Video Infoblog: Reports Claim Russia Sending Cargo Planes of Weapons to Iran + Shoigu in Tehran w/ Mark Sleboda
VIDEO
6 Aug 2024
Iran's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, met with the secretary of Russia's National Security Council, Sergey Shoigu, in Tehran for talks where the two leaders reaffirmed the strategic partnership between Russia and Iran.
The meeting comes as the world is watching to see how Iran will respond, after Israel assassinated Palestinian diplomat and Hamas political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, during his visit to Tehran last week. And Israel is already warning that it will respond to any retaliation, with some reports saying Netanyahu is even considering a "pre-emptive" strike.
International Relations and Security Analyst Mark Sleboda noted that while unconfirmed reports have circulated on social media claiming that Russia is sending a steady stream of weapons by plane to Iran, there's a chance Moscow may be helping Tehran with its defensive capabilities—and that's the last thing Israel and its allies in the West want to hear...
Follow Mark Sleboda on Twitter: https://x.com/MarkSleboda1/ and Substack: https://marksleboda.substack.com/
it is August 5th 2024 and the head of Russia's Security Council Sergey shuu is currently in Iran now while he's meeting with Iranian officials there the timing could not be more notable because of course the entire world is watching Iran right now to see what they will do how they will respond to Israel after last week Israel carried out the assassination of a top Palestinian Diplomat and the Hamas political Chief is Mal hania now of course Israel doesn't take responsibility for that assassination but it also came just hours after they targeted a Hezbollah Commander by bombing Beirut so what will Iran do and how could Russia be playing a role in not just what they do but possibly how they respond as we have reports that Israel is preparing some sort of Counter Strike as they already carried out the initial attacks and apparently they're preparing to respond to Iran's retaliation even though it hasn't even happened yet there are also reports of weapon shipments or some sort of military related shipments going from Russia to Iran so what do we know about those reports how accurate are they and what could this mean for the future of conflict in the region as we continue to see those tensions heat up all fueled by Israel with the support of the US well we discussed all that and more earlier with a special guest so let's take a listen to that conversation now joining me now to discuss is international relations and security analyst Mark slaboda Mark thanks so much for taking the time to join me Rachel thanks for having me it's always an honor and a pleasure to be on the show it's always good to have you now I want to get your take on the latest here as Russia's Former Defense Minister and current Secretary of the Russian Security Council Sergey shuyu is in Iran today for talks with the country's leaders as the world of course waits to see how Iran will respond to the assassination of Palestinian Diplomat and Hamas political Chief isal hania in Tyran last week what do you see is the significance of not just shu's trip but also the timing of it okay so rumor mail time let's pretend we're at the water cooler right because this this is all unconfirmed so obviously shyu is uh in he no longer the Secretary of Defense he is now the head of or the uh chair of the Russian National Security Council which is probably the most important political body in the country it's the one that makes the major geopolitical decisions um and and a lot of it weighs in increasingly on a lot of domestic uh decisions as well um but uh a lot of Western analysts like to refer to it as a new pollet Bureau okay all right I mean that's not entirely correct but not entirely incorrect either uh so Sho is in Iran and uh the timing of course is assassination of Ismael Khia the uh Hamas political Chief um in tyon where uh the inauguration of the new Iranian and in response to that it is widely reported in the western mainstream media that Iran and its allies uh in the axis of resistance Hezbollah K Hezbollah R anah the houthis in Yemen and and a host of smaller groups are preparing to retaliatory strikes in response uh at Israel uh and and conceivably against US military bases and Assets in the region as well uh because Iran regards the us as complicit in the assassination it was humiliation uh to the Iranian government and to the new Iranian president to have a senior foreign guest killed on in their house right uh so uh Shu will be meeting with the head of uh his Iranian equivalent the Secretary of uh Supreme Security Council of Iran but he will also be meeting personally uh with the new president Iranian president peski and himself um so and this coincides one of course the timing asan is supposedly moving military assets into place all over the country in what we are told in the western mainstream media and I think it's a this is a fair bet that uh Iran is about to respond in a big way a much bigger long range strike uh barrage or perhaps days of barrage than we saw back in back in provocation um now the rumor mill part of it uh is that there are reports that continous stream of flights of Russian heavy military transport planes illusion 76s to and back and forth to and from Tyron uh and Russia and the reports go further this is being reported in uh uh Ukrainian media it's being reported in Israeli media it is being reported correspondent uh telegram channels a lot a lot of chatter but this there's nothing official about this yet so take it all with a with a grain of salt but it is not entirely improbable supposedly Russia is transferring a uh amount of military equipment for Iran before they launch this uh retaliatory strike and are expecting a further retaliatory strike uh from Israel and perhaps the United States and uh one of the things the the primary thing in in most of the reports that Russia has transferred is the mormans BN electronic Warfare system well doesn't what is that okay so this is perhaps Russia's most powerful electronic warfare system it's not much to look at a system is about 10 trucks and about seven of them carry very very large antenna masks that rise up off the truck High into the sky um and an energy truck as well uh but these things are positioned over a wide area and they have a very powerful electronic warfare capability across a whole range of things they can do there's their specialty though uh is uh the jamming of a high frequency signals that are used for us NATO and Israeli military um particularly you know with aircraft uh say in the air and that sort of thing but they can also be used for GPS uh jamming interception of radio communications um they can uh uh seriously Aid in the detection uh the targeting of stealth uh Fighters and and aircraft uh with uh tracking uh incoming uh and aircraft um as uh well as as um uh spoofing some of the signals that uh these um uh missiles and uh strike aircraft will will use uh for launching attacks so primarily what it is likely to be used for is an added layer of electronic warfare defense in case assuming Israel responds to the Iranian retaliatory strike with their own retaliatory strike or perhaps even as has been suggested in the Israeli press a preemptive strike so they assassinate someone uh in Iran uh and uh they've also uh recently assassinated a Hezbollah uh commander in Lebanon in in Beirut as well uh so they respond to that uh as the opponent gears up for a retaliatory strike with their own preemptive strike to the retaliatory strike because you know Israel um so um anyway uh this is a formidable system reportedly the range of the mormans BN is somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 and I had to check it up the distance between Israel and Iran is somewhat less than 2,000 kilometers so well within the range of the rant system now there are other reports uh particularly I've seen these in the Israeli press that Russia has also transferred a number of isander ballistic missile systems to Iran and the isander has proven extremely effective in Ukraine and uh there are versions of it that have a range of around 5,000 kilometers uh as well uh none of that is confirmed but it's being talked about in multiple places and it all conceivable because uh Russia and Iran have a strategic partnership that has grown in strength as is Iran has provided support to Russia's uh intervention in the Ukrainian civil conflict since 2022 drone designs uh there are talks about ballistic missiles as well not so sure about that but definitely with some drone designs which Russia then spun off and made their own equivalent of the long range uh shahad uh strike drones the Russian evolved iteration of that right now is the Gan to Black um but uh Russia remembers it its friends uh and there is open discussion that Russia and Iran are supposed to sign a new deepened and strengthened strategic partnership in October and supposedly that is still on course and Russia has promised um or shall we say threatened the United States that if it continues to provide long range uh missiles and other strike assets which it is widely assumed that us Personnel are actually targeting for strikes inside Russia then Russia will retaliate and provide um uh longrange strike capability to us adversaries which could it it very well uh be considered to be uh Israel uh although it's probably more likely that they're providing the the electronic warfare system at least as a defensive capacity there have also been reports in the last CNN that the US managed to behind closed doors um um come to a deal with Russia about F at least temporarily about fur certain further escalatory steps because it is reported this was CNN that Russia was uh about to provide uh long range anti-ship missiles to the houthis uh are on Salah movement in Yemen uh which is allied with Iran and has been targeting Israeli and Western shipping uh through uh the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen uh for for months now and all attempts by the US and the United Kingdom and recently Israel itself to stop those attacks uh with air strikes and cruise missile strikes have been like playing whack-a-mole uh in in in the desert uh and uh extremely ineffective uh so and it is also discussed that Russia has already been providing satellite uh and other c4isr data to the houth to assess to assist in their targeting of Western aircraft that that itself would you know of course be extremely useful and at least some us sources are crediting that uh with the success that the houthis have had in targeting shipping and by by some accounts chasing off US military aircraft uh uh uh surface craft including an possibly an aircraft carrier out of the theater there but then again Russia also gets blamed for everything that goes wrong with the West so whether it's true or not we're putting it out there and you can consider it right and I'm glad that you bring up those reports because I had been looking into them earlier today and I was actually surprised by how little talk there is of this in the American Media the mainstream media more specifically because these are two of their favorite bad guys Russia and Iran I'm surprised that they're not taking this and really running with it even if they are having to give them time we'll probably see it in the times in the morning exactly they'll they'll catch up to it but what what this is spelling out to me is basically World War I right it's the increase of what we've already seen in Ukraine it's also a reminder of kind of what we saw years ago in Syria where you had the us trying to overthrow the government there you had Russia come in and say no we're not doing this and we're actually going to Target Isis which the US clearly was not doing as we saw by the fact that the elimination of Isis came about after Russia got involved but when it comes to the current situation that we're in and the fact that you've got Iran ready to respond you've got Israel exactly as you were saying there I mean they're already talking about preemptive strikes and we're in this situation because of the assassinations that They carried out in the first place so what are the concerns about this continuing to escalate and being a very literal World War III scenario where you have the US and its Western buddies on one end with Israel and then you have Iran with its allies side okay so I mean let's let's address the the the I idea of this it definitely the possibility almost the certainty of major escalation possibly a regional configration is there but is it really a scenario no and yes um so um first of all it's true that Israel in the past uh two weeks has targeted Iran and Lebanon and Syria and Yemen right I mean it's it it's h at least four uh countries in the region I would be surprised if they haven't managed to hit Iraq at some point uh in in there as well uh going uh after uh militant groups um but um so I mean that is already obviously Israel trying to start off a major regional configration that the intent Almost 100% is to draw the us into it now does that make it a World War III scenario or does that make it a regional conflagration I would argue the latter Russia and China both have strategic Partnerships with Iran but at least as of the moment they don't include a article five type Mutual defense agreement so while they will certainly continue trade with Iran it is unlikely that either Russia or China would become directly involved in the conflict unless there was some type of existential threat to the Iranian state which is extremely unlikely we're not going to see a million US soldiers uh storming tyan right that that's not this is going to be a war of long range strikes uh and and perhaps a covert Warfare by proxy groups back and forth uh but this isn't going to be large uh you know crashing clashing militaries uh on the ground or or uh invasions of each other's countries uh so it's unlikely to present an existential threat therefore Russia and China would not get directly involved however they certainly would and possibly already are providing degrees of military assistance like satellite data uh like possibly this discussion of electronic warfare and possibly missile supplies but as we know from the US and uh Western um uh support for the Kiev proi regime you can provide everything under the sun uh to uh another country but it doesn't mean that you're involved in the conflict at all right I mean that's that's what they say when they do it uh so um that uh this may be a chance for Russia and China to respond with a little bit of that um so but um now on the other hand you could take a look at this and say from a future perspective we may look and see a long string of interconnected conflicts uh whose um uh common denominator is resistance to us-led Western Global hegemony uh whether we're talking uh the conflict in Ukraine the conflict uh the Frozen conflict in Syria now and extension of the Ukrainian conflict out in Mali uh with uh Vagner and the Ukrainian um forces getting involved there and now this configuration here that certainly the US and Russia are behind uh opposing Powers this is more uh you know being Israel and Iran this is more properly a uh a more traditional proxy conflict where there's one degree remove on on each side but in the future people may look back at this and say that this string of conflicts were World War II um uh you know happening in shall we say in slow motion uh as it were so that's why I say no and yes okay I I think that's a fair answer and yeah it's interesting to see how we continue to be in kind of that that push and poll where in one moment it's like okay are are we on the slope to World War III right is this Heating up to the point where we're headed there and then it kind of backs off but yet those it's a roller coaster it really not leading anywhere good but it is a roller coaster now the last thing that I want to ask you about is of course the latest coming out of Ukraine it seems like Solinski is feeling a little bit forgotten with everything else going on in the world I mean he just got his first batch of F-16 fighter jets he got to announce it and confirm it and no one cares but it almost seems like no one cares because they know that this is not going to be the game Cher that the West initially made it sound like it was going to be so now you have zinski even accusing the west of being too fearful of escalation with Russia has he not figured out that this fear may actually be a healthy fear because the West knows that if they get to that point it's not going to look good for them yeah so after I mean a couple years of of pressure and wrangling and argument the West has finally provided six old f16s to Ukraine and zalinski posed uh you know uh on the ground with two uh Ukrainian repainted f-16s behind him and two more flying over the sky and uh we know uh from at least uh uh us sources in the in the admin Biden Administration uh have been telling the New York Times that uh Ukraine now presumably has six f-16s that have been delivered around that and they've got about six barely trained not really trained pilots uh you know that that at least could probably sit in it and and turn it on um how much more they're capable of uh isn't clear yet but if there's a big ywn to this uh one uh a a major new conflict uh involving Israel uh certainly uh gathers a lot of us uh political intention but we've also heard from the uh us defense secretary from the US uh chairman of the Joint Chiefs from the Kev regime's own top General sersi last week in the guardian all saying that these f-16s are not a GameChanger they're not going to change the uh the status quo on the battlefield which is not a status quo it's a Russian Advance um and uh that their primary role is going to be to hide in Western Ukraine well away from the front line from the contact line um uh and from Russian far superior air defense and Russia's own much more advanced Air Force and be used primarily in a defensive capacity as a an assistance to the Kev jimes faltering air defense uh trying to shoot down Cruzan in Western Ukraine which is to say that you know for all the trouble and the expense these f-16s are more of a political gesture than they are any real serious uh military Wonder WF uh that's that's that's going to uh change the course of the conflict that's probably why there's a bit of a yawn as as zalinski does everything he can to uh you know um uh divert World attention back to himself being the the absolute um Primadonna that he is yeah I'll never forget in the aftermath of October 7th when zalinski suggested that he needed to go to Israel to really draw more attention to them and it's like No And that Yahoo was like no he's like oh you haven't figured this out you think the world revolves around you that's that's not how this works the Western World well they revolve around their one Ally and that is not good news for sininsky certainly a let it stay here all around and I really appreciate you taking the time to join me today to break down the latest here international relations and security analyst Mark slaboda thanks so much for your time and insight thanks for having me if anything in this video resonated with you be sure to like it share it with your friends leave a comment and as always don't forget to subscribe and if you want to keep up with all of my work make sure that you're subscribed to my page on substack that's Rachel Blen .s substack do.com if you want to support my work you can also check out my page on patreon that's patreon.com Rael blovin that's where you can sign up as a monthly paid subscriber and join the community there as always thank you all so much for all of your support and I'll
