What happened last Wednesday was surprising that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris said that Iran is the greatest threat to the United States. Harris justified this by saying that Iran has American blood on its hands and pledged that one of her top priorities would be to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power. Her interviewer on CBS has asked her about the biggest enemy of the US. She did not say it was China, in line with the American approach established by former President Barack Obama, nor did she say it was Russia in connection with its invasion of Ukraine.
However, Harris’s statement is not generally taken seriously. It’s not concluded from it that her party’s orientations have changed. The common belief is that it’s merely an election statement, intended to please Israel’s supporters in the United States, particularly with her competitor Trump exploiting his hostility to Iran and focusing on it in his election rallies. In fact, he had the opportunity with the US intelligence warning days ago of Iranian assassination attempts against him. This could cast similar doubts on the two assassination attempts he had previously been subjected to.
Two months ago, the Trump campaign complained of a major information breach, which it attributed to Iranian hackers, leading to the leaking of sensitive internal documents.
In contrast to the hostility with Iran, Trump’s relationship with Putin seems to be at its best. A forthcoming book by journalist Bob Woodward has revealed two pieces of information which confirm this. According to the journalist, who previously broke the Watergate scandal, Trump sent Covid-19 tests to Putin at the beginning of the pandemic, and the two kept the matter secret. More revealing, according to the book, is that the former president has contacted Putin seven times since the end of his presidential term in early 2021, despite his country’s military support for Ukraine against Russia, which puts him in a position to contradict his country’s official policy. A report published by the New York Times revealed that former President Trump sought advice from Russian President Putin on arms requests which Ukraine had submitted to the United States, during their first meeting on July 7, 2017. Surprisingly, the leaking of these secrets has not affected Trump’s electoral chances, according to opinion polls published so far. The numbers indicate that Harris is ahead of him in the popular vote, as she received 49% of the votes compared to 46% for him, while his chances are slightly ahead in the electoral college votes which decide the outcome.
Perhaps this is the first time in the history of the US elections that Moscow and Tehran are competing. Accordingly, Putin’s statement has an unusual significance. He has said that relations with Tehran are a priority for his country. He stated: “We work together actively in the international arena, and our views on what is happening in the world are very close in most cases.” Putin’s statements came after his meeting with the Iranian president on the sidelines of a regional summit in Turkmenistan. He seemed to deny the existence of any differences between the positions of the two allies, starting with each of them preferring a candidate for the US presidency, and extending to the Golan front, where the evacuation of Russian forces from their positions on the Syrian side of the Golan is understood as a withdrawal in the face of possible Israeli incursions.
[by Omar kadour in Al-Modon]
Compiled and translated by Faizul Haque