New World Order Netanyahu Wants

It would be wrong to attribute the expansion of the war in the Middle East to the Netanyahu government’s sole need for survival. In reality, there is a broader strategic plan behind this undeniable conditional push. This includes, in addition to the entire Middle East, the Indo-Pacific and the Mediterranean, up to the Northern Adriatic and Trieste. From this last port city, located on the periphery of the “upper right” of Italian geographical maps, one can paradoxically grasp a general vision of the tragic events in the Middle East, which do not arise without a disturbing logic.

The first indicator that should have caught the attention of commentators is the name given by Israel to its military operation in Lebanon (with branches in Syria and Yemen) that led to the assassination of Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, and the dismemberment of its leadership group: Operation New Order. A name appropriate for a large-scale strategic military intervention, not just a tactical one in a localized conflict.

The second signal light that went off was the maps shown by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in a very harsh speech on September 27 at the UN, which he unashamedly called a “swamp of antisemitic bile.”

The first map at the beginning shows Iran, Iraq, and Syria looming over the Middle East, highlighted in black. Interestingly, both Iraq and Syria are portrayed as belonging to the “Axis of Evil.” Apparently, the US invasion of Iraq and the American intervention in Syria have not produced the desired results, but rather the opposite.

The second map (below), identified as the “Blessed” or “Desirable Perspective,” shows a red band with two pointed arrows that connects the Mediterranean Sea to India and the Indian Ocean, crossing Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, highlighted in green “hope.”

Anyone who lives in Trieste or who has read the three previous articles about the US security and commercial projects called IMEC’s Cotton Road and Three Seas Road will immediately recognize the red-lined Cotton Road, conceived by the United States as antagonistic to China’s New Silk Road, which has now reappeared in the context of the Israeli war in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Thus, the IMEC Cotton Road seems to have become the center, at least rhetorically, of the United States and Israeli viceroy’s strategy in the Mediterranean stretching to the Indian Ocean.

The project, still only schematic, envisions goods traveling between the ports of Mumbai (India), Dubai – Dammam (Arabia), and Haifa (Israel), crossing the desert lands of Saudi Arabia and Jordan by rail and then loading onto ships to reach Central Europe via Trieste. From there, they will head to Gdansk (Poland) and Constanta (Romania) via the Three Seas infrastructure, paid for with European money but useful almost exclusively for the logistics of NATO weapons and troops on the eastern front.

The problem is that there are no goods to ship.

That is, the cargo flow between India and Europe is nowhere near the cost support level of this logistics corridor, as India’s industrial development is not even comparable to that of China. In the medium term, India’s development cannot be compared to what has happened in China due to the problems inherent in India itself, with a society that is actually still divided into castes and the myriad national and religious realities that have already destroyed previous attempts to really unify the “subcontinent” into a single nation capable of carrying out large-scale economic projects. Modi is currently attempting to do so under authoritarian Hindu hegemony, however, at the risk of destabilizing the complex reality in delicate balance, as has happened in the past.

But there is not even any infrastructure for the Cotton Road, including the long railroad that is supposed to connect Dubai and Haifa, which are 2500 kilometers apart in a straight line: it is estimated that the actual route would be more than 3000 kilometers long and run mostly through the desert.

This route would lead to the Mediterranean Sea north of Gaza, to Haifa, an Israeli port that in recent days has been the target of missiles launched from southern Lebanon. But the entire route would be under attack from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, the West Bank, and even Yemen.

Will Israel, along with its American ally, be able to pacify the region? Doubts are well founded, given that the Israeli port of Eilat on the Red Sea declared bankruptcy last July, as maritime traffic has been blocked for almost a year by the Yemeni Houthis, despite the intervention of Anglo-Saxon and European naval forces. Only one ship has arrived since November 2023…

Laying the groundwork for the IMEC – Cotton Road is an important component of Netanyahu’s overall strategy, right down to the rhetorical substance of his UN speech.

The Israeli government’s strategy is clearly aimed at solving the problem through the Final Victory that will eliminate the problem itself: that is, the Palestinians of Gaza, the West Bank, and the inhabitants of South Lebanon, whose society is closely linked to the presence of Hezbollah, which plays the role of a substitute for the disappearance of the Lebanese state.

However, a “final solution” by military means to the complex situation in the Middle East seems unlikely, as most military analysts (including Israelis) believe that the elimination of Hezbollah and Hamas is impossible, since they are closely interpenetrated with the society of the territories in which they are located and act not only as militias but, above all, as providers of the only welfare available to these unfortunate segments of the population (subsidies, work, study, etc.). Unless we take the path of genocide and mass deportation, the hypothesis of which seems to appeal to extremist and messianic segments of Israeli society. However, the recent failed US invasion of Iraq should serve as a warning against following the “war path.”

Perhaps, some analysts say, this new phase of war in the Middle East, which has seen the beheading of Hezbollah, will evolve to weaken Iran, its credibility and containment.

But if things were to go that way, which is unclear given the stability of Hezbollah’s heterarchical organization, additional space would open up for a rival Turkey initiative.

Erdogan, in addition to cutting off trade relations with Israel to present himself as a defender of the Palestinian cause, has developed jointly with Iraq, Qatar, and the Emirates a logistical corridor antagonistic to IMEC’s Cotton Road, which is already 40% complete.

Turkey has made it clear that it is not willing to relinquish its historical and strategic role as a link between Europe and the Middle and Far East and has taken appropriate steps with another infrastructure project that India can equally benefit from joining.

This is the Turkish-Iraqi Strategic Development Road project, the agreement for which was signed in Baghdad on May 27, 2023 (4 months before the launch of the Cotton Road at the G20 Summit in New Delhi), 1200-kilometersl long, passing through Iraq, connecting Turkey to the Persian Gulf coast in southern Iraq by 2030. The construction of Iraq’s port has been entrusted to a newly established joint venture between the Emirati company Ad Ports Group and the General Company for Iraqi Ports Al-Faw in southern Iraq and its “special economic zone” by 2025.

The project also involves the construction of a rail network that connects the port of Al-Faw to the port of Mersin in Turkey, thereby also connecting to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), also known as the Middle Corridor of the New Silk Road, where commercial traffic is already visible and growing.

As you can see, all logistical corridors pass through the black area of Netanyahu’s maps, trade routes are subordinate to the “Axis of Evil,” according to the Israeli Prime Minister, who instead considers himself Good in the claws of the Dragon, according to the American narrative: hence, they should be obstructed in some way.

Instead, as highlighted in the AIOM Trieste Bulletin 7/24, freight traffic on the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) has increased by 86% in 2023, with a further increase of 19% expected in 2024 (without affecting the trend of the first 6 months). This route halves the travel time between China’s western border and Europe and can connect Europe and Central Asia in 15 days.

The increase in traffic along this logistics corridor is associated with changes caused first by the war in Ukraine and related sanctions and then by the blockade of the Suez Canal as a result of the Houthi attacks responding to war in Gaza.

The focal point of this kind of infrastructural revolution along the Europe-Asia axis is Kazakhstan, as the Asian state stretches from the border with China to the Caspian Sea. And it is with Kazakhstan that China has begun a new phase of relations that links Zhengzhou, Urumqi, and Khorgos in China to the ports of Kuryk and Aktau in Kazakhstan, where Chinese trucks are loaded onto ships bound for Azerbaijan, on the other side of the Caspian Sea, with Turkey being the final destination. From here, semi-trailers can travel to Trieste and Europe via the Marine Highway, which has been consolidated over decades and continues to expand.

Comparing the two projects, it becomes clear that the Turkish project involves the introduction of high-speed trains into the populated territory of Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia), the development of local industrial and energy centers, including oil and gas pipelines, and the construction of more than 1200 kilometers of railroads and highways that will connect Iraq with neighboring countries. And the US-Israeli IMEC plan calls for twice the length of railroads in semi-uninhabited desert territory.

While the former assumes that Turkey and Iraq are seriously engaged in monthly government-to-government meetings and first achievements, the latter is only hypothetical and depends on real pacification of the Middle East and the Abraham Accords between Israel and Saudi Arabia, currently frozen due to the expanding war.

Italy’s accession to the Cotton Road in September 2023 was a slap in the face to Turkey, which remained excluded, and Turkey’s reaction to the project has actually been harsh.

What is the point for Trieste to come into conflict with Turkey, which sends 70% of its exports to this International Free Port and whose goods already account for 60% of the work and in concrete terms will grow?

In Netanyahu’s view, this would be a doomed ideological commitment to the “Axis of Good”: where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Jordan do not even appear to be the cream of liberal democracies, but are merely states pleasing to the USA.