Joint Russia-Iran Naval Drills as US Attack Looms

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Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson joined me on Press TV’s Spotlight program to discuss the latest Russia-Iran naval drills and the likelihood of another major US attack on Iran.

Transcript:

Welcome, everyone. Iran and Russia have held naval exercises in the Sea of Oman and northern Indian Ocean to boost military cooperation and regional security. And topping the drills, maritime counter-piracy and counter-terrorism operations, IRGC forces also closed the Strait of Hormuz for a brief episode during their exercises just a day earlier. Annual drills are meant to send a clear message that the region is capable of providing its own security and stability and does not need or welcome, in fact, foreign players or intervention in this regard.

In fact, this Moscow to Iran cooperation is also giving way to the south north south transit corridor, a revolutionary transit route on land to run from St. Petersburg, Russia to the middle of India. And it runs primarily right through Iran, an economic game changer.

But first, let’s start with this quick report. Iran and Russia have wrapped up a series of joint naval exercises in the Sea of Oman and the northern Indian Ocean, aimed at boosting military cooperation and maritime security across the region. The drills focused on expanding operational coordination between the two navies, particularly in planning and executing combined missions. Special operations units from the Iranian Army, the IRGC, and the Russian Navy carried out a complex simulation to retake a hijacked vessel. In a coordinated air and sea assault, special forces boarded the target ship, detained the mock hijackers, and secured the vessel.

Military officials say the exercises were designed to improve joint readiness in countering maritime threats, including piracy and terrorism.Rear Admiral Hassan Mafzoudlu, spokesperson for the Iran-Russia joint drill, said all planned objectives have been successfully achieved.In the end, all the objectives planned by the designers in the operations room were successfully achieved.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy routinely participates in various defense diplomacy exercises around the world. Joint exercises with Russia in the Caspian Sea and in southern waters are also part of Iran’s annual defense diplomacy planning. As defense ties between Tehran and Moscow continue to deepen, Russian naval official Alexei Sergeev emphasized that the two countries are capable of addressing a wide range of maritime challenges together, highlighting a growing atmosphere of trust and cooperation. The level of interaction and cooperation between Iran and Russia shows that together we can manage and resolve many maritime and coastal challenges.

Moscow is ready to hold joint exercises in any region, including specialized drills such as maritime counterterrorism operations carried out by naval vessels and patrol boats from both countries. With Iran and Russia expanding collaboration across multiple sectors in recent years, the latest Navy drills underscored deepening strategic partnership between the two countries. The exercises also demonstrate the ability of both countries to safeguard regional maritime security without reliance on outside powers.

The drills come at a time of heightened tensions in the region, as the United States has stepped up its threats against Iran in recent weeks. Tehran has asserted that it is fully prepared to respond to any force threatening its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

And now for our guests for our program. Joining us, Mr. Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst from Florida. And also Kevin Barrett joining us from Saidia, Morocco. Gentlemen, pleasure to have you both. Welcome to our spotlight program. I guess Mr. Johnson, we’ll start with you down there in sunny Florida. Your initial take, please, on these naval drills between Moscow and Tehran and what they signify, especially in the scope of recent tensions.

Well, I think it’s important to understand that it’s not just with Russia. China’s also been involved. I mean, China, Russia, and Iran started a series, an annual joint naval exercise. They started that back in 2019. It’s always been scheduled around mid-February to mid-March. And anybody that’s ever been involved with military exercises before knows that the planning for this, they didn’t come up with this because of recent tensions with the United States. These exercises are usually planned days to months in advance.

And so it’s a reminder that now because of the tensions, it does take on added importance. It’s possible that they added in an additional dimension to this with just Russia. But you know the Chinese are also in the area. They have a an intelligence ship tailing the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. So I think it’s important to understand that unlike what happened in June’s surprise attack by Israel, Iran now enjoys the full backing of Russia and China, based in part on a trilateral agreement that was assigned at the end of January of this year.

Thank you there, Mr. Johnson. Dr. Kevin Barrett, pleasure to have you join us, sir. And thank you for your presence, in fact. And your opening thoughts as well on these annual drills that we witnessed. And to Mr. Johnson’s point, he’s very correct on that, that it’s been Russia, Iran, and China. And even China was supposed to be part of this, and it just opted out in the last minute. But nevertheless, the timing of the drills, the geopolitical relevance, and the message they sent this year, forget about the other years, but this year, with the buildup of tensions.

Well, first, I’d like to say it’s an honor to be on the show with Larry Johnson. He’s doing great work. I wish we had more government service people in the United States with his analytical skills and integrity. So yeah, these drills show that this time this is yet another aspect of the way that Iran is prepared now in a way that it wasn’t last June. That is, Iran has had more than half a year to figure out what went wrong, what went right in June, and to coordinate its response with Russia and China.

And of course, Russia is the world’s leading nuclear power with a lot of battle-tested people. They’ve been fighting a very serious war now that’s dragged on. And so they’re used to fighting an existential war in a way that the United States, of course, is not.

China is the world’s biggest economic and technological power by quite a bit now. And China has, according to many analysts, made a lot of progress in the intelligence fields relevant to the Iranian response to any US attack. We know that Iran now has access to radars that are specifically directed to going after stealth aircraft. And China, of course, had with its technological edge in many fields, is known not only for their ability to deal with cyber communications and satellite communications, but of course, also they’ve been apparently involved in helping Iran develop its missile technology. I believe there were Sunburn missiles more than two decades ago that already at that point could have shut down the Persian Gulf.

So Iran is totally prepared for this. Dick Cheney backed off. Obama didn’t even want to think about it. And now we’ve got an apparently Epstein-blackmailed Zionist stooge lunatic in the White House who is willing to gamble with the future of the region and the world. And so it’s a very, very dangerous situation. And with Russia and Chinese involvement, this of course sets the stage for escalation that could get out of control.

And thank you there, Dr. Barrett. And Mr. Johnson, Iran said time and again that the anti-terror operations and anti-piracy operations and other dimensions to the drills are meant to convey that, hey, we have regional players that can handle regional security and do not need, in fact, do not want outside forces in the region for any assistance in this regard. But is anyone listening when it comes to this point being driven home?

Well, the only terrorism threat that Iran has really faced has been that which has been ginned up by the United States and Israel. In particular, let’s recall that in after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and identified the MEK, the Mujahideen al-Khalq, they then, in 2004, realized, “hey, we can use these guys to attack Iran.” And even though the MEK was still on the list of international terrorists that my old office used to classify as organizations that were bad, the CIA and the US military started working with these guys. They weren’t removed from the terrorist list until 2012. And yet they became US proxies.

So to my knowledge, the MEK has never been responsible for carrying out a maritime attack. I think the maritime platform is, I’ll call it an excuse, to bring Russia and China together. What happens in these exercises is the officers, they get to know each other. You develop friendships. You learn how to communicate. You learn what kind of systems work best, and you try to simulate a crisis situation. And can you communicate in that situation? And if there’s a breakdown, what kind of workarounds do you come up with?

So they used the anti-terrorism thing as sort of the script, but that’s not the real purpose of this exercise. The purpose of this exercise is to ensure that Russian military personnel, Chinese military personnel, and both the conventional and the Revolutionary Guard personnel in Iran know how to communicate, know how to work together in different circumstances. And I frankly think that we’re on the cusp, as Mr. Barrett was noting. of something very dangerous and very terrible, but I think at the heart of it, the United States has grossly, grossly underestimated the capabilities of Iran.

And part of it is they keep feeding themselves propaganda. Just as an illustration, Sy Hersh, who I’ve known for years, and Sy’s been a friend, but he’s come out with one of the most ridiculous pieces of crap. He insists that during the 12-day war that the Iron Dome of Israel knocked out 90% of Iranian ballistic missiles and they eliminated the ballistic missile threat from Iran. Now, that’s what he’s been told by intelligence sources. That is a complete falsehood. But the problem is, the policymakers in the United States, and apparently in Israel, believe that nonsense. And when they act on it, they’re in for a rude awakening.

Thank you there. And Dr. Barrett, would you like to weigh in on that as well? The fact that Iran and Russia, both under U.S. sanctions, both would like to see a region free of U.S. and NATO presence or meddling, that it’s basically they take pride in maneuvers like this to make that very declaration that no one is, especially from the West, is needed or wanted in this backyard. But does it matter to anyone in the West?

I think the West is right now mired in confusion. And as Larry Johnson said, they are basically high on their own supply of propaganda. And I think that’s largely due to the exorbitant power wielded by fanatical tribalistic Zionists. Everything they see is tempered by their kind of paranoiacal tribal self-interest. And then there are some millenarian messianic strain of Zionism as well that lead them to embrace these extremely dangerous and risky scenarios. And of course the fact that the Israelis have gotten away with so much over the years, not least of all the Kennedy assassinations and 9/11, emboldens them to take these ridiculous risks.

Russia and China and Iran are at this point the grown-ups in the room who see that the West, led by this Zionist occupied regime in Washington, is a grossly irresponsible actor that cannot be allowed to preside over the development of this coming multipolar world. And there’s now an agreement on that. That is the crazy Americans, the Zionist hijacked Americans, have driven Russia, China and Iran together in a way that never would have happened if relatively sane strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski had had their way. Brzezinski wrote in The Grand Chessboard that one of the most important, if not the most important, strategic imperatives for the U.S. was to basically get along well with Iran and not create a situation where Iran might make common cause with one of these other rising great powers. And now we have this situation where the Americans have proven that they’re just so completely, grossly irresponsible and reckless and crazy that they no longer have the mandate of heaven, no longer deserve to preside over the world. And the rest of the world, the sane people, see that. And that’s why we’re seeing increasing cooperation from the heart of this new multipolar order led by Iran, China and Russia.

Right, and Mr. Larry Johnson, these strengthening alliances in the face of very sensitive time, increased U.S. military threats and buildup, for that matter, in the region. Okay, many feel that that has no bearing on the fact that from different dimensions of Iran’s leadership, including the leader himself, very defiant, bold, and far from cowering in the face of U.S. threats recently. Many people, it has nothing to do with Iran’s ties with Beijing or Moscow. What do you attribute this level of confidence to?

You mean confidence on the Iranian side?

Yeah, it’s a crushing response, should the U.S. make a misstep.

Well, look, Iran made a mistake prior to June 13th last year. because both Russia and China had offered assistance. And in fact, the mutual security pact that Iran and Russia inked last January of 2025 did not include the kinds of security guarantees that Russia had offered to North Korea. And my understanding is that, in fact, Russia had made the same offer to Iran, but for some internal reasons, I call it the desire to be more independent, Iran said, no, no, no, let’s just go with this other level. Well, in the aftermath of this cowardly attack by Israel and by the United States, I think the Iranians sort of woke up and went, you know what? Those offers from Russia and China sound pretty good. And so what we’ve seen is a dramatic upgrade in the relationship between Russia and China with Iran and providing not just military equipment and significant upgrades with air defense radar, actual air defense systems, other weapons such as attack helicopters, but more importantly intelligence, intelligence cooperation and sharing.

And, you know, I understand the pride of the Iranian people and don’t want to diminish that at all. But there’s a reason Ringo Starr wrote that song, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” And that’s where Iran is now. They’re going to be getting by with the help from some very powerful friends. And the other dimension to this is Russia and China open a new economic path forward for Iran, who has been victimized by what I would say is an illegal economic warfare waged primarily by the United States, but also by Europe.

Thanks. And Dr. Barrett, Mr. Larry Johnson earlier alluded to, you said many are grossly underestimating Iran’s defense capabilities in the face of these U.S. threats of military action against the country. Your take on that?

I think that’s right. I think maybe the people who were fooling themselves on the Western side, I’m not talking about Trump and the political leaders who don’t really have any understanding of the military issues involved, but maybe some of the military people who are basically telling Trump and his friends what they want to hear, that, hey, we can solve this. Maybe what they’ve done is they’ve got some kind of plan to deal with what Iran did last time. But Iran, of course, is not going to do exactly what they did last time. And what Iran learned in raining down missiles on Tel Aviv is that there are ways to get past the so-called Iron Dome and these other anti-missile systems.

So I think you might have a static analysis coming out of the Western side that doesn’t take into account this series of changes that Iran has undoubtedly made, as Larry Johnson said, in part with the assistance of Russia and China, but also, of course, due to its own internal abilities to look at what’s happened on the battlefield and make adjustments.

I imagine that anybody in the American side that thinks that they can deal with the capabilities that we saw on display in June—and we saw that they can go through the most advanced missile defense systems that the West and Israel have and hit these targets flat on, right? Just very, very accurately. That means all of that whole armada that Trump just sent, it’s a big series of sitting ducks. They all have targets on their back. And whatever the Americans think that they have to deal with that, it’s really hard to imagine how it could possibly be effective.

You know, what I’m concerned about, of course, is that Trump is not just playing the Nixon-style madman theory of pretending to be insane. I mean, he really is a narcissistic, deviant character. And who knows what he could be manipulated into. And that’s why the escalation potential of this is so dangerous for everybody.

All right, thank you. And we have, I think, enough time to get one more question out to each of you. I want to kind of switch shifts now and go beyond the drills. There’s this north-south corridor, Mr. Johnson, this land route that will connect Europe to India. It runs from St. Petersburg, Russia, all the way through Iran down to the middle of India. Now, it’s obviously a massive operation that will have massive economic dividends for the region’s future. But not just that. With something like infrastructure this big, a project this big, comes political benefits, you very well know, and political leverage. So your thoughts on what that, the fruition of such a project will mean for all parties involved.

Well, it’s just, it’s another, let’s call it another brick in the wall of building a new economic, international economic order. The Bretton Woods system, what the United States erected in the aftermath of World War II with Bretton Woods, IMF, World Bank, that system is now unraveling and the unraveling of that system has been accelerated by the sanctions that were imposed on Russia, sanctions imposed on Iran, sanctions imposed on China. It has been really created an incentive for these countries to find a way that they can operate outside of a system that is based upon a reserve currency as the US dollar. And in fact, they have dramatically accelerated in that regard. The problems Iran has suffered economically were imposed in large measure because they didn’t have an alternative system. Now they do. The Chinese have created it with the cross-border interbank payment system, for example. So, you know, I think that’s where the north-south corridor fits within this whole architecture, new architecture of building a new financial trade system.

Thank you, Mr. Larry Johnson. And Mr. Dr. Kevin Barrett, I want to come to you also. What the realization, from your perspective, of the Northwest Corridor mean for Russia, for Iran, and the region, even for those not party to or apart of the project?

Yeah, this means a whole new world where these crazies in Zionist-occupied Washington, D.C. can no longer just sanction anybody that doesn’t obey their orders. And of course, everybody wants that all over the world. Nobody likes living in a world where these crazies in Washington and Tel Aviv can just hit you with these sanctions and basically debank you, deplatform you, you can’t trade anymore. Russia doesn’t like that. China doesn’t like that. And of course, Iran likes it least of all.

And with this progress in alternative trade platforms, we are going to see the final sinking of the dollar as the international reserve currency. And we’re going to see a thriving Eurasia in a multipolar world.

We have a little bit of time left. I’m not going to sign off just yet. Larry Johnson, Donald Trump said that he’s giving talks days to see if they reach a good diplomatic settlement. How do you see things unfolding over the next days to two weeks with respect to tensions between D.C. and Tehran?

He’s lying. I think Iran’s going to be attacked within the next to hours.

And Dr. Kevin Barrett, your take and final thoughts, please.

Well, I have no idea what the time frame would be, but my optimism from a few days ago has evaporated. And I think that the odds at this point do seem to favor another American attack on Iran. And I think Iran is going to be able to demonstrate that it can go all the way up the escalation ladder as far as the Americans want to take it. And hopefully some, perhaps the Israelis will call it off as Iranian missiles once again rain down on Tel Aviv to the delight of everybody who’s horrified by this genocide that the Israelis have been committing.

Well, we all hope that cooler heads obviously prevail. Thank you, gentlemen. Pleasure to have you both on. Stay safe both of you. Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst, joining us here out of Florida, and also Dr. Kevin Barrett, editor at Veterans Today, joining us from Sadia, Morocco.And viewers, this brings us to the end of your Press TV Spotlight program.Thank you for tuning in, and bye-bye for now.

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