India holds joint naval exercises with Vietnam Navy

Lately, Indian Navy sent a warship to hold joint exercises with Vietnamese warships to assert navigation rights on the South China Sea as both countries try to boost maritime cooperation amid rising border disputes with China.

The INS Kiltan, an anti-submarine warfare corvette, took part in a two-day Passage Exercise or ‘PassEx’ with the warships of Vietnam after it arrived at Ho Chi Minh City to deliver humanitarian assistance for those affected by floods in central Vietnam. The Indian Navy said that the drill was aimed to "reinforce maritime interoperability and jointness."

The Indian Navy's assertion of navigation rights is on the lines of the Freedom of Navigation patrols that the US regularly takes out in the South China Sea to challenge Chinese territorial claims. 

Beijing, which has made expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea and militarized islands there, has watched the exercises with a wary eye. Liu Zongyi Shanghai of the Institute of International Studies (SIIS) wrote in the state-sponsored China Military Online that the joint operation is a bid by India to exert pressure on China through the South China Sea, to force it to back off from eastern Ladakh. The Indian and Chinese militaries are locked in a stand-off in the Himalayan border region of Ladakh after Chinese soldiers intruded into territory claimed by both countries. A border clash in Galwan in June killed about 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese soldiers. 

The opinion piece, authorized by the Central Military Commission of China, says India's meddling with South China Seas and strategic partnership with Vietnam was to counter China on the land boundary issue. It said the Indian army was finding it "extremely challenging" to supply the troops in the Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso lake area in Ladakh. But those assertions were not independently verified and Chinese party mouth-pieces are known to make such propaganda claims. India has refused to back off in the face of Chinese aggression, with Indian troops moving quickly and boldly to outmaneuver Chinese troops and occupy mountain ridges, putting intruding Chinese troops at a tactical disadvantage.

Both nations have stationed thousands of troops in the frigid heights and have dug in for the long haul, recent reports have said.

The Indian Navy also adopted an aggressive posture during the Ladakh clashes and could, in the event of a war, hold an advantage in the Indian Ocean basin through which Chinese shipping has to pass.

Zongyi added that India's recent strengthening of military cooperation with Vietnam and Indonesia and building of military facilities near the Malacca Strait was with an "important purpose of guarding against China, even throttling its development."

Vietnam also has maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea region. Though China claims sovereignty over the region and its vast reserves of oil and gas, Vietnam has made counterclaims, along with other littoral states like Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippine. 

According to the Deccan Herald, the 'PassEx' comes a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a virtual summit with his Vietnam counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc. Modi had then formally handed over a high-speed patrol boat, which was the first of a fleet of 12 that India had promised to Vietnam to help it guard its maritime boundary in the face of growing Chinese aggression. The leaders had also stressed the need to maintain freedom of navigation and over flight in the South China Sea.

India's ONGC Videsh has a long-standing partnership with PetroVietnam for exploration of oil and gas in Vietnam, which has irked China, says Deccan Herald.

 

Will Saudi-Israel relations normalize after Joe Biden takes oath?

The Jerusalem Post has disclosed, there are expectations that there will be normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia by the end 2021. There is high confidence among some that normalization will not come before the Trump administration exits nor in the early stages of the Biden administration, but certain trends will be evident in their own ways.

The assertions come following a series of sometimes complementary and sometimes seemingly contradictory statements by top Israeli officials in recent months as the normalization trend lurched forward. Confronted with the assertions, the Foreign Ministry had no official comment.

Last week, Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said that a deal could come with the Saudis in the next few years, but not before 20th January 2021 – nor did he publicly specify by the end of 2021.

This came following Cohen’s statement on 2nd November 2020 that a deal with the Saudis could be close, though he qualified his prediction in light of uncertainty at the time about who would win the US election as well as future Iran policy.

On 23rd November it was widely reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had recently met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as part of a joint visit to the Kingdom along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

A flood of confirmations and denials – Netanyahu himself publicly refused to comment - appeared to make it clear that the visit had happened and was viewed as a sign of relations moving forward, but was supposed to have been kept secret.

Incidentally, the Post has learned before that MBS has previously secretly visited Israel.

Back on 25th October 25021 Channel 12 had reported that Mossad Director Yossi Cohen had privately said to those around him that the Saudis were waiting until after the US election, but that they could potentially announce normalization as a “gift” to the winner.

The implication from the report was that such an announcement could even come almost immediately after the election.

However, the Post reported later that the Channel 12 report either misunderstood or did not fully flesh out what the Mossad’s Director had said. In actuality, Cohen’s comments in closed conversations in October had been more nuanced.

Speaking a week before the US election, the Post learned that the spymaster had said that if US President Donald Trump won, there could be an almost immediate announcement.

Yet – if as the polls correctly predicted – now President-elect Joe Biden won the election, although the Saudis would still want a normalization deal with Israel, there would not necessarily be a clear timeline.

Cohen had emphasized that the Saudis did not want to give a gift to Trump and then get nothing for it upon a Biden administration taking over the reins.

Rather, Cohen understood at the time that a Biden administration may want to link normalization with the Saudis to progress with negotiations with the Palestinians.

This was the opposite tactic of the Trump administration, which was trying to pressure the Palestinians to show flexibility in negotiations with Israel by moving ahead with normalization deals without them.

What is interesting about the latest information learned by the Post is that now, almost two months after the US election, there is once again higher confidence that there will be a deal with the Saudis by the end of 2021.

If before November 3, there was far more uncertainty from both Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen and Mossad Director Yossi Cohen about how the Saudis would conduct themselves with Biden, now there are top officials who have greater confidence on the issue.

Though some of this could be from informal signals sent between Israeli officials and Biden transition figures, some of the confidence may come from a renewed understanding of the Saudis’ intentions regardless of how exactly they are treated by the incoming administration.

Mossad chief Cohen first suggested the possibility of official ties with the Saudis in a rare on-record interview with Channel 12 in mid-September and has been secretly visiting there for years.

Former IDF chief Lt. Gen. (ret.) Gadi Eisenkot in 2017 publicly announced that Israel was sharing intelligence with the Saudis as the countries grew closer. 

Mideast tensions reach new highs with Trump's term nearing end

Israel’s normally tense relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran has grown more taught in recent days, as mutual threats and promises of retaliation have been lobbed by both governments while the sides await Joe Biden to take oath. 

On Sunday, the spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Parliament reacted harshly to last week’s news that an Israeli submarine had crossed the Suez Canal on its way to the Persian Gulf.

 “Israel must know that our response to aggression against our national security will be strong and massive,” Abu al-Fadl Amoui, told reporters, accusing the Jewish state of dragging the region “into a tension that creates chaos in the last days of the Trump presidency.”

Last week, a surfaced Israeli Dolphin AIP class submarine was spotted crossing the canal separating Israel and Egypt. According to several news outlets citing multiple sources, the rare – but not unprecedented – occasion was carried out with the approval of Cairo’s government and was meant to send a message to Tehran.

A few days later, Israeli military spokesperson Hidai Zilberman addressed the naval maneuver in an interview to a Saudi news site, noting that “Israeli submarines can sail everywhere” and urging Iran not to escalate the volatile situation.

“This isn’t the first time the navy has crossed the canal, so let’s not make too much of this. But yes, this was definitely meant for Iranian consumption,” a former commander within the Israeli submarine unit disclosed.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump joined the fray himself, responding to a reported Iranian attack on the American diplomatic compound in Iraq with a series of direct threats at the ayatollah regime.

 “Our embassy in Baghdad got hit… by several rockets… guess where they were from: IRAN,” Trump tweeted. “Now we hear chatter of additional attacks against Americans in Iraq. Some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible. Think it over.”

Precisely one month ago, Iran’s top nuclear official Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated on the outskirts of Tehran, in an ambush blamed by Iranian security authorities on Israel. In recent years, top officials within the Republic’s nuclear program, as well as its most senior military commanders, have been the target of successful strikes by Israel and the US.

The most noticeable of these was the January killing of Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds force, in an American drone attack in a Baghdad airport.

“The main reason for the current tension between the US and Iran is the remaining time [President] Trump has in the White House,” Prof. Eytan Gilboa, an expert on US policy in the Middle East at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, informed.

“There are three more weeks, and Trump is known for his unexpected nature of decisions,” Gilboa notes, adding: “I would give a very low probability to an initiated American or Israeli attack onn Iran. But with Trump - you never know. A small incident can develop into war.”

President-elect Joe Biden has in recent months stated he plans on rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was reached between Iran, the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany in 2015.

The deal called for the winding down of Iran’s nuclear aspirations and efforts in return for a lifting of sanctions by Europe and Washington.

In May 2018, President Trump pulled out of the pact and embarked on his ‘maximum pressure’ strategy of imposing crippling economic sanctions on Iranian individuals and institutions. Tehran responded by restarting its uranium enrichment program several months after Trump’s announcement.

Following Biden’s victory in the November presidential elections, Iran’s top officials have repeatedly insisted they will refuse to renegotiate the JCPOA and will not consider reducing the Republic’s military involvement in other arenas in the Middle East, two demands Biden’s incoming team has hinted it will present in future talks.

“What we have now is psychological warfare and an exchange of messages, both for immediate military purposes and for the post-Trump diplomacy,” says Gilboa, who in the past has served as senior adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry and prime minister.

“Biden will eventually have to articulate a policy and decide which, if any, of the Iranian preconditions – removal of sanctions, the return to the unchanged 2015 deal, the freezing of the Gulf normalization process with Israel – he’ll accept.”

Another factor that may directly affect the Tehran-Washington-Jerusalem relationship in the coming months is the 2021 presidential election in Iran.

“Those are critical,” Gilboa stresses. “We’ve seen in the past how domestic events influenced Iran’s foreign policy,” he said.

India trying to maintain its hegemony in Indian Ocean Region

Lately, Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has become a major point of conflict between India and China, as India considers Indian Ocean its backyard and aspires to become the dominant power in the region. The Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean is countering its ambitions to establish hegemony in the region.

The Indian attitude has put it in confrontation with China and the countries that support the Chinese presence in the region for economic and security interests. The clash of interests and competition among the major stakeholders is making the IOR a highly volatile region, in turn, affecting economic and trade activities conducted through the Indian Ocean.

To safeguard its interest, India has negotiated several agreements with different littoral states of the Indian Ocean, primarily aimed at obtaining military access to their bases. Recently India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval attended a trilateral Maritime Security Meeting between India-Sri-Lanka and Maldives. The trilateral maritime security meeting was held to discuss issues relating to the security situation in the IOR. The meeting was significant because India holds a massive influence on both of these South Asian island states. However, the nature of this relationship has been full of ups and downs.

In the past, both Sri-Lanka and Maldives had maritime security relations with China, which paved the way for Chinese naval presence in the region. Since India is not in a position to counter China on its own, it is following two different strategies: 1) alliance and security partnerships with countries of the IOR and 2) gaining extra-regional powers that hold significant influence in the Indian Ocean most notably the US.

India has also made agreements with Indonesia to access strategically located deep sea Sabang Port and Oman’s Damuq Port. It is also negotiating with Bahrain to formalize maritime security partnership.

India has significantly enhanced its strategic partnership with extra-regional powers as well. In this regard, its partnership with the US, Australia, and Japan under “Quad” is quite notable. India has signed various logistic cooperation agreements with France and the US separately. These agreements allow the Indian naval forces to access the US military base in Diego Gracia and the French base in the Reunion Island.

The western countries and the US in particular consider the growing Chinese influence a threat to their shared common interests. Therefore, India has been designated as a balancer by the US that would serve their mutually beneficial interests. The US has signed several strategic agreements such as LEMOA, COMCASA, and BECA with India that would significantly enhance their military cooperation. Also, France has proposed the “Paris-New Delhi-Canberra Axis” in the newly created “Indo-Pacific” region.

To implement these partnerships into something physical and concrete India has been rapidly modernizing its naval forces. Over the next decade, India has planned to invest an additional US$51 billion to build surface ships and submarines for its Navy. India also intends to expand its indigenous ship industry to a worth of US$5 trillion by 2025. Indian Navy has built nearly 140 naval warships. These include; an aircraft carrier, nuclear-capable submarines, attack submarines. Other than these, some 240 aircraft and UAVs have also been built. Recently, the Indian Navy has acquired two predatory drones on lease from the US. These drones would be used for surveillance in the Indian Ocean and the Ladakh Border.

India is also investing heavily in anti-submarine warfare. It has recently bought weaponry worth US$155 million from the US. These include; AGM-84L Harpoon Block II air-launched missiles, MK 54 lightweight torpedoes, and P-81 maritime patrol aircraft. These developments indicate the Indian pursuit of a naval dominance strategy. Furthermore, this also comprehends how India is exploring new options for naval dominance.

The approach of global powers specifically the US to empower India as a balancer against China would likely amplify an arms race in the region. This would ultimately affect the economic and security interests of small powers in the region. It would become more difficult for the regional states to accept India as the sole security guarantor vis-à-vis China in the IOR because of the adverse relations.

Israel warns about Iranian retaliation likely to come from Iraq or Yemen

Israel is monitoring Tehran’s movement in the region and expects that an Iranian attack could come from Iraq and Yemen, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman told the Saudi news website Elaph. 

He talked about Iranian threat and the tactics deployed by the IDF in order to respond to the threat, which he said is likely to arise from Iraq and Yemen.

The Spokesman referred to Iraq and Yemen as Iran’s second circle after Lebanon and Syria, stressing the first circle is in proxy conflict with Israel, and said that Israel has been monitoring the situation in both countries closely.

Zilberman stressed that Iran has developed a wide range of capabilities in the area – and specifically in Iraq and Yemen – that include advanced drones and remote-guided missiles, which they manage to operate without detection, indicating “a great Iranian ability in this area.”

He stressed that everyone should be on high alert regarding the Iranian threat, which he described as a “powder keg liable to explode,” considering the many blows Iran has received in the past year without being able to properly respond.

These include the assassination of Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani, its sites continuously being targeted in Syria, the mysterious explosions in several of its nuclear facilities, the assassination of its top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, international sanctions and the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has had a devastating effect on the country.

Nearing the one-year mark since the assassination of Soleimani that took place on 3rd January 2020, Zilberman noted that Iran may use the occasion to launch an offensive against Israel or the US, which are considered one entity in Iran’s eyes.

Asked about the incident of an Israeli Navy submarine being spotted crossing the Suez Canal earlier this week, Zilberman said he could not confirm the report but noted that the IDF operates freely in the Middle East and that Israeli submarines sail to “different places, far and near.”

Addressing various unprecedented recent operations attributed to the IDF, Zilberman said he considers 2020 a year of “security par excellence for the State of Israel.”

In this regard, he noted that the Jewish state has proven its ability to carry out targeted and smart operations, considering that the IDF has led more operations in the past year than usual and has received close to no response.

He added that Israel has no intention of stopping its efforts of preventing Iran from taking hold of areas in Syria and Lebanon, indicating that the extended array of anti-aircraft systems deployed in Syria is no obstacle for the IDF.

Asked about Israel’s involvement in Lebanon and the recent rising tension with Hezbollah, Zilberman avoided giving a direct answer but said that Israel knows about the current efforts being undertaken by Hezbollah and will know how to neutralize any weapon or technology of the terrorist group – by military means or otherwise.

Regarding recent cyberattacks carried out against Israel by Iranian hacker groups, Zilberman admitted that Iranian efforts on this front have increased and have succeeded somewhat – explaining that the Iranian hackers usually target civilian companies that work with the military – but stressed that the damage was insignificant. He did, however, hint at the possibility that 2021 will see even more attacks of this kind, as cyberattack warfare replaces the modern battlefield.

“Any calculations known to us today could change for an unknown reason,” Zilberman told Elaph when asked about a looming war, adding that the current echelon leading the IDF is innovative in its thinking about the future and its unknown threats, and is working hard to ensure that Israel will always be prepared.

Earlier, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi addressed the Iranian threat during a ceremony for exemplary soldiers, saying that Iran will pay a heavy price if any Israeli is targeted.

“We are hearing more and more threats against Israel coming from Iran,” he said. “If Iran and its partners... attack the State of Israel, they will [pay] a heavy price... I am simplifying things and describing the situation to our enemies as it is,” he added. “Our retaliation plans are prepared, and they have been practiced.”

Will US President Trump make the world safer or more dangerous in his remaining days in power?

It is no secret that Donald Trump, President United States had asked for military options for attacking Iran and that Israel has been preparing for such an eventuality. It is the collective responsibility of all to examine the possibility of the US or joint US-Israel attack on Iran and its consequences.

There is absolutely no justification for such an attack, but that is no guarantee that it won’t happen. It needs to be emphasized that none of this would be happening if the Trump administration had not taken the reckless and destructive step of reneging on the JCPOA and launching an economic war on Iran. Whatever adversities the world may face only the Donald Trump would be held responsible for that.

When Trump ordered the assassination of Soleimani in January 2020, administration officials eventually lined up behind the excuse that it was intended to “restore deterrence” against rocket attacks from Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. Even though these attacks have continued, throughout the year, the US administration is back to issuing of threats of military action in response to attacks that would not be happening if it were not for the president’s own reckless actions. As the anniversary of the Soleimani assassination approaches, the administration is once again drifting towards an avoidable and unnecessary conflict.

Were it not for the president’s “maximum pressure” campaign, the US forces in Iraq would have faced far fewer risks than they do today, and conflict between the two governments would have been less intense. Had it not been for the president’s decision to order the illegal and provocative attack that killed Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader, tensions between the US and Iran would not be as great as they are now. Trump’s approach to Iran for the last two and a half years has been to pick a fight and then blame the other side for responding to his provocations. Far from deterring attacks from Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian military itself, the Trump administration has been provoking and inviting them. It is mostly a matter of luck that this has not yet triggered a larger conflict.

For its part, the Israeli government is also raising the temperature by sending one of its submarines through the Suez Canal to signal its readiness to respond to retaliation for its murder of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. An Israeli submarine has embarked for the Persian Gulf in possible preparation for any Iranian retaliation over the November assassination of a senior Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Israeli media reported.

The above-water, fully visible Israeli deployment into the Suez Canal and then the Red Sea was a rare move that was reportedly carried out with the acquiescence of Egyptian authorities and was seen as a clear warning to Iran that Israel was preparing for battle as hostilities continue to rise.

The deployment of the Israeli submarine is described as a “message of deterrence,” but it is in fact the result of an ill-advised and illegal attack inside Iran. Had the Israelis not carried out a terrorist attack on Iranian soil, they would not now be worried about possible retaliation. This gets at a basic problem with the hawkish framing of our news coverage related to Iran and the constant misuse of the concept of deterrence by both the US and Israeli governments.

When hawks in the US and Israeli governments talk about “restoring deterrence,” what they really mean is that they want to commit acts of aggression but present them as defensive actions. Blowing up Soleimani had nothing to do with deterring future attacks, and one can see that it has failed to deter them. Murdering Fakhrizadeh definitely had nothing to do with deterring anything. It was just a gratuitous killing that the Israel government did because they could. Now both the US and Israel find that they have to make additional shows of force and issue new threats to ward off possible responses to these earlier aggressive acts. Instead of making them more secure, these aggressive acts have exposed Americans and Israelis to greater risks than they faced earlier on.

Iran non oil trade reported at US$52 billion in 9 months

The value of Iran’s non-oil trade during the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year (March-December 2020) was reported at US$52 billion by the Head of Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA).

The total volume of the country’s non-oil trade was 110 million tons during the period under review, out of that 85.2 million tons were exported commodities and about 25 million tons were imported goods, Informed Mehdi Mir Ashrafi.

The official put the total value of the imports into the country during the said time at US$26.8 billion, while the value of exports was reported to be US$25.1 billion.

According to Mir-Ashrafi, 17.5 million tons of the imported commodities into the country in the period under review were basic goods, accounting for the lion's share of the imports in terms of weight.

Iran's top five non-oil export destinations during this period were China with US$6.4 billion worth of exports, Iraq with US$5.9 billion, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with over US$3.3 billion, Turkey with US$1.8 billion, and Afghanistan with US$1.7 billion.

The country’s top five sources of imports during this period were China with US$7 billion, the UAE with US$6.3 billion, Turkey with US$3 billion, India with US$1.6 billion and Germany with US$1.6 billion worth of imports.

Some 5.2 million tons of commodities were also transited to other countries through Iran, 10.9 percent less than the figure for the same period in the previous year, Mir-Ashrafi said.

Like all other countries around the world, Iran’s trade with its foreign partners has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. However, the situation is getting back to normal and the country’s trade is reaching its pre-pandemic levels.