Lucerne lessons for Lanka, Lebanon war; Easter massacre mastermind scenarios

Iranian delegation arrives in Lucerne, Switzerland 

Four flags at the corners, representing the quadripartite nature of the talks: US-Iran-Pakistan-Qatar

US Vice-President JD Vance with Prime Ministers of chief mediator Pakistan and secondary mediator Qatar.

Easter Massacre conspiracy maybe better understood as a Matryoshka ‘nesting’ doll model

The USA cannot afford a high-intensity or mid-intensity war, still less a protracted one, with a ‘medium power’ while still competing with China in the world economy and hoping to prevail. Washington’s overwhelming military superiority cannot secure it unipolar control of a multipolar world economy, and therefore cannot generate a throwback to the post-Cold War unipolar moment 

Watching the Lake Lucerne Summit, Switzerland, on TV, I must confess to a twinge of nostalgia. 

In July 1997 I was among the paper presenters at International Alert’s three-day conference chaired by Dr. Kumar Rupesinghe on the 10th Anniversary of the Indo-Lanka Accord, in a hilltop hotel overlooking Lake Lucerne. Participants included J.N. Dixit, M.K. Narayanan, Gen. Kalkat, N. Ram, Gen. Cyril Ranatunga, Harry Goonetilleke, R. Sampanthan, Bernard Tillekeratne, Bradman Weerakoon, Stanley Kalpage, Kethesh Loganathan and D.P. Sivaram (‘Taraki’).

In February 2005, I was on the team despatched by Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar to Islamabad to study the training academy and think-tanks supporting Pakistan’s Foreign Service and diplomacy, regarded by Kadirgamar as a model of excellence for Sri Lanka.  

The stubborn non-disclosure to this day by the AKD-JVP-NPP administration of the contents of an unknown number of agreements signed with Prime Minister Modi’s India, is in stark contrast to the pretty prompt release to the global public of the contents of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding.

However fragile the 14-point US-Iran MoU is, or ephemeral it may turn out to be, its very existence is to be welcomed by people of goodwill the world over. 

By its indiscriminate escalation in Lebanon aimed among other things at sabotaging the US-Iran MoU, Israel is revealing itself still more clearly as the most evil State in today’s world; the closest to a contemporary equivalent of Nazi Germany. It is also the most isolated State in the world community. 

US-Iran MoU mirror

The US-Iran MoU demonstrated the limits of the US claim to be the world’s sole superpower, or its aspiration to restore the status which it enjoyed after the collapse of the USSR and the dawn of what Charles Krauthammer called ‘the unipolar moment’ in history. 

What the Trump administration sought was to reverse the trends towards multipolarity and restore unipolarity in military-strategic and economic terms. China’s retaliation for US sanctions put paid to the attempt at economic unipolarity, revealing the world economy to be bipolar at least. 

The ultimate weapon of the US attempt at a reassertion of unipolarity is literally the unmatched weaponry equipping its military Leviathan. And yet, America’s war against Iran could not break the willpower of the Iranian State, its military or its people. Militarily, politically and diplomatically, Iran withstood everything the US had to throw at it and remained unbowed. The MoU is hardly that between a victorious US and a humbled Iran. Instead, it reflects a standoff, and a victory for Realism. 

The deeper lesson is that the enormous tangible strength and technological wizardry of the US military machine were matched by the intangible strength of the moral factor of Iran’s side: high morale, strong identity, spiritual faith, militant patriotism, resoluteness and willpower rooted in an authentic popular revolution (1979). 

The US could have invaded Kharg island and parts of the Iranian coast. It still might. But loss of 42 US military aircraft—as disclosed during testimony in Congress—including an F-35 and most recently an Apache helicopter gunship, indicated that renewed war may inflict domestically unacceptable losses on the US. It took over one hundred US aircraft to rescue two downed airmen. US military power would be unable to completely stop Iranian missiles landing in Israeli cities and US assets in the region. A Special Forces incursion to recover buried enriched uranium was rightly assessed as too great a risk because of the number of body-bags that would be coming home. 

Thus, Iran was able to fuse military means (mainly missiles and drones), moral steeliness, and ‘LEGO’ rap music, into a credible strategy of hybrid asymmetric deterrence in relation to the world’s mightiest military power. 

Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz was effectively countered by the US blockade bracketing the Strait—but countering meant deadlock, not defeating the proximate, immediate Iranian stranglehold. In a deliciously dialectical irony, the double blockade affected the world economy so badly that it became more counterproductive to US interests. Iran absorbed the loss and pain, the US blinked. 

The MoU results from Washington’s realisation that the world economy is objectively multipolar. The living standards of US citizens depended on factors and forces that the US couldn’t impose its control upon. Even if the MoU were to fail, the multipolar character of the world economy and the leverage of  middle-echelon powers in the Middle-East and elsewhere, will remain. 

The USA cannot afford a high-intensity or mid-intensity war, still less a protracted one, with a ‘medium power’ while still competing with China in the world economy and hoping to prevail. Washington’s overwhelming military superiority cannot secure it unipolar control of a multipolar world economy, and therefore cannot generate a throwback to the post-Cold War unipolar moment. 

Diplomacy, foreign relations

The US-Iran MoU is known as the ‘Islamabad MoU’ and bears the signature of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif who is in Lucerne. The Lake Lucerne Summit conference room displayed four flags: USA, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar.

The diplomatic hyper-activity confirmed the importance of broad coalition-building to influence outcomes in a positive direction—bringing Washington and Tehran around a table in Lucerne. Pakistan supported by Qatar worked with the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey—and kept China in the loop. 

India committed the colossal blunder of standing by Israel and the USA and abandoning its traditional friendship with Iran, Turkey and the Arab states which could have enabled it to achieve what Pakistan did. By its one-sided partiality or supine silence, abandoning the ‘strategic autonomy’ it prides itself on, India proved dispensable as a ‘great power’, a ‘global player’, which is the status it aspires to. It elicited only an unsympathetic unilateralist reiteration, not an apology, from Marco Rubio for the killing of three Indian sailors in an American strike.

Sri Lankan diplomacy traditionally maintained excellent relations with Pakistan, but has forgotten to do so in recent years because politicians and policy-elites have been dazzled by the Indo-US equation, the Quad, and USINDOPACOM (Indo-Pacific Command). Though its wider operational remit remains, US INDOPACOM no longer exists as an institutional title and has reverted to its original USPACOM (Pacific Command). As for the Quad, the arrogantly imperious treatment by the US of India should give Colombo’s Quad fans pause. 

China’s behavior was and is in contrast to India’s. China has no partnerships with vastly superior powers because there aren’t any. Beijing’s self-respect and strength make it unthinkable that it would behave as Delhi did. Nor would Washington treat Beijing the way it did Delhi. 

Sri Lanka should reacquaint itself with the importance of Pakistan, the OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference) countries, and the medium or middle-level powers of ‘the intermediate zone’ of the world system. 

Sri Lanka’s core national interests are better served by restoring our traditional relations with China, Pakistan and the OIC, though not at the expense of US-India-Japan and while engaging in ambidextrous balancing between the two constellations. We can learn from Pakistan’s ability to balance between Washington and Beijing—an ability we had in considerable measure and foolishly abandoned.    

Sri Lanka’s core national interests are better served by restoring our traditional relations with China, Pakistan and the OIC, though not at the expense of US-India-Japan and while engaging in ambidextrous balancing between the two constellations. We can learn from Pakistan’s ability to balance between Washington and Beijing—an ability we had in considerable measure and foolishly abandoned

Gaza and Hamas

Israel’s defence of its genocidal atrocities throughout the region boil down to one argument: it was attacked by Hamas on 7 October 2024. That doesn’t explain Israel’s increasingly vicious, violent actions against the Palestinians in the West Bank who are governed by the Palestinian Authority which is largely Fatah, main rival of Hamas. 

Hamas was born in 1987 as a result of the prolonged Israeli Occupation. The Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2024 had a reprehensible aspect  because of certain atrocities, but the attack itself was comprehensible. 

Hamas broke through the ‘Separation Wall’ in a brilliant technological and tactical military move unsurpassed in the history of asymmetric war. The wall was the symbol of what former President Jimmy Carter referred to as an ‘Apartheid Atate’. 

After two years of warfare, the mighty IDF has failed to eliminate Hamas. The expert consensus is that there are 20,000 Hamas fighters despite two years of all-out destruction by the IDF in a territory which is a box with sealed borders and no natural cover, i.e., a large coffin. The Israeli fairy tale of its scientific wizards having invented a foam which would be pumped into the tunnel network and turn into a hard concrete-like substance, burying and suffocating Hamas like rats, just didn’t happen. Hamas outfights the IDF in the tunnels, turning them into deathtraps for the enemy. Successive Hamas leaders are liquidated, but keep getting replaced. 

Battleground Lebanon: Hezbollah

Mossad’s tactical masterstroke of blowing up Hezbollah cadre by exploding their pagers damaged but didn’t defeat still less destroy the movement. Tel Aviv and Washington want Hezbollah to be disarmed as do Lebanon’s Prime Minister and President. But that won’t happen as long as the Lebanese army is unwilling and unable to defend its country’s territory against the Israelis who have been invading Lebanon and occupying parts of it from a decade before Hezbollah existed. During its current invasion the IDF has targeted and killed several Lebanese military personnel including a General—with no self-defensive response from the Lebanese military.  

Hezbollah was born in 1982 as a direct consequence of the IDF invasion and occupation under Gen. ‘Arik’ Sharon. It is no ISIS/Isil comprised of nomadic foreign fighters. It is a rooted, organic, Lebanese militia, with a political wing, parliamentary representation and local political allies. 

Hezbollah has a legitimate right to bear arms and fight the invaders just as the French resistance had the right and responsibility to fight the Nazi invaders when France’s Vichy Government of Marshal Petain was collaborating with them. It is the equivalent of the patriotic anti-Nazi partisans throughout Europe during Nazi invasion and occupation. 

The fact that Hezbollah is supported by Iran doesn’t make it less legitimate. Struggles for national independence against invading foreign countries have received external support throughout world history, ranging from pre-revolutionary France’s role in the American War of Independence against Britain, to the support by US, UK and USSR of partisan Resistance movements in Europe and Asia during WWII.  

Hezbollah is showing great prowess in fighting the IDF invaders. Furthermore, it has targeted and hit the IDF brigade (401st Armoured Brigade) and battalion (52nd ) named internationally in the brutal slaying of 5-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza in 2024. 52nd battalion Chief Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon was killed when his tank was ambushed and exploded by Hezbollah. (For a review of the award-winning docu-drama on the anguish and cruel death of the little girl, please read https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/the-voice-of-hind-rajab-a-truth-that-cannot-be-unseen/).

Suresh Sallay puzzle 

Two things I can’t figure out:

If Suresh Sallay had something damning hidden on his phone and laptop, wouldn’t he simply delete it instead of relying on refusal to reveal passwords? 

If the ex-spy chief was the ‘mastermind’ or ‘director’ of the Easter massacre (or related conspiracy), why didn’t he skip Sri Lanka with his wife and son during the last seven years? 

In uncontradicted remarks, Manori Sallay told the media that at a recent meeting with the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission, CID officers admitted to a ‘deeply invasive rectal examination’ of Maj-Gen Sallay.   

It is standard practice globally to instruct prisoners to bend over and spread their own buttocks cheeks to see if they’re trying to smuggle in any substance (e.g. drugs) into prison. Though no convict, Sallay has not been afforded even the usual self-spreading that convicts perform, but subjected instead to a “deeply invasive rectal examination”. 

Meanwhile, respected journalist and author MR Narayan Swamy, expert on Sri Lanka’s wars, discloses in the Jaffna Monitor: 

‘…Ex-Tamil militants scattered in Europe say Maulana’s claims are unbelievable… Another former militant, who was once with the EPRLF, said he could not digest the claim that an experienced intelligence officer like Sallay would blurt out to Maulana a supposed grand plan behind the Easter conspiracy…’

(https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/ex-militants-in-europe-question-maulanas-easter-bombings-claims/)

What could conceivably have made paying Israel $ 50 million, an urgent imperative and high priority for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in a tightening foreign exchange situation in which he had already banned the crucial import of agrochemicals for use by local farmers?

Foreign mastermind?

Can or will an investigative apparatus that still couldn’t/didn’t find who cruelly murdered Dinesh Schaffter in broad daylight in Colombo’s Kanatte, find the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday Massacre? 

The FBI accurately identified the actual local perpetrators of the Easter massacre itself, but I cannot help wonder whether the massacre was embedded in a larger conspiracy. 

The 71-page FBI affidavit is a smaller doll in a larger Matryoshka doll of the truth. The larger ‘doll’ is the conspiracy which caused and covered up the deed. That larger conspiracy probably had an external player. The mastermind may not be local. 

Just recently the French Government publicly accused the Israeli cyber-tech company BlackCore of interfering in elections in France, Scotland, US (New York) and Angola to influence outcomes. The shadowy, secretive BlackCore is headed by a former boss of an elite Israeli military unit called ‘8200’ and its staffers are ex-Israeli intelligence operatives. According to French authorities, BlackCore’s international operations were aimed to prevent electoral outcomes unfavorable to Israel. 

What covert action would former special operatives-turned-contractors belonging to an outfit of, let’s say Country X, not do, i.e., recommend, plan, facilitate, coordinate, undertake or coverup, to secure a favourable electoral outcome for a ‘Manchurian Candidate’ of Country X in a strategically-nodal island in the Indo-Pacific region? 

The BBC’s Time Watch and a new France24 documentary exposed Italy’s Operation Gladio, in which CIA-trained ex-fascists perpetrated ‘false flag’ operations including bomb attacks killing hundreds of civilians in train stations—to shift the political tectonic plates rightwards. The killing of ex-PM Aldo Moro was exposed by John Simpson’s Time Watch as almost certainly by Gladio agent-provocateurs infiltrated into the Red Brigades.   

Eastern Muslims loyally and actively supported the State against the LTTE. But years before Zahran Hashim turned to violence, Islamophobic extremist Sinhala-Buddhist organisations appeared, postwar. 

The pro-Israeli Secretary/Defence spoke at one of their events. 

Around the same time a widely-publicised book appeared (2012) attributing Sri Lanka’s wartime victory not to President Mahinda Rajapaksa but his brother (‘Gota’s War’).

Two days after the ‘Black Swan event’ of the Easter Sunday massacre, the most pro-Israeli public figure in Sri Lanka openly declared his Presidential ambition, secured the Presidential nomination from his (still deliberating) iconic elder brother (the war-winning ex-President), and was elected the country’s leader on a massive anti-terrorist/security-driven swing vote generated by the Easter Massacre. 

Upon election as President, he divested his pronouncedly pro-Palestinian elder brother of effective power as Prime Minister through a constitutional amendment.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was evicted by a popular uprising in mid-2022 due to extreme economic hardships stemming from depletion of foreign currency. Yet in mid-2021, he signed a contract to pay $ 50 million to Israeli Aerospace Industries to refurbish five obsolete Kfir aircraft of the Sri Lankan Air Force. Why not J-10C jets from China on staggered repayment terms, instead of ensuring retention of old Israeli jets in service, giving Israel a continuing stake-hold? 

What could conceivably have made paying Israel $ 50 million, an urgent imperative and high priority for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in a tightening foreign exchange situation in which he had already banned the crucial import of agrochemicals for use by local farmers? 

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