WORLD AT WAR: 9.17.22 - Iran and Russia: The New Alliance

 Iran and Russia: The New Alliance - by Judith Bergman - https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18903/iran-russia-alliance Iran and Russia have been strengthening their alliance recently, growing it gradually to such an extent that the Wall Street Journal wrote on August 27 that the two countrieswere "forging tighter ties than ever," as both countries face continued international isolation. In recent months, Russia and Iran have signed a multitude of agreements, especially in trade, oil and gas, and military cooperation. In June, an agreement on the establishment of mutual trade centers in St. Petersburg and Tehran was signed, to generate further trade between the two countries in the sectorsof energy, transportation, electronics, agriculture, food, pharmaceuticals and construction, by helping Iranian and Russian businessmen establish contacts and conduct financial transactions. In May, Russia and Iran signed agreements on settling their trade and energy payments in their national currencies instead of the US dollar. In addition, they agreed to continuetalks to connect their electronic payment systems as well as their financial messaging systems. Since then, Russia and Iran have gradually begun trading in their national currencies. In 2021, the volume of bilateral trade between Russia and Iran increased by 81% from the previous year, rising to $3.3 billion. In January, after a two-day visit to Moscow,Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that the two countries would increase trade even further. "We agreed to remove trade barriers and boost the economic exchanges between the two countries. Currently, the level of mutual trade is not acceptable, so the two countriesagreed to increase trade to $10 billion a year. The two countries can take steps to break the dominance of the dollar over monetary and banking relations and trade with the national currency." During Raisi's visit, the two countries also signed agreements to deepen energy cooperation and in July, Russia announced that it would invest $40 billion in Iran's oil industry,Russia's largest ever investment in Iran. Russia announced the investment deal as Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting Iran for talks. According to Iranian state news outlet IRNA, Putin and Raisi "discussed ways for expansion of bilateral relations in different areas, including energy, transit, trade exchangesand regional developments as well." Significantly, Russia and Iran's cooperation extends to the military and space fields, with Russia recently helping Iran to launch a new satellite into space: On August 9,Russia launched Iran's new Khayyam surveillance satellite from the Baikonur space station in Kazakhstan. The launch of the satellite is a telling example of the kind of dangers that a strengthened Russian-Iranian alliance poses to US interests. Iran's Khayyam satellite "will greatly enhance Tehran's ability to spy on military targets across the Middle East," according to unnamed Western and Middle Eastern officialsquoted by the Washington Post. The satellite's high-resolution camera apparently gives Tehran "unprecedented capabilities, including near-continuous monitoring of sensitive facilities in Israel and the Persian Gulf." Iran will also be able to "task" the new satellite to spy on locations of its choosing, as often as it wishes, according to the officials. "It's not the best in the world, but it's high resolution and very good for military aims," a Middle Eastern official familiar with the hardware of the satellite told theWashington Post in June 2021. "Iran could share the imagery with pro-Iranian militia groups across the region, from the Houthi rebels battling Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen to Hezbollah fightersin southern Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria." "This is obviously a clear and present danger to the United States and our allies in the Middle East and abroad," said Richard Goldberg, a former Iran analyst in the Trumpadministration's National Security Council. "As Iran perfects its missile arsenal – from short-, medium- to longer-range missiles, alongside its growing UAV capability throughout the Middle East –being able to syncthose capabilities with satellite capabilities and surveillance will only increase the lethality of the Iranian threat." For the time being, however, the Iranian satellite is meant to be helping Russia's war effort in Ukraine, another example of the mutual benefits accruing to both Russia andIran from their alliance. "Russia, which has struggled to achieve its military objectives during its five-month-old assault on Ukraine, told Tehran that it plans to use the satellite for several months,or longer, to enhance its surveillance of military targets in that conflict," the Washington Post wrote. Equally significantly, Iran is now actively helping Russia with its war effort in Ukraine, which puts on display the extremely negative effects of the new Russian-Iranianalliance. Russia has ordered hundreds of Iranian military drones as Russia suffers from a severe lack of attack drones that are precision-capable. Russia has bought at least two kindsof drones from Iran, the Mohajer-6 and the Shahed-series drones. The first batch of drones, according to the Washington Post, was picked up by Russian cargo flights in late August. Iran reportedly has been training Russian soldiers in using them in Russia'swar in Ukraine. On September 13, Ukraine said that it had shot down an Iranian-produced Shahed drone. Iran has become a major developer and producer of drones. In October 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported the concern of defense officials from the United States, Israeland Europe that Iran's progress in developing, building and deploying drones was changing the security situation in the Middle East region. "The drones themselves are often made with widely available components used in the ever-growing commercial drone market and by hobbyists, the officials say," the Wall StreetJournal reported. "Some mimic the designs of Israeli and American military drones... Tehran's engineers rely on imported components to create aerial vehicles that can accurately strike targetsat long distance and rapidly change direction to avoid air defenses and radar, say European and Middle Eastern security officials who have studied wreckages of the drones." Most recently, Iran claimed that it had developed a long-range suicide drone "designed to hit Israel's Tel Aviv, Haifa." In July, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan denounced the new cooperation between Russia and Iran: "Russia deepening an alliance with Iran to kill Ukrainians is something that the whole world should look at and see as a profound threat." Despite this acknowledged "profound threat" emanating from the mutually beneficial alliance between Russia and Iran, the Biden administration nevertheless has been makingdangerous concessions to revive the nuclear deal, which would only deepen the threat and benefit not only Iran, but also Russia. "Several of Russia's top state-controlled nuclear companies stand to gain billions of dollars in revenue as part of a new nuclear accord with Iran that will waive sanctionson these firms so that they can build up Tehran's nuclear infrastructure," the Washington Free Beacon reported in April. "Russia's state-controlled Rosatom energy firm and at least four of its major subsidiaries will receive sanctions waivers under a new accord so that they can complete nuclearprojects in Iran worth more than $10 billion, according to the 2019 document, which details all the Russian entities involved in these projects. With a new nuclear accord being finalized, the Biden administration has repeatedly guaranteed Russia that it willnot face sanctions for its work on Iranian nuclear sites, even as Moscow faces a barrage of international penalties for its unprovoked war in Ukraine. The Biden administration renewed a series of sanctions waivers to permit Russia's nuclear work in Iran aspart of a package of concessions meant to entice both countries into signing a new accord." Let us hope that the new "Iran nuclear deal," reportedly "off the table for the time being" is off the table for good. -------------------------------- A Top Russian Official Quoted The Book Of Revelation To Describe What Will Soon Happen To America- by Michael Snyder - http://endoftheamericandream.com/a-top-russian-official-quoted-the-book-of-revelation-to-describe-what-will-soon-happen-to-america/ The Russians continue to threaten us with nuclear annihilation. Why are so few people in the western world alarmed by this? I think it is because our leaders are assuringeveryone that the Russians are all talk and that the odds of a nuclear war actually happening are extremely low. Meanwhile, both sides just continue to take steps to escalate the war in Ukraine. We are engaged in an extremely bizarre game of �nuclear chicken�, and both sides truly believe that the other side will blink first. And so we continue to creep closer and closer to a cataclysmic nuclear conflict, and once the missiles start flying there will be no turning back. I simply do not understand why our leaders are not taking Russian threats more seriously. The Russians warned that they would take military action in Ukraine if an agreement to avoid war could not be reached, and that is precisely what happened. And now the Russians are repeatedly threatening us with nuclear war. In fact, Dmitry Medvedev just warned that if the U.S. does not back down our �land will be on fire andthe concrete will melt�� If the West continues its �unrestrained pumping of the Kiev regime with the most dangerous types of weapons,� Russia�s military campaign will move to the next level, where �visible boundaries and potential predictability of actions by the parties to the conflict� will be erased and the conflict will take on a life of its own, as wars always do, Medvedev argued. �And then the Western nations will not be able to sit in their clean homes, laughing at how they carefully weaken Russia by proxy. Everything will be on fire around them.Their people will harvest their grief in full. The land will be on fire and the concrete will melt,� Medvedev wrote, before citing a Bible verse from Revelations 9:18. In case you are wondering, this is what Revelation 9:18 says� A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues�by the fire and by the smoke and by the brimstone, which came out of their mouths. Medvedev also addressed the fact that U.S. politicians don�t seem to be taking Russian threats very seriously� �Yet still the narrow-minded politicians and their stupid think tanks, thoughtfully twirling a glass of wine in their hands, talk about how they can deal with us without enteringinto a direct war. Dull idiots with a classical education,� Medvedev wrote. When I read that statement, I immediately thought of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. He is one of the chief warmongers in the Biden administration, but most Americans don�t even know who he is. Personally, I am shocked that someone like Sullivan can even get a job in Washington, but at this point he is one of the key architects of our foreign policy. There are timeswhen Sullivan makes John Bolton look like a radical anti-war peace activist in comparison, and Biden considers his advice to be highly valuable. That is quite frightening, because if Sullivan has his way we are likely to end up in a nuclear war with Russia. At this point, the Russians do not believe that they are fighting a war with just Ukraine. All over Russian television, there is talk about the vast numbers of �British and American soldiers� that are now on the front lines of the conflict� Watching Russia�s channels over the last 24 hours reveals two trends. The first is that talk of �Ukrainian Nazis� has decreased � instead it�s now about �shared past and history� of two nations. Second, they simply cannot accept they�re losing to Ukrainians; instead, they talk about fighting a huge force of British and American soldiers, or as they often call them: �Anglo-Saxons�. Officially, the U.S. and UK governments have not sent any troops to Ukraine. But somehow tens of thousands of highly trained U.S. and British fighters are now involved. Many of them are uploading videos of their exploits to social media, and this is something that even the Daily Mail is admitting� In a compilation of footage uploaded to social media, soldiers with British accents can be heard speaking to one another while wearing blue armbands to identify themselvesas Ukrainian forces. One clip appears to show soldiers moving �POWs� through a compound, while others show soldiers hurling grenades, running to take cover, and climbing through windows. Whether these troops were officially sent by the U.S. and UK governments doesn�t really matter. What matters is that the Russians now believe that they are fighting troops from NATO countries that have been armed with NATO equipment. If the Russians perceive that this is the big showdown with NATO, they may decide that it is better to go for the jugular sooner rather than later. Because the side that strikes first has the best chance of surviving a nuclear war. In a scenario in which the Russians decide to strike first, they would move large numbers of their super silent �black hole� submarines into position just off our coastlines. This is something that I have warned my readers about over and over again. These submarines would simultaneously launch their nukes, and within just a couple of minutes a host of key strategic targets would be destroyed all over the country. Our missile silos and our air bases would be among those strategic targets, but once his advisers finally got him out of bed the president would inevitably order a strikeof our own. Unfortunately, Minuteman III missiles that went into service in the 1970s still form the backbone of our strategic nuclear arsenal, and Russia has the most advanced anti-missilesystems on the entire planet. The Russian S-400, A-135 and S-500 anti-missile systems would likely intercept much of what we throw at them, but inevitably some targets would be hit. But overall, the Russians would hurt us a whole lot more than we hurt them, and they know this. So why won�t we take the threats that they are making more seriously? Of course there are ultimately no �winners� in a nuclear war, and that is what western leaders are banking on. As I have discussed previously, studies have determined that only about 20 percent of the U.S. population would die immediately if there was a full-blown nuclear exchangewith Russia. But the ensuing nuclear winter caused by such a conflict would result in billions of people starving to death worldwide. So I am pleading with leaders on both sides of this war to find a peaceful way out of this mess while they still can. Unfortunately, both sides have become absolutely obsessed with �winning� the conflict in Ukraine, and it appears that it is just a matter of time before it goes nuclear. -------------------------