Russia Doesn’t Want Iran To “Remove The Zionist Regime From The Political Map”

Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, the second most important person in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, confidently declared that “We announce that if Israel takes any action to wage a war against us, it will definitely lead to its own elimination and freeing of occupied territories. Iran’s strategy is to remove the Zionist regime from the political map, and the Israelis contribute to this by their criminal activities.” This was obviously said in response to Israel’s latest strikes against the paramilitary group’s alleged positions in Syria and Netanyahu’s pledge to do whatever’s needed to force their withdrawal from the Arab Republic. It was also of course a reiteration of former President Ahmadinejad’s widely mistranslated statement from the mid-2000s to – as the Mainstream Media misreported it – “wipe Israel from the map”.

It should be noted that President Putin remarked upon that during an interview with RT back in 2013 when he said that “It doesn’t quite matter whether it’s a proper quote or not. It means it’s best to avoid a wording that could be improperly quoted or could be interpreted differently. That’s why the focus on Iran does have a reason behind it.” Russia therefore strongly disapproves of Iran’s official policy of carrying out regime change against Moscow’s allies in Tel Aviv, and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov recently took steps during his interview last week with CNN to distance his country from the hyped-up notion that it’s supposedly also Tehran’s “ally”. In response to being asked whether Russia and Iran are allies in Syria, he shook his head and unambiguously said that “I wouldn’t use this type of words to describe where we are with Iran. We in no way underestimate importance of measures that would ensure very strong security of the State of Israel”.

Taken together, President Putin and Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov’s words convey Russia’s official state policy of being adamantly opposed to Iran’s regime change intentions in Israel and clarifying that no alliance exists between the two Great Powers despite their pragmatic anti-terrorist cooperation in Syria. This is a signal to Israel that Russia won’t jump to Iran’s defense whenever the self-professed “Jewish State” bombs its alleged assets in Syria that Tel Aviv claims could pose an existential threat to it. Russia will, however, seek to broker an “understanding” between the two just like it did over the summer when it encouraged Iran to withdraw 140 kilometers away from the occupied Golan Heights, but the point is that its military isn’t going to actively take one side over the other if they come to blows.

That probably won’t happen any time soon, however, since Iran’s declaration was nothing more than an ideological reaffirmation of its earlier stated position in response to Netanyahu’s increased pre-election rhetoric against the IRGC’s role in Syria over the past few weeks and not the so-called “threat” that it’s being popularly portrayed as. While the words themselves are indeed threatening for Israel’s security, they don’t in and of themselves signify an intent to imminently act on them otherwise Iran would have obviously done so by now. Rather, the IRGC’s statement should be interpreted as chest-beating designed to rally its allies in Syria after Israel’s latest spree of attacks against them there and not necessarily the beginning of a conventional Iranian-Israeli war.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Feb 01, 2019:

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