By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The news broke shortly after today’s Dialogue Works podcast went to air.

This is China’s attempt to take from Iran its two trump cards in defending itself from the US, Israel and their allies:

First card — Iran’s right of self-defence and retaliation against each and every base, including radars, logistics, intelligence, operational plans, military staffs and financing, which are being used to run the war on Iran.

Second card —  counter-sanctions against the energy, other exports and food, tourism and other imports of all the states allied in the war against Iran, including India, Cyprus, UK, and the  European states. The closure of the Hormuz Strait to these war-making countries, and the imposition of a permissions regime for neutral and friendly states, are part of Iran’s defence. They are also a counter to the scheme of sanctions against Iran’s economy and asset seizures which has been kept in place by the anti-Iran alliance for forty years, and which were reinforced through the United Nations Security Council snapback mechanism in 2025.  

In camouflage for what China is doing against Iran, it has just announced its support “to strengthen the primacy of the UN.”

This is Point 5 in the “Five-Point Initiative of China and Pakistan” which was published following talks in Beijing between Wang Yi, China’s Politburo member and Foreign Minister under President Xi Jinping. Read the full text.  

Point 1 calls for “immediate cessation of hostilities”. This is the ceasefire which has been repeatedly dismissed by Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei’s Five-Point term sheet of March 12.  

Point 2 claims “dialogue and diplomacy is [sic] the only viable option to resolve conflicts”. After the record of negotiation by the US before the June 2025 war and now the February 28 war, this statement is false on the evidence. Also, it is a claim that is contradicted by China’s position on the future of Taiwan as non-negotiable.

Point 3 declares that “the parties to the conflict [should] stop attacking important infrastructure, including energy, desalination and power facilities, and peaceful nuclear infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants.” This is China’s alibi for Israel to retain its Dimona and Sdot Mikha   facilities for enriching uranium for bomb and missile warheads aimed at Iran; and for Iran to disarm itself in the face of the global alliance committed to regime change in Teheran. By omission, China has now accepted that assassination of Iran’s leaders, scientists and military commanders by the US and Israel, aided and endorsed by the Arab sheikhs, should be accepted by Iran in the peace talks to follow – without the penalties and reparations declared in Khamenei’s Five Points.

Point 4 of the Beijing paper is headed “security of shipping lanes”. Drafted by Wang, this is designed to open the Strait of Hormuz to the financial profit of all states, starting with China, but with the exception of Iran. There is no mention of the closure, let alone opening,   of all the world’s seas and straits to Iran’s shipping.

“The Chinese have an annoying habit of believing everyone else is an idiot,” responds a Moscow source in a position to know.

He interprets Wang’s motive — and behind him President Xi — is to secure short-term oil and gas supplies at lower cost;  and in the medium term, ahead of the rescheduled talks with President Donald Trump in China in mid-May, to reduce the escalation of the US war plan against China. “I’m also beginning to suspect that Xi’s purges of the military have a lot less to do with the corruption that’s been announced  than with repression of those unhappy with the comfortable elites around him [Xi]  selling out to the US.”

The source also points to Wang’s statement of March 8, declaring that China is “a sincere friend and strategic partner” — not to Iran under attack but to all “Middle Eastern countries” including the Arab states and Israel. “This is a war that should not have happened…Wilful use of force does not prove one’s strength.”   By omitting to identify the US, Israel and their allies in the attacks commencing on February 28, Wang, according to the interpretation in Moscow, is sacrificing Iran for Xi’s and Wang’s calculation of their own advantage.

Since last December senior Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Kremlin national security advisor Yury Ushakov, have been expressing doubt in the “sincerity” of the Xi-Wang friends.    

The suspicion in Moscow is that China is betraying its commitments to Iran under their 2021 agreement  – without going as far in the betrayal as the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s explicit and secret support for the US and Israel’s war. This means that two of the foundation states of BRICS have defaulted on the collective security the organization has promised.

That leaves Russia. Listen or view the hour-long discussion with Nima Alkhorshid, broadcast at 7 in the US morning, 2 in the Moscow afternoon.  

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by Editor - Tuesday, March 31st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The weapon was first used at least forty thousand years ago, not only by Australian aboriginals (lead image, left) but also by ancient Egyptians and native Americans like the Navajo.   Even the Poles are known to have mastered the technology of shaping mammoth tusks and throwing them at people whose meat they wanted to steal.  

In the new Red Pill Diaries podcast with Rasheed Muhammad, we open with the collaboration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) and his foreign minister in the US plan of attack on the Iranian Navy squadron seeking safe harbour for several days before the war was launched on February 28, and before the frigate, IRIS Dena, was sunk on March 4. The evidence is presented of US planning, Indian collaboration, and Sri Lankan delay which combined to expose the Dena to lethal ambush when it was just nine nautical miles and eighteen minutes from safety.

The immediate lessons: Modi’s prejudice against Iran has triggered the biggest over-estimation of US and Israeli power in Indian history; India’s conduct has ended BRICS as a multipolar collective and alternative to the US empire; Iran’s new Hormuz Strait regime is penalizing India in favour of Pakistan and severely damaging India’s economic growth; Indian state elections in April will decide the political penalty which Modi and his BJP party must pay for losing the war they expected to win; and finally, the value to India’s military establishment of Israel as a weapons  supplier, intelligence source and political ally is now less than zero.

The medium term lesson:  Russia is emerging as the only credible force capable of supporting the balance of defence and deterrence in the Middle Eastern wars the US and its allies aim to fight.  

The long term lesson: beware of the boomerang which the US, Israel, their Arab allies, and India threw at Iran because it has now returned to strike them more powerfully than any other in their arsenals. It’s also a stealth weapon which they failed  to see coming and duck.

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by Editor - Monday, March 30th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The survivors of the US attack and sinking of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena on March 4 are direct witnesses of exactly what happened — not only in the hours and minutes before the attack, but also in the days preceding –at least a week — when Iranian officials were requesting sanctuary from the Sri Lankan and Indian governments; and also in the days following the attack – now almost a month ago — when Sri Lankan and Indian officials have prevented the witnesses from speaking in public.

The story of the plan of US attack and the evidence of the culpability of Sri Lankan and Indian officials was told here, and the Twitter stream which has followed.  

This was not a report on whether the UN Charter,   the international law on surprise attack,   the rules of war and the Geneva Convention code of naval conduct  were violated by the USS Charlotte in the submarine-launched torpedo firing without advance warning to its target; nor whether the Dena was armed or unarmed. 

A US military assessment has concluded: “The sinking of the IRIS Dena was legal under the law of naval warfare, the submarine was neither required nor equipped to rescue the sailors it left in the water, and Congress had every opportunity to stop the war but voted against it. What remains harder to explain is why the U.S. left its premier submarine-hunting aircraft to fly drills  alongside the Dena one week before a submarine killed her.” 

Instead, the Dances with Bears report of March 24, and earlier ones,   were presented to show Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of External Relations, Subramanyan Jaishankar,  had declared themselves on the side of the US and Israel against Iran before the latter launched their war on February 28. In their conduct of the negotiations with Iran over the Dena and its two escorts, before the attack and since then, the Indians have demonstrated they were not neutral.

Their attempts to retrieve this neutrality have followed after —  but only because —  the short war and defeat of  Iran which they expected have failed; and after Iran’s fight-back put Indian workers, businessmen and offshore financial operations in the Gulf states at risk, and stopped essential supplies of oil, gas and fertilizer on which the Indian economy depends. No Indian mainstream or alternative medium has been found which has reported this evidence and discussed the implications of Modi’s abandonment of India’s neutrality.

There has been more public debate of Sri Lanka’s neutrality and criticism of the conduct of President Anura Dissanyake.   In EurAsia Times, an Indian analyst Sumit Ahlawat reported on March 26 under the headline “Iranian Sailors Trapped in Sri Lanka: Tehran Demands Return, US Pressure Mounts — Can Colombo Stay Neutral?”  He reports from an interview with Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath that currently, 252 Iranian sailors remain in Colombo’s “custody” – 15 on board the escort IRIS Bushehr, which was given safe harbour in Colombo, then Trincomalee, after the Dena’s sinking; the remaining 204 of the Bushehr crew at a Sri Lankan Navy camp,  and in a separate Sri Lankan Air Force camp,  the 32 survivors of the Dena.

There remain discrepancies in the official statements and press reports of how many Bushehr crew remain in Sri Lanka.  Altogether,  the Iranian total is either 251;  252;   or 253,  depending on source.  

 “They are not prisoners,” Foreign Minister Herath was quoted as saying. “But that doesn’t mean, give them all freedom.” The Iranians are being held incommunicado, allowed to telephone their families in Iran under strict supervision, but prevented from speaking to the Iranian media or the local press.   In isolation from their fellow Iranian crew members, the special conditions of the Dena crew in Sri Lanka have not been reported.

Herath has admitted there is intense US government pressure not to allow the repatriation of the Iranian crews. The pressure includes the threat to reverse the trade tariff and other concessions which the Trump Administration gave Colombo last year  after first penalizing the country’s exports with a prohibitive 44% tariff.

There has been sharp criticism from the Sri Lankan Navy of President Dissanayake’s calculated delay in allowing the Dena, the Bushehr, and the third vessel in the squadron, IRIS Lavan, to make safe harbour, despite their request before the Dena attack. “ ‘We did not take any prompt action,’ said former Sri Lankan Navy chief, Rear Admiral (ret) Sarath Weerasekara, in an interview with a London newspaper on March 16.   “‘We could have saved those lives also. This has been discussed in the [Sri Lankan] Security Council and yet no action has been taken.’ In the aftermath of the attack, Sri Lanka agreed to allow Bushehr to dock late on 4 March, amid fears it too would be hit.”

There has been no investigation in India of the comparable delay by Modi’s National Security Council. Retired Indian admiral-rank officers have been critical in public of the US for attacking the Dena and for not assisting in the rescue of survivors; they are either unaware of the Modi decisions which exposed the Dena, or unwilling to express the dismay and criticism of Modi which are circulating in the Navy Headquarters staff in Delhi and at Eastern Command of the Indian Navy, which had hosted the Dena squadron at Visakhapatnam between February 15 and 25, before it  set sail on its final voyage.

Because Russia is allied with Iran, providing both humanitarian and military assistance since the US and Israeli attack began, there have been official statements almost daily from Moscow on the targeting of Iranian civilians and the nuclear reactor complex at Bushehr, where Russian technicians continue to work, following their partial evacuation.  Although the Russian Navy frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov participated with the Dena in the naval exercises at Visakhapatnam in mid-February, there has been no official Russian comment on the sinking of the Dena.

The most detailed Iranian comments have come in a 40-minute press conference in Colombo by Iran’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Alireza Delkhosh. He reveals that the first request for sanctuary for the Dena, Lavan and Bushehr was initiated by Iran before the vessels left Visakhapatnam on February 25. That is before the February 26 date which President Dissanayake has claimed in his press and parliamentary statements.

It also raises the question — did the Iranians also ask the Indian Government for safe harbour at the same time?

The Delkhosh disclosure means that the Iranian squadron set sail from the Indian port on February 25 without orders to return to the home port of Bandar Abbas. The Indian Port Clearance Certificate required to have been filed before February 25 must therefore show the planned voyage destination. This document remains secret. The subsequent course the Iranians took southward through the Bay of Bengal may have been extended eastward and slowed down because of the delays in Sri Lankan and Indian permissions.

That delay is the political crux of this story. Its outcome was the killing of the Dena and of the neutrality of the Indian and Sri Lankan politicians involved.

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by Editor - Sunday, March 29th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

No president in his right mind goes willingly into elections facing inflation, war casualties, recession, and hope for investment from his rivals and enemies – simultaneously.

I’m not talking about Donald Trump on November 3, the Congressional election day.   This is about Vladimir Putin on September 20, the State Duma election day.

The risk to Putin is that, if ballot manipulation and fraud aren’t counted, the voter mandate for the Communist Party (KPRF) will be greater than for United Russia, the ruling party, by a ratio of about 35% to 30%; and that the number of Duma deputies representing the opposition parties altogether will reach a majority of the 450 seats. This would put United Russia in a minority for the first time, and Putin as weak as he was in 2000, when the Communist Party (KPRF) held 113 seats.    

In the latest VTsIOM poll,  for example, United Russia has dwindled to 30.6%, while the New People Party  has reached 11% and continues to climb. VTsIOM always undercounts the Communist Party voters; they don’t confide in pollsters. On the other hand, in VTsIOM’s latest poll of trust in the top-five national politicians, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov ranked fourth with 30%, trailing ex-President Dmitry Medvedev (37%), Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin (57%), and President Putin (77%).  

Russian vote fraud is not so much if as how big – most experts estimate between 5% and 10% of the 114 million votes registered to be eligible.   Ballot rigging of that magnitude has been well understood by Russian voters since Boris Yeltsin took power in 1991; it is expected still.

The warning signs in the public approval polls have been flashing since last September as the percentages have begun to grow out of the margin of statistical error. From last September to February,  approval for the President has dropped from 87% to 82%; approval for Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is down from 75% to 68%; approval of the Government, down from 74% to 67%; approval of region governors, down from 73% to 69%; approval of the State Duma, down from 62% to 58%.  

In the election-winning, election-losing formula of Votes + Money + Bullets,  these numbers are an urgent challenge for the Kremlin to recover the votes.

The accounting for bullets is this. On the Ukraine war front, direct sources report seeing concentrations for a “major offensive” of Russian infantry and tanks, with heavy artillery and air support, “on the Konstantinoka, Slavyansk, and Kramatorsk directions.” Another military source says this is the Russian response to last month’s Ukrainian counter-offensive in which territory was lost. “Russian forces are now attempting to take the [lost territory] back. I don’t see anything, however, that represents a major armoured thrust. There will be shaping attacks and the same kind of small-unit exploitation, then consolidation, we’ve seen before. I believe that if, or when, a major offensive comes, it will be a drive on Zaporozhye city and a move north to cut off, or threaten to cut off, the remaining Ukrainian formations in the Donbass.”

Success for the Russian operational strategy in all sectors of the front is dependent on methodically slow artillery, air, missile, and drone preparation; limitation of casualty risk by dispersion of men; concentration of numerical superiority by rapid manoeuvre plus deception.   Since last September, the decline in the weekly Russian casualty rates — as measured by anti-Russian sources — has been a sharp one.  Corroboration can be inferred from the  daily Moscow briefings by the Ministry of Defense which are reporting a 10% to 15% drop in estimated Ukrainian casualties compared to December and January; this is a sign of fewer direct engagements and thus of corresponding Russian casualties.

In parallel with what sources believe to be Putin’s tight rein on ground operations at the front, the General Staff is expanding its missile and drone attacks deep into western Ukraine, aiming at the energy infrastructure between Kiev and Lvov;  the railway links from Poland;  and command bunkers for Ukrainian and NATO officers. To most Russian military observers this is attrition strategy unchanged, not a shift to a knock-out offensive.  No source expects a victory parade by the autumn elections.

The election risk to Putin, therefore, is primarily economic. At his March 23 session with domestic policymakers, this is how he called it: “What stands out most is the weak, negative trend in key macroeconomic indicators.”   Putin  meant the 2.1% recession in the GDP measure in January. He didn’t say what the officials  around the table understand but don’t say in public: this is the start of the two-year recession Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina has projected to run from minus 2.5% of GDP to minus 3.5%.   

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by Editor - Thursday, March 26th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

“Sergei Victorovich”, President Vladimir Putin said behind his hand to his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov (lead image, left). “Do me a favour. When you’re talking to the Iranians, promise whatever they need to keep fighting and deter Trump. But keep it secret. And in public, waffle. Your job is to reassure the Americans we are powerless — you are powerless — I’m impotent.”

Just after lunch on Monday, Lavrov spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who had initiated the call with urgency. The published Russian communiqué said: “The situation in the Persian Gulf zone, which was degraded by the United States and Israel, was discussed. Sergei Lavrov pointed to the categorical unacceptability of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which create unacceptable safety risks of Russian personnel and are fraught with catastrophic environmental consequences for all countries of the region without exception. Mutual concern was expressed about the dangerous spread of the conflict provoked by Washington and Tel Aviv to the Caspian Sea.  The Russian side noted the need for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a political settlement, taking into account the legitimate interests of all parties involved, primarily Iran. This position Russia will be guided by the UN Security Council. A.Araghchi thanked the Russian leadership for the significant diplomatic and other support provided to the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the supply of humanitarian assistance.”  

Araghchi has omitted to publish a record of what was really discussed.  

“Pishka”, Putin said to Dmitry Peskov, his spokesman (centre). “When you’re asked questions about Iran, do me a favour — say nothing. Your job is to convince our people at home who vote for me that I know best, and that I won’t be getting them into more trouble than we already have.”

Peskov hadn’t eaten his lunch on Tuesday when local reporters asked him to clarify the President’s attitude towards the Israeli Air Force attack on the Iranian Caspian Sea port, Bandar Anzali, through which Iran and Russia run heavy-cargo ship deliveries in both directions, both civil and military. “As for these reports”,he said, “we haven’t seen them. To be honest, I don’t have any information on the matter.”  Peskov was following  Putin’s order, if clumsily,  because what he said was an obvious lie.   

Four days before, Lavrov’s spokesman had confirmed the Caspian port attack. “The US-Israeli coalition continues pouring fuel on the flames of the war they have unleashed in the Middle East, which could cause this war to spread even further. On March 18, a bomb attack was carried out against the Iranian port of Bandar Anzali on the Caspian Sea. That major Caspian port is an important trade and logistics hub that is actively used in Russian-Iranian trade, including for food deliveries. The strike has affected the economic interests of Russia and the other Caspian states that maintain transport communications with Iran via that port. The regional countries and the international community have always regarded the Caspian Sea as a safe zone of peace and cooperation. The aggressors’ reckless and irresponsible actions pose a threat of dragging Caspian states into an armed conflict. We once again firmly call for the immediate cessation of hostilities and resuming efforts to achieve a political settlement of the situation in the Middle East, which is increasingly affecting neighbouring regions.”  

In these private moments, deep behind the Kremlin wall, what Putin means to say is that Russia has now gone into recession, and the timing is very bad for the coming State Duma elections. Putin is asking his spokesmen to put up a smokescreen, an alibi for the difference between what the General Staff and intelligence agencies are doing and what he doesn’t want domestic voters or the Trump White House to blame him for.

Instead, he is counting on his spokesman for oligarch capital and Trump bribery, Kirill Dmitriev,  to tweet several times a day on the fidelity of Russia as a strategic partner. “As the largest holder of natural resources in the world and a top-3 producer of most commodities, “ according to Dmitriev a few hours ago, “Russia is well positioned for the predicted and emerging Era of Extreme Scarcity.”   “Russian energy is indispensable to easing the world’s largest energy crisis. EU bureaucrats will soon be forced to recognize this reality, acknowledge their strategic blunders, and atone.”  

To interpret these signals of Russia’s two-track policy in the war against Iran and predict what will happen next, listen to this podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, aired on Tuesday morning.

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by Editor - Wednesday, March 25th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the pre-dawn hours of March 4, the Iranian frigate, Islamic Republic of Iran Ship (IRIS) Dena, was racing eastward on the Indian Ocean. From the southwest, a tailwind of 7 knots and swell of 1.5 metres added to the Mowj-class vessel’s top speed of 30 knots. At coordinates 6.0073 degrees North , 79.8654 degrees East, the Dena was 9 nautical miles (nm) outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters;  19 nm west of the harbour of Galle, a port on the southwestern coast of the island.

It was 05:06 local time. Dawn was an hour away. On the bridge of the Dena the clock and speed log showed that in just 18 minutes the vessel and its crew would be safe from US pursuit and attack.

That was when a US Navy submarine, the USS Charlotte, fired two torpedoes. One missed; one struck the Dena, holed the aft section, triggered an internal explosion, and sank the ship within three minutes (lead image, top). Of the crew’s 180-man complement, 32 were rescued alive by the Sri Lankan coast guard; 87 bodies were recovered from the water; 61 were lost. Altogether, 148 were killed (lead image, below).  

In the Pentagon briefing which followed,  Secretary of War Peter Hegseth said:  “an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo, quiet death.”  Hegseth intended to reveal that the position of the Dena was “in international waters”. He did not mean to reveal the US had been listening to the Dena’s communications as it was transmitting, live. The reason the Dena was reporting it was safe was that it was just 18 minutes from Sri Lankan territorial waters.

The order to catch and kill the Dena had been issued earlier. It required the Charlotte to intercept the course of the Dena before it reached Galle — before it reached Sri Lankan territorial waters. The Charlotte almost missed the interception point and almost missed the target. The Dena almost reached safety.

The reason for both outcomes is that the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, and the Foreign Minister, Subraymanyam Jaishankar, had refused to allow the Dena to enter an Indian port when Jaishankar has acknowledged the request was made on February 28. According to Jaishankar’s statement on March 6,   also reported by the BBC on March 9,  the safe harbour request was made for the Dena and its two escorts, IRIS Lavan, a landing ship,  and IRIS Bushehr, a cadet training and replenishment vessel,  According to Jaishankar, only one vessel was allowed sanctuary at Kochi, on India’s west coast; this was the Lavan.

“ ‘The Iranian side had requested permission on 28 February for three ships in the region to dock at our ports. This was accorded on 1 March,’ Jaishankar told parliament on Monday. ‘Iris Lavan actually docked on 4 March in Kochi. The crew is currently in Indian naval facilities. We believe that this was the right thing to do.’”  

There has been no Indian explanation and no Indian media reporting of what transpired between February 28 and the morning of March 4, when the Dena was attacked and sunk.

The available evidence suggests that the refusal on Modi’s and Jaishankar’s orders forced the Dena to reverse its course from off the western Indian coast near Kochi and sail southeastwards for more than three days, February 28 to March 3. In that three-day interval, Indian naval intelligence on its position and communications was relayed to the US, on Modi’s direction. The Indians also reported to the Americans the communications they were receiving from the Iranian embassy in New Delhi and from Iranian officials in Teheran.  The two senior Indian officials also added to the pressure from the US and also from Israel on the Sri Lankan Government to delay its decision on the Iranian request for sanctuary, all the while lying to Iranian officials in Delhi and Teheran.

These actions make Modi and Jaishankar complicit in the US submarine action; they are culpable as accessories in the murder of the Dena’s crew. This is an Indian war crime.

The crime is compounded by the cover-up or destruction of the evidence , ordered by Modi and his subordinates, of maps, course location data, ship-to-shore communications,  and the time sequence from February 25, when the Dena and its escorts, the Lavan  and Bushehr, left the east central Indian port of Visakhapatnam, headed for their home port in Iran.

In a press statement on March 5 by the Sri Lankan President, Anura Dissanayake,    and a subsequent speech he made to parliament on March 20, it was revealed that on February 26, two days before the war began,  Iran requested sanctuary in Sri Lanka for all three Iranian Navy ships.

“A request was made to us,” Dissanayake said, “on 26 February, 2026 for three naval ships to visit Sri Lanka on 9 and 13 March as part of a goodwill visit aimed at strengthening cooperation. We were in the process of reviewing this request for approval. On the same evening, the United States also requested permission for two warfare aircrafts to land at Mattala International Airport in Sri Lanka. We took a clear and firm decision based on our policy of maintaining neutrality. At that time, there were already indications of escalating military tensions. Consequently, we did not grant approval for either of these requests. Some questioned why permission was not granted for the Iranian vessels. Had we done so, it would have compromised our overall neutrality. Furthermore, it would have brought a military conflict, which was distant from our region, closer to Mattala and the Port of Colombo. Regardless of the pressures faced, we acted to safeguard the country and preserve our neutrality.  

Dissanayake’s admission reveals that the Iranian request for safe harbour preceded by two days the February 28 sanctuary request to India. The Sri Lankan evidence suggests that after the February 26 refusal from Colombo, the Dena sailed on towards Kochi as Iranian officials tried to negotiate with Modi and Jaishankar.

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by Editor - Tuesday, March 24th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

A little socialism and working-class patriotism still go a long way among Russians.

This is despite the new, carefully laid plans of CIA Director, John Ratcliffe (lead image, left) to make it appear otherwise,  at least in the western media (right).

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by Editor - Monday, March 23rd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

This website and I have been banned from appearing on Gunners Shot, the strategic and military analysis website produced in Chennai by Lieutenant General (retd) P.R. Shankar which is widely read by the national security and military staffs around Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The reason is that no analysis is to be allowed of Modi’s alliance with Israel and the US in the war against Iran which began on February 28, three days after Modi declared to the Israeli Knesset, Am Yisrael Khai – that is the Hebrew call to war against the enemies of the Jews.   Jai Hind, Modi added to standing cheers, clapping,  and stamping from the Knesset.

State censorship has followed for any publication the Modi government considers critical of his alliance with Israel. This month it has been extended to films.  

Criticism of that (and of me) has been endorsed by veteran Indian officials and military officers.  “You”, said one, “seem to have fallen into the category of Westerners who make a quick trip to this diverse, ancient civilisation and arrive at conclusions which suit their preconceptions…Modi is one of the best Prime Ministers this country has ever had…India is an old civilisation which has always welcomed and absorbed those who came here…including the Jews… Pragmatism in foreign policy is welcome, whether you agree with individual issues or tilts at a particular point in time or not. However, India is definitely not anywhere near fascism.”

The pragmatism, confirmed by Indian sources, is this:

The 7-day war to destroy Iran which Modi expected and supported from before it began has failed; his India Middle East Europe Corridor (IMEC) strategy  has been exploded as defenceless; Israeli air defence and air attack missiles, drones, electronics, and other materiel, for which Modi has agreed to pay almost $9 billion, have been defeated; Modi’s security pact with the Zayid al-Nahyan family of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a dead letter forty days after Modi signed it; Indian worker remittance incomes and business revenues from the Gulf Arab states are ruined; Modi and his officials have been reduced to telephoning Teheran to request emergency oil, gas, and fertiliser relief through the Hormuz Strait.

The short-term cost of repatriation and exporter compensation (war premiums for demurrage, freight rates and insurance, etc.) is already budgeted in New Delhi at $6.2 billion;  the loss of remittances may grow to ten times as much. New investment bank reports  indicate that the projected 7% annual growth of the Indian economy will go into reverse;  the fall of up to one percent of GDP will cost up to $45 billion.

Inside the Indian security establishment, Prime Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs, Indian Navy and the intelligence services there are desperate attempts to retrieve position and power,  deflect blame, and escape the scapegoating now under way.

Here are the questions and my answers which are no longer allowed in India.

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by Editor - Sunday, March 22nd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

This is the first book to expose abuse of power by Australian coroners investigating the cause of death when there is suspicion of medical negligence in the combination of popular prescription drugs – widely used benzodiazepines with treatments for non-life threatening conditions such as vertigo, vestibular migraine, and epilepsy.   

The book records the evidence of the sudden death of Tatiana Vasilievna Turitsyna, my wife, and of the two years which have followed of forensic investigations to uncover the cause, the role of the treating doctor, then the delay, obstruction, and cover-up by the Coroners Court of Victoria.

Throughout the world this court is the only one of its kind to have been investigated and then prosecuted by the state for abuses of power by the coroners in charge – this is corruption in the law.  In 2023 the court was found guilty, sentenced, and fined almost $400,000, but no individual was held culpable. That was the outcome of a plea bargain — a cover-up to keep the evidence secret, the individual coroners blameless, and the penalty paid out of public money from the court budget.  

In a presentation that is unprecedented in the practice of Anglo-American law, in Australia and Canada, this book has become the jury book or brief of the case of suspicious, sudden drug death. It is now a model for the international public debate on corruption by the pharmaceutical companies in cahoots with government regulators, the medical profession, judges, and lawyers.  

This is your summons to serve on the jury.

You, the reader, are called to judge the evidence and the legal argument; and then cast your verdict, not only for the doctor and coroner but also the Supreme Court judge who conducted a trial of his own, dismissing every count of the author’s case, and endorsing the coroner’s decisions without qualification.

This is also a textbook on subversion in our lives and deaths.

This is how the victims of lethal combinations of drugs are blamed for dying of heart attacks that are judged to be “natural causes” when the evidence that they are nothing of the kind is buried according to the “rules-based international order”.  

If you are a survivor of a crime of “natural causes”, here’s how to fight for your right, and the right of the dead, to natural justice.

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by Editor - Monday, March 16th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When pirates fall out over their loot, and one tips the Black Spot to another, that’s the summons to give up the map of Treasure Island with the location of their buried treasure; or die.

The Black Spot, scrawled on a page torn from a bible, was the summons which opens Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883); causes the fatal stroke of Billy Bones, the pirate who kept the map of the buried treasure hidden in his sea chest; and led on to the adventure which millions of children have read, and I continue to read today. I do this because the story of the Black Spot foretells the future when evil men get desperate to the point of killing each other.  

When American and Israeli naval and air forces combined on February 28 to deliver their biblical Black Spot on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and members of his national security council in Teheran, killing them all, the attackers failed to capture the treasure which had been their purpose. That was the overthrow of the Iranian state and the destruction of that state’s will and its capacity to inflict comparable destruction on Israel.

The evidence of the US and Israeli failure on February 28 and in the fifteen days of the war since then,  is that retaliation by Iran has reduced both US and Israeli missile defences, broken through dozens of times, and on March 1 and again on March  9 – according to this uncorroborated report with simulations, projections, and guesswork,   from Minute 5 — targeted the Israeli military base of Sdot Mikha, near Tel Aviv. That is the site of Israel’s nuclear warhead bunkers, vertical launch silos, and mobile truck launchers of the Jericho-2 and Jericho-3 missiles.   

Whether or not these were actual hits or near-misses by the Iranians, or calculated warnings, and whether or not Sdot Mikha was in fact the target, the outcome now, after fifteen days, is the consensus of many sources:  Iran’s missile launch capacity and munition stocks have survived and now threaten to inflict on Israel a level of destruction which neither Sdot Mikha’s defences nor the Israeli state’s can combat, repulse, survive intact.

What happens next? The answer is not a fresh one. It was demonstrated a year ago during the four-day Indian Operation Sindoor against Pakistan between May 5 and May 10, 2025. According to the Indian recounting, it was the Indian detection of Pakistani moves of nuclear warheads from bunker storage to missile deployment which triggered Indian strikes to disable Pakistan’s military command-and-control systems and expose as defenceless all targets, including nuclear missile launch sites, and to paralyse their operational control and guidance.

At that point, according to Indian sources and others, the Pakistan military command asked US Vice President JD Vance to arrange a ceasefire. That’s to say, a pause, not an armistice nor an end-of-war agreement. This was what the Indian government accepted.

Whether or not the Indian account is to be fully or partially accepted, the lesson is plain, ominously plain for now. As the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has repeated in his US television network interviews, no humanitarian pause, no ceasefire will be accepted for negotiation; only a complete end of war agreement.  

On the Israeli side, however, the failure of their war aims leaves Israel’s military capacities, together with those of the US bases and air defence systems in the Middle East, in much worse condition than they were when Israel and the Trump Administration proposed, and Iran accepted, the ceasefire of June 24, 2025, or the terms negotiated with Aragchi by Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Muscat and Geneva last month, between February 6 and February 17, 2026.

“That race to a nuclear bomb, President Trump will never allow it,” Peter Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, said in a briefing with General Daniel Caine on March 10, “not now, not ever, not on our watch.”  Three days later, in another briefing with Caine, Hegseth repeated: “We’re on plan to defeat, destroy, disable all of their meaningful military capabilities at a pace the world has never seen before.”  Asked if “Iran [is] expected to meet demands of both countries [Israel] or just the US? And what are those demands?” Hegseth replied: “we’re proud to partner with the incredible capabilities the Iranians — or excuse me, the Israelis have, but our objectives are our objectives. So when those are met, as we meet those, we’ll set the — we’ll set the tempo of when those are met.”

The implication of the reporter’s question, and also of Hegseth’s answer, is that Israel may decide to escalate to achieve its war objectives at the same time as the US has decided to declare its war objectives have been achieved, cease fire, and withdraw. However, if Israel, or at least Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (lead image, right) and his associates, are on their own race to using their nuclear bomb, then that is a course of action the Trump Administration “will never allow”.

What will happen – is happening now – if Netanyahu tells Trump that in the present circumstances he has no choice but to escalate to launching a Jericho missile attack on Iran with nuclear warheads numbering from at least 20 to as many as 120?

Last May, when that step on the nuclear escalation ladder was reached in Islamabad, Washington and Delhi, this is what the Indian chief of the Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan, said happened next: “There is a lot of space before the nuclear threshold is crossed. There is a lot of signalling before that…The most rational people are people in uniform when conflict takes place. That’s because they understand that conflict can swing either way. In every step which happened…I found both sides displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as their actions. Why should we assume that in the nuclear domain there will be irrationality on someone else’s part?”   For analysis, click,  

In the present war – just as it was in the genocide of Gaza since October 2023 — it is unclear how much difference in what Chauhan called rational calculation there may be between Netanyahu, his civilian advisors and political allies, and the Israeli military chiefs –or  if there is measurable difference in rationality among them at all.

If there is such a difference, and if it also exists between the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Israel-First group around Trump, and between the Pentagon (perhaps the CIA too) and the Israelis, who will there be to tear out the page of a bible, draw the Black Spot, and put it directly into Netanyahu’s hand, or through the ceiling of his bunker?

The Black Spot isn’t always a death sentence that cannot be survived, not even in the original Treasure Island. Netanyahu may have disappeared mysteriously for several days;  he may be alive today to drink coffee with both his five-fingered hands intact.   But has Netanyahu been given a warning from the White House or  from his own men, which was so surprising that, like the pirate Billy Bones in Treasure Island, he disappeared from sight, took to his bed, played dead?

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by Editor - Sunday, March 15th, 2026
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