By:Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

 

When the Warsaw Pact was dissolved on July 1, 1991 by Moscow and what used to be the socialist bloc of East European countries as a goodwill gesture marking end of the Cold War, the rival military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should have been dissolved as well for start of a new world order of peace, friendship, and stability.

The US, France, and Britain, however, did not reciprocate this goodwill and as part of their Machiavellian policies launched an eastward expansion to lure the new regimes in Eastern Europe to join NATO’s push towards the Russian borders, resulting in distrust and culminating in the ongoing war and bloodshed in Ukraine.

NATO’s unbridled belligerency of the past three decades since the dissolution of Warsaw Pact has been fully evident in its stationing of heavily armed battalions in the former socialist bloc countries of Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Hungary, as well military intervention in US occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, in addition to Libya and the destabilization of Francophone Africa.

It is now obvious who the real warmongers are in Europe and other parts of the world, and why the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, who is known for his political prudence and farsightedness, has called NATO a “dangerous outfit”.

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who yesterday granted an audience to visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin, called for peace and strongly deplored war, saying: “The US-led military alliance knows no boundaries and had to be stopped in Ukraine or it would have eventually started war using Crimea as a pretext.”

He added: “In the case of Ukraine, however, if you had not taken the initiative, the opposite side would have caused [the outbreak] of war with its own initiative.”

Words of wisdom indeed! This explains the Islamic Republic of Iran’s clear sighted policy in strengthening independent countries and popular movements to thwart the devilish designs of Washington and its NATO allies who use the illegal Zionist entity and the macabrely murderous terrorists to destabilize Muslim states.

Tehran’s aggressive diplomacy to resolve regional conflicts was fully evident on Tuesday when it hosted tripartite talks involving the presidents of Iran, Russia, and Turkey, as part of the Astana Peace Process, to remove distrust, overcome differences, and preserve Syria’s independence and territorial integrity which is under threat from the frequent Israeli aerial attacks, the US occupation forces in the oil-rich eastern flank of the River Euphrates, and the terrorist groups Washington supports against Turkey, Iran, and the home country.

It is indeed a feather in the cap for strictly neutral Iran to assemble NATO member Turkey and former Warsaw Pact member Russia, for trilateral and bilateral talks, the positive outcome of which was the joint communique in which Tehran, Ankara, and Moscow pledged: “commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic as well as to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.”

The presidents of the three countries also agreed to jointly confront terrorism, which they said is being supported by the US and West European regimes, and condemned the unabated Israeli military attacks as “violation of the international law, and the sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Syria,” while rejecting the Israeli annexation of the southern parts of Syria’s Golan Heights, by stating “all decisions and measures taken by Israel in this regard are null and void and have no legal effect.”

If wisdom prevails, Turkey will resist the Zionist controlled western media’s propaganda to undermine the Tehran trilateral communique as well as NATO’s insinuation for military incursion into northern Syria that will definitely not be in the interests of Ankara, which now has the opportunity to do a great service to Islamic solidarity and humanitarian values by making common cause with Damascus and the Resistance Front against usurper Israel.

Meanwhile, Putin the diplomat who had wide-ranging discussions with Iranian officials on several topics of mutual interest and has offered to host the next round of tripartite talks on resolving the US-instigated crisis in Syria, denounced the unpardonable act of terrorism by Washington in assassinating Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani, and said, the moment NATO stops meddling the war will end in Ukraine.