Eastern Europe in High Stress

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg are seen at a news conference at the European Union headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. (John Thys/AFP/Getty Images)

"The message today to Russia is that it is for Ukraine as a sovereign nation to decide its own path."

"We call on Russia to return to diplomacy. To de-escalate. And to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

"Any further aggression against Ukraine will have severe consequences. And would carry a high price."
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary-General

"We will emphasize here once again, that the inviolability of borders is one of the very important foundations of peace in Europe, and that we will do everything together to ensure that this inviolability actually remains."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

"I'm worried because the military concentration, especially on the Ukrainian border with Russia [is] very strong."

"We are prepared to avoid the kind of surprises we met during the occupation of Crimea."

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, EU revolving presidency

"Probably we face the most dangerous situation in the last 30 years. I think we have to do everything that is in our hands to prevent the worst scenario, which we [cannot] exclude."

"This scenario is possible military intervention into the territory of Ukraine."

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda

 

"There will be no talks on European security without European allies and partners."

"[Washington will hold discussions with its allies but] we will not compromise the key principles on which European security is built, including that all countries have the right to decide their own future and foreign policy, free from outside interference."

Jen Psaki, White House spokesperson

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a conference in Moscow on Friday. (Sergei Guneyev/SPUTNIK/AFP/Getty Images)

Over 100,000 Russian  troops have been massed on the Russian border with Ukraine, leaving leaders of Europe to warn of the most dangerously tense episode occurring in real time, in the past 30 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when its satellites went their separate ways, assuming full sovereignty for themselves after years of orbiting helplessly around the powerfully-enforced magnetic star of the USSR. 

 

With the last European Council summit of the year in Belgium, EU heads of state and government gave ample warning to the Kremlin that it would face "massive consequences and severe cost" should there be a repeat of the annexation of Crimea in a violent 2014 takeover. But Vladimir Putin remains resolute; should Europe wish to achieve a relaxation of tensions, NATO must withdraw its 2008 assurance to Ukraine that it would be welcomed along with Georgia into its bloc. No agreement, no de-escalation.

 

Moscow's published list of demands for de-escalation and recall of Russian troops and war machinery has failed to impress NATO  and the EU. Russia's insistence of a legally binding guarantee that NATO surrender all military activity in eastern Europe and Ukraine is part of its list of security guarantees to be negotiated with the West if any progress is to be made in de-engaging from its current level of intimidation and threat.

 

The detailed demands, Moscow stressed, are essential, without which tensions will not be diminished in Europe, and the crisis over Ukraine defused. However, the world could be assured, Moscow reiterated, that it has no intention whatever of planning an invasion of Ukraine. Demands include an effective Russian veto on future NATO membership for Ukraine. Other elements relate to the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe alongside the withdrawal of multi national NATO battalions from Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 

None of those demands were met with ingratiating deference. Russia does not, after all, control with the
EU or NATO and its allies, led by the United States, envision for Europe; total abandonment of the Baltic states and the rest of eastern Europe to the kind remonstrances of the Kremlin to convince former satellites that their futures lie with a resumption of their former devotion to a mighty Russia's formation of a strong Europe.

According to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Russia and the West must begin with a clean slate to rebuild relations gone sour. Russia being fully prepared to begin talks as soon as possible. As far as the Kremlin is concerned, its position is one of response to threats to its security from Ukraine's increasingly warm relations with NATO and its aspirations to join the alliance. 

The best possible scenario the Kremlin envisages if that NATO  return to the situation that existed before May 1997; predating the accession to NATO of any of the former communist states in east Europe; that NATO relinquish any military activities in Ukraine, eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Wait for it.

Ukraine’s foreign minister has asked Canada to help strengthen its defences amid escalating tensions with Russia, while NATO warns Russia will face “high impact” sanctions if it attacks

Threat to Peace and Stability : Islamic Republic of Iran

"The fake Zionist regime is the mother of all calamities and the root-cause of problems in the region and, therefore, the few regional countries that move toward normalizing ties with this fabricated regime are acting against the security and interests of the region and the Muslim ummah."

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian 

 

"Without swift progress, in light of Iran’s fast-forwarding of its nuclear program, the JCPOA will soon become an empty shell."

"There has been some technical progress in the last 24 hours, but this only takes us back nearer to where the talks stood in June."

E3 Diplomats

 

"We have had many hours of engagement, and all delegations have pressed Iran to be reasonable [over stalemated talks]."

"As of this moment, we still have not been able to get down to real negotiations. We are losing precious time dealing with new Iranian positions inconsistent with the JCPOA that go beyond [a] clearly visible [outline tentatively agreed during the previous round of talks in June]." 

"But time is running out. Without swift progress, in light of Iran’s fast-forwarding of its nuclear program, the JCPOA will very soon become an empty shell."

Senior European Diplomats

The delegations are expected to head back to the Austrian capital in about a week with an aim to move forward on restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [EU Delegation in Vienna/EEAS/Handout via Reuters

 

This is the foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran as he congratulates Ismail Haniyeh on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the "resistance movement" known as Hamas. Iran and Hamas would not under other circumstances have anything approaching friendly relations; their ancient sectarian enmities; Shi'ia Islam under Iran and Sunni Islam representing Hamas's Islamism would have kept them at vitriolic loggerheads. Both, however, have a solid link to a common denominator: the state of Israel.

The United Nations whose formation and constitution were based on upholding human rights, peaceful negotiation, and equality between nations provided a platform for former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to expound on Iran's position of vitriolic opposition to the existence of the state of Israel in the Middle East. Iran shares no borders with Israel, has no business to conduct with Israel, but takes the implacable position that no land once consecrated to Islam may be occupied by any other religion.

This, despite Israel's ancestral origins in the Middle East, well documented and historically evidenced, long predating Islam. The Iranian brand of Shia Islam nurtured by Ayatollah Khomeini in his Iranian Revolution -- that brought fundamentalist Islam to Iran and ousted the Pahlevi dynasty that had been modernizing Iran, and had good relations with the Arab Sunni nations and with Israel -- has since alienated most of the Arab nations while focusing on Israel as a future target for total elimination.

During Lebanon's civil war period when its shared governance with its major populations of Sunni, Shia, Druze and Christian leaders fell into violent disarray, Iran's Republican Guard Corps al-Quds division covertly entered Lebanon -- along with Syria's military and government agents at a time when Israel had invaded to stop cross-border attacks from Palestinians living on the border, and France and the U.S. were installed on a UN peacekeeping mission -- and Hezbollah was born.

The "Party of God" was nurtured, trained and armed by the Islamist al-Quds of the Republican Guard as a functional ally of Iran, a proxy militia that Iran would control. Known for its links with and support for terrorist groups, and for the part it plays in dispatching them to international destinations to mount atrocities against Jewish institutions, Iran is fixated not only on destroying Israel, but Jewish lives anywhere they exist.

This is the theocratic government that the UN, the EU and the US have been busy negotiating with in an effort to slow down the Republic's nuclear program. Sanctions imposed on Iran linked to its illicit uranium enrichment program, failed to stop Iran's burgeoning ballistic missiles program as it became more technologically advanced and capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

In efforts to restore the original 2015 nuclear agreement during which time Iran steadily, surreptitiously continued its uranium enrichment, its threats against its neighbours, its dispatch of Shia militias into Syria to aid in Bashar al-Assad's vengeance attacks on Syria's majority Sunni population, the Western negotiators have re-discovered Iran's penchant for duplicity. Even more so, Iranian negotiators are now less ostensibly willing to negotiate in good faith.

The very concept of good faith is risible in the face of a regime that practices taqqiya -- offputting an adversary for the greater goal of eventually gaining advantage; in this case denying any intention of posing a threat to the region much less gaining the goal of nuclear weaponry, arguing it would be for peaceful, civil purposes only, the while at every level of authority threatening the existence of Israel; its presence an intolerable affront to Islam.

Months ago the Iranians let it be known that they built an underground missile complex they called a "missile city". Imaging company Planet Labs Inc. took satellite images showing launch preparations at Iran's Imam Khomeini Spaceport; a clear defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, whereby Iran is not to take action of any kind involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

But this kind of arsenal is critical to Iran's plans to achieve Middle East dominance and in the process destabilizing the region. Non-Arab Iran's Shi'ism while a dominant strain of Islam is in the minority; most Arab countries are Sunni-dominant. Iran's plans to control the Middle East stem from its ancient preeminence in the region, along with its political-weight sectarian authoritarianism.