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What does the upcoming Putin-Erdogan-Raisi meeting mean?

By Kostas Raptis

The new Cold War is rapidly turning into an increasingly Middle Eastern affair. Although, of course, the Middle East did not wait for the outbreak of the war in Ukraine to turn into a field of bloody settlement of accounts of third parties.

US President Joe Biden’s tour of Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia this week highlights Washington’s attempt to soften old “fronts” (Arab-Israeli and intra-Arab) in order to achieve alignment. of its regional allies in a direction of isolating Iran in the first place and Russia in the second, with the perspective of creating an “Arab NATO”. The context of this visit is given on the one hand by the impasse in which talks have reached to reactivate the 2015 international agreement on the Iranian nuclear program and on the other hand by the “difficult” relationship of the US with the strong man and crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman. , while Riyadh remains faithful to its agreements with Russia under OPEC+ on oil export quotas.

But before Biden leaves the region, the “opponent of awe” will make a diplomatic show of fists, with the visit of the presidents of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan, to Tehran next Tuesday, the 19th of the month.

The organization of a summit meeting between the “conservative”, in the Iranian political vocabulary, President of the Islamic Republic Ebrahim Raishi and his guests is a resounding reappearance in the foreground of the tripartite “Astana Process”, which emerged to manage the Syrian crisis – it will however, it was also marked by important pairwise consultations.

The meeting in Tehran also had side effects of particular Greek interest since it forced the cancellation of Erdogan’s planned visit to occupied northern Cyprus for the anniversary of the first invasion of “Attila” on July 20, when important announcements were also expected about the nature of relations with the pseudo-state with Turkey.

But conciliation with Putin is currently a higher priority for the Ankara strongman: both because Erdogan is in a hurry to secure Moscow’s tolerance for the new Turkish military intervention he has announced against the Kurds in northern Syria, and because the leadership of the neighbor has been promoted to a position of mediator in the Ukrainian crisis, with the current phase leading to the creation of safe export corridors for Ukrainian grain in the Black Sea.

The presence of Erdoğan in Tehran, just a few days after the serial Turkish veto on the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, will certainly disturb Turkey’s Western allies and will be seen as another example of “bilingualism” and “indiscipline”. However, even vis-a-vis Putin, the Turkish president is not at all certain that he will find a particular understanding: the limits of the Russian-Turkish understanding are defined on the one hand by the participation of the neighbor in NATO and on the other hand by the resistance of Moscow and Damascus to Ankara’s expansionary plans (under anti-terrorist pretext) against the Syrian territory.

The partnerships between Russia and Turkey are unfolding under the weight of an objective contradiction: maintaining channels of cooperation between two powerful neighbors is mandatory and at the same time offers them valuable space for maneuvering against third parties, however their pursuits are verified on a number of fronts (Syria, Libya, the Caucasus). that they are competitive.

In any case, the communication and interconnection at a strategic level of what is happening in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea is highlighted once again.

However, the Russian-Iranian aspect of the July 19 meeting is equally important. All the more so when the news is dominated by the complaint of American National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that Iran is preparing to strengthen the Russian war effort in Ukraine by exporting Iranian drones. Of course, Sullivan himself had launched similar complaints months ago, with the obvious aim of creating a climate of pressure, also against China, without particular results. After all, it happens to be known that China is par excellence a host for Russian arms exports and not the other way around.

Be that as it may, the not so obvious, based on historical precedents, Russo-Iranian cooperation seems (like the corresponding Sino-Iranian one) to deepen continuously during the new Cold War. The inclusion of the Islamic Republic in the Shanghai Pact and its pivotal position in the Eurasian integration plans (especially in the “southern corridor” that will connect Russia and India commercially through the Caspian) underline this emphatically.

Source: Capital

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