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Since the launch of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine last February, there has been much debate within the southern Irish state on Dublin’s relationship with NATO, with many establishment politicians in favour of joining the military alliance, a view not shared by the majority of the Irish public.

With each NATO member expected to contribute a minimum of 2% of their GDP towards defence spending, the appetite for the 26 County Irish state to join the alliance amidst rising costs due to two years of lockdowns, just simply isn’t there, with the only possible event that could change this view being a false flag attack intended to radically alter the Irish public’s attitudes towards Russia and NATO membership. Something that has almost been grimly foreshadowed over the past year.

Last January, a month before the launch of Russia’s operation in Ukraine, Russian naval exercises in international waters 240km from the Irish coast would draw widespread condemnation from the 26 County political establishment, something that would garner worldwide media attention.

Since then, a point has constantly been raised by establishment voices that key communication infrastructure in the form of undersea cables would become a target for the Russian navy, the reasoning for Moscow to launch such an attack never being sufficiently explained.

Recent events however, indicate that a false flag attack on these cables, intended to implicate the Kremlin, may be imminent.

Two weeks ago, despite little publicity, the Chiefs of European Navies (CHEN) meeting – a summit composed of any EU or NATO country with a Navy – was held in Ireland for the first time since 2001, the same year that Leinster House allowed US warplanes to land at Shannon Airport en route to Afghanistan, an arrangement that remains in place two decades on.

In spite of the 26 County state’s supposed ‘neutrality’, senior US Naval commanders were present at the meeting, something which drew absolute zero criticism from the Dublin establishment, in stark contrast to their response to last year’s Russian naval exercises.

In coincidental follow-up timing, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, speaking at the European Polticial Community summit in Moldova on Thursday, announced that strong consideration was being given to the 26 County state joining any EU or NATO-led mission to enhance undersea security.

Hours later, it emerged that the Virginia Ann, an advanced US Navy ship capable of the deployment of deep-sea divers, had spent the past four months traversing between the southern Irish coast where the aforementioned undersea cables are located, and the southernmost point of Britain, the location of the Royal Navy’s Devenport base, home to Britain’s submarine fleet.

In further suspect behaviour, the transmitter of the Virginia Ann has been mostly turned off during these journeys, a move usually only taken when a ship wants to conceal its movements.

The close timing of these developments suggests that a joint US-Anglo operation involving the planting of explosives on undersea cables off the Irish coast, in a bid to blame Russia on the ensuing explosion and thus, fast-track Ireland towards full NATO membership, is either planned or has already been put in place.

Indeed, the exact same script played out last September when, during a referendum held in Donbass, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia on rejoining Russia, explosions would destroy the Russian-owned Nord Stream 1 pipeline in the Baltic Sea.

In the weeks following the Nord Stream explosion, strong evidence would emerge linking the British government to the attack, and in February of this year, acclaimed US journalist Seymour Hersh would publish a piece outlining Washington’s role in the blast.

US President Joe Biden himself ominously declared in early February 2022 that should Russia launch an intervention in Ukraine – which happened less than three weeks later – that the US government would ‘bring an end’ to the Nord Stream pipeline, with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and chief Ukraine regime-change architect Victoria Nuland making a similar threat several weeks beforehand, one that now likely looks set to be repeated off the Irish coast in the not too distant future.

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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Support him on Patreon.