Talk about good news and bad news...
“Nothing has changed in the past few months from when the U.S. decided that Iran was just trying to buy time for its nuclear weapons development program by continuing to submit new clauses to the text of the new version of the JCPOA agreement,” a senior energy source who worked closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry, told OilPrice.com.
“And Washington has told everyone else in the P5+1 group [the U.S., the U.K., France, China, and Russia ‘plus’ Germany] that it will not budge from its position on the IRGC, which is aimed – as Iran knows – at destroying the IRGC’s influence, and by extension Iran’s influence – in the world,” he said.
“As far as the U.S. is concerned, everything is now focused on ensuring that Iran does not get the three months it needs to finish the guidance systems it requires, with the help of Russia, to deliver weapons-grade nuclear material in the missiles it already has,” he added.
A cementing of the U.S. view that “we are not going to change a single word or add a single comma in the current draft [of the new version of the JCPOA] on the table” – as a senior European Union energy source told OilPrice.com last week - came on 9 August with the launch of Iran’s ‘Khayyam’ satellite, built almost entirely by Russia and powered into orbit from the Russia-controlled Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. According to Iran, the satellite will be “used to monitor Iran’s borders and improve the country’s capabilities in management and planning in the fields of agriculture, natural resources, environment, mining, and natural disasters.” According to the U.S., the satellite is to be used for spying on its neighbors. Neither statement is entirely true, although the U.S. did hint at how serious it is when a State Department spokesman said last week of the Khayyam launch: “Russia deepening an alliance with Iran is something that the whole world should look at and see as a profound threat.”
This latest advance by Iran in its quest to be able to deliver a fully functioning nuclear warhead to anywhere within a few-thousand-mile radius should come as no surprise, given that the same sponsor for North Korea’s nuclear program – China – is the key state sponsor of Iran, as analyzed in depth in my latest book on the global oil markets. After the landmark 25-year deal was struck in August 2019 between Iran and China – a story exclusively broken by me in September 2019, nearly two years before it was officially announced or reported on by anyone else – China (and Russia) gradually and quietly began to increase their cooperation on key elements of Iran’s nuclear weapons development program. In China’s case, the level of intermediation between middle-men connected to it and to North Korea and Iran was stepped up using a triangular system of technology supplies (from China to North Korea via middlemen, and then from North Korea to Iran), and payment principally in oil (from Iran to North Korea, with some also sent from Iran to China directly). Russia had agreed to take a back seat to China in Iran’s nuclear weapons program in the year or two after the 25-year China-Iran deal had actually been made (in August 2019), but shifted back to a front seat position from September 2021 (when it began to activate its plan to invade Ukraine), as China remains wary of overtly challenging the U.S. outside its own perceived area of influence in the Taiwan Strait.
Iran and Russia still need “two to three months to finalise its overall missile guidance system,” according to the sources spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, although it already has a vast array of missiles already in place with varying range applications. This leaves the nuclear material itself for the warheads as the third element it needs to line up before it rates as a clear and present nuclear threat. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nuclear-deal-increasingly-unlikely-iran-strengthens-ties-russiaThis remains the primary stumbling block for me to ever consider Russia as trustworthy or to be allowed to declare themselves a Christian people. People who are trustworthy and Christian would never consider associating with the Satanic murderous Shiite Mahdi Death Cultists on anything...but cooperating with them on their nuclear weapons program? Seriously, there is no sane rationalization to excuse such cooperation! And knowing that Israel is the prime target for annihilation by these lunatics puts an enormous yoke of responsibility around every Russian neck. I get allying with China on energy, fiscal and trade issues...but this, this is a black mark that cannot be erased.
If this is allowed to continue, if Iran isn't levelled to rubble (for there will be no other sane option left to prevent them from going roughshod over the entire Middle East)...what will happen is increasing hostility and nukes flying to Israel and then nukes flying around the entire globe.
https://summit.news/2022/08/16/nuclear-war-between-us-and-russia-would-wipe-out-5-billion-people/Pretty sure the Mahdi Death Cultists would be OK with 5 billion dead...apparently Russia thinks it is OK as well. And that seems optimistic...I think the tidbit at the end of that article on that study is closer to reality...the extinction of humanity...thinking a global nuclear exchange would be limited to the US & Russia is just not very realistic...everybody would be launching.
Swell, huh?
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