know the kind of sustained air campaign which would be needed to meaningfully impact the Syrian armed forces, Hezbollah, the Iranians or the Russians. It sure ain’t what we have seen since the Russians beefed up their air defenses in Syria.

By the way, the SOHR article mentioned above also makes a mistake saying that a “scientific research center” was attacked. Why does this matter? Well, since we know that Syria has no nuclear, chemical or bacteriological research program or weapons, we can immediately conclude that whatever the “scientific research center” was doing (assuming this was not some empty building in the first place) was not something relevant to the Syrian war effort. In other words, this “scientific research center” was chosen as a symbolic target which, for all we know, might not even have been protected in the first place. However, “Israel destroys secret Syrian research center” sounds oh-so-triumphant and presents that it was well worth attacking that target. Heck, the SOHR article even mentions destroyed *orchards* (I kid you not!). I am sure that Hezbollah and the IRGC were both very impressed by the Israeli military prowess and totally heartbroken to have been deprived of their precious orchards :-)

My question to the “Putin is a Zioagent” folks is: why in the world would you expect the Syrians or the Russians to defend empty buildings or orchards from Israeli airstrikes anyways?

Conclusion 1: Putin, the traitor? Hardly!

My regular readers will know that my support for the Kremlin is a sincere one, but also a critical one. Not only do I not believe in flag-waving (called “hat tossing” in Russian), but I do also believe that there is a very dangerous and toxic 5th column inside the Russian elites working to subordinate Russia to the Empire. So while I sometimes like to call myself a “Putin fanboy” or “Putin groupie,” I do that only in a tongue-in-cheek manner. In reality, I believe that Russia in general, and Putin specifically, actually need the criticism of those who want to see Russia truly become a sovereign nation again. So I am all for being critical of Putin and Russia. However, not all criticisms are equal or offered in a sincere spirit.

I have concluded that the folks at Langley (and elsewhere) have figured out that accusing Putin of being a journalist-murdering dictator or a nationalist freak who wants to restore the Russian Empire have entirely failed (especially inside Russia). So they switched strategies and have embarked on a major strategic PSYOP we could call “Putin the traitor”: instead of moaning about Putin being too much of a Russian patriot, they have now decided to paint him as a “not sincerely patriotic” and, truth be told, that new strategy has proven much more effective, especially against the background of the Medvedev government continuing to champion socially reactionary policies.

In fact, I suspect that Patrushev’s statement was, at least in part, designed to debunk the canard about Russia ditching either Iran or Syria. Not only that, but since the Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Secretary of the Security Council of Russia has made the Russian support for Iran crystal clear, this will now force the 5th columnists to either shut up or face sanction.

Will the putatively pro-Russian “useful idiots” who spent so much energy trying to convince everybody that Putin was Netanyahu’s puppet learn their lesson? I doubt it. In fact, I don’t think that they will ever admit being wrong: they will explain-away Patrushev’s statement as “empty talk” or something similar and resume their mantras (which is the only thing which gives them “click-visibility” anyway).

Let’s sum up what we all could observe: Russia remains the single biggest “resistance nation” on the planet (the other contender for the top position would, obviously, be Iran). The “Putin betrayed” folks have been denouncing a Russian betrayal for at least five years. The fact that no such betrayal ever materialized has had no impact on those who are little more than useful tools for the Empire. Expect more “Putin the traitor” and “IDF defeats S-300s” articles in the future (the only way to stop them would be to stop clicking on their bait-titles which would force them to find a new source of revenue; I am not holding my breath on this one).

Conclusion 2: back to reality

In the real world the most interesting questions now are 1) how viable the current partnership between Russian and Turkey will prove over time and 2) how strong the Russian-Iranian alliance will become. It is also unclear what role the SCO will play or whether the SCO will grow more impressive military “teeth” (so far, at least as far as I know, no SCO member state has offered military help to Russia). And finally there is the big question of what China will do.

For the time being we see the Empire spewing a lot of hot air and making threats to an almost endless list of countries, while the Israelis engage in what I would call “murder psychotherapy” (which is all that IDF strikes really are) to keep their racist delusions afloat. And while the AngloZionists maniacally pursue these (pretend-)strategies, the rest of the world is building an alternative to the AngloZionist Hegemony. Will the leaders of the Empire prefer a massive war to a quiet (and rather pathetic) self-destruction of the Empire? Looking at the faces of Trump, Pompeo or Bolton, I can’t say that I feel very reassured. Yet I remain hopeful that I will see the day come when the USA, Russia and Palestine are all liberated from their oppressors and recover their full sovereignty.

The Saker

The Essential Saker IV: Messianic Narcissism's Agony by a Thousand Cuts