There are already sales being arranged despite the arms embargo not being lifted for five years. Does anyone believe these sales are being scheduled for anything longer than immediately after the money is in the bank? You have probably heard about the Russian sale of the S-300 anti-aircraft-and-missile systems which was prevented a while back by pressure from Israel for Russia to respect the existing United Nations arms embargo. Well, according to Iran that United Nations Arms Embargo was lifted the minute the agreement was reached and signed, well, signed by Russia, China, Iran, France, Germany, and Great Britain and passed by the United Nations Security Council as a Chapter Seven binding resolution so no longer necessary for the United States to sign the agreement as the United Nations has made it binding on every United Nations member. The United States could still decide as a policy not to sell arms to Iran and could even place trade sanctions on nation who do sell arms to Iran; but this would simply leave the United States open for a suit for impeding free trade. Meanwhile Russia has closed the S-300 anti-aircraft-and-missile systems and the Chinese have struck a deal to sell Iran one-hundred-fifty Chengdu J-10 sophisticated jet fighters with Israeli avionics and finally, so far, back to Russia who is set to sell Iran two-hundred-fifty highly-advanced Sukhoi-Su-30MK1 heavy-fighter-bombers as well as one-hundred IL78 MKI tanker aircraft which with the Chinese aircraft providing tactical air cover and the Su-30s figured for both bombing and long-range intercepts or electronic interference to foil ground interceptors the Iranians could bring a heavy air assault with air refueling extending the range bringing much of MENA and Europe within range of air assault. This as well as the advancing Iranian missile technology increasing range and accuracy provides Iran with just one more method for bringing Egypt, Israel, Turkey and beyond within Iranian range for multiple assault combining sufficient assault vehicles to overwhelm any defensive system no matter how many stages and overlap exists or the number of aircraft which can be put into the air to assist with the defense. Within two years Iran will have full range ICBMs with greater range than their present ballistic missiles and even threshold continental ballistic missiles which can reach beyond Paris and with a limited warhead weight even reach London with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Even the limited warhead load limit permitting these missiles reaching London they could still carry nuclear warheads once Iran masters a modicum of miniaturization of an atomic bomb, such a device could conceivably strike London thus bringing every European capital within range with the exceptions of Ireland and Portugal. Does this make any of those nations who have been criticizing Israel for sounding the alarm still feel comfortable? Saudi Arabia feels so confident that they have confirmed the standing of their relationship with Pakistan that should they require nuclear weapons on the quick and quiet that the Pakistani government remembers the debt owed the Saudi Royal family for financing much of their crash nuclear emergency program to equalize their standing against a newly nuclear armed India. So, please do not interpret the silence from Saudi Arabia as being a sign of their comfort with the newly entry of Iran as virtually the next nuclear armed nation as they are not at peace about such an occurrence. Neither is Egypt at ease with this situation as is evident from their assisting Saudi Arabia in their attempts to assist the exiled government of Yemen to retake their nation from the Iranian armed Houthis who broke out of their tribal mountain areas which the arms and support of Iran which provided them with superior weaponry and training making their military abilities far exceed their previous abilities. With the armaments which the Iranians are going to be capable of providing their proxies in the near future could alter a number of conflicts and even the rule of one nation over the coming months or at the longest a year or two. The immediate nation under threat is obviously Yemen followed likely by Iraq then either Lebanon or Syria.
Additionally with the recent agreement between Turkey and the United States to fight against those forces challenging the Syrian rebels which to the average Western citizen, especially those in the United States, such a deal would imply they would be targeting the Islamic State but initial reports would imply that the initial targeting has been against the Kurdish forces. This comes on top of thus far unconfirmed reports that United States has been charging areas where Islamic State was operating but after-mission reports showed that the strikes struck areas immediately before Islamic State forces advanced into these areas. These unconfirmed reports tend to lend credence that orders were given to assist the Islamic State in areas where they border Kurdish controlled areas. These reports come along with the report that Turkey has finally allowed for the United States to fly missions from airbases in Turkey. That makes all of this appear to almost make sense, especially since the Kurdish party made sufficient headway taking a respectable number of seats which preventing President Erdogan’s PKK Party from attaining their usual majority of seats making it incapable of making a coalition by itself. This has led to some very distasteful moves by Erdogan including attempting to strip the Kurdish Parliamentary members of their immunity from prosecution so that he can bring charges against them and once they have been removed in sufficient numbers after speedy trials and their party disgraced then claim that no coalition is able to be reached and have new elections in which without the Kurdish party’s influence the PKK should easily gain their usual position of being a one party coalition and complete the conversion of Turkey from the free society that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk transformed Turkey to after the fall of the Ottoman Empire was disbanded after its having been on the losing side of World War I and make it basically a dictatorship with Erdogan as their President for life with absolute powers. This result is supported fully by the Turkish branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Should Erdogan succeed in completing his refashioning Turkey after his own image, then comes the big question, which side will Erdogan fall this time the question is given and he needs to choose once the Kurds have been ejected out of Syria and possibly Turkey as well, placing the fortunate Kurds making their way to norther Iraq, and Erdogan can either attempt to hide in what he believes fortress Turkey or he can choose Islamic State, a very risky group with which for Erdogan to align, or align with Bashir al-Assad and the Iranian Mullahs and Supreme Leader, an alignment Erdogan once played with but pulled back when trouble began at home needing his full efforts to resolve. Should Turkey align with Iran and come into a symbiosis that could place NATO in danger of having to support Turkey if they were to become involved in an Iranian war against Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Gulf States, Jordan and even, believe it or not, Israel and requests NATO assistance, then what does the rest of Europe and the United States do as NATO members and treaty bound to assist Turkey in any armed struggle. Would NATO refuse because the war is not a threat to Turkey itself and is being fought far from Turkish lands and thus Turkey is not under threat of invasion and their people would be safe if Turkey simply ended their offensive invasion against a nation previously not hostile to Turkey or actually even Iran or any of their neighbors until outside influences forced issues such as in the Yemeni Civil War where Iran has armed the Houthis against the government. The Middle East will explode in ten different ways once Iran can announce or be suspected of having manufactured nuclear weapons which would make Iran a hegemonic threat to the entirety of not just the Middle East but much of the rest of MENA and Europe not to mention the large chunk of Asia which would become threatened from any Iranian designs in their direction. Then, within a short period of time they will have mastered further rocket technology allowing their development of ICBMs.
As it is, both North Korea and Iran have orbited satellites which travelled on a south polar orbit and have already practiced and sent satellites with payloads sufficient to represent an EMP size and weight nuclear warhead such that they circled over the United States entering from the south perfectly in the hole in the radar and intercept sites which is a known soft spots in defenses yet are being ignored by Congress despite some warnings by military members. There are a number of articles which deal with these threats as follows: Center for Security Policy Jim Woolsey: Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is existential threat to America from July 30, 2013, which means this possible threat was known from long before the negotiations with Iran were finalized and we appeared to have a rather cavalier attitude at best, and Experts: Iran Now a Nuclear-Ready State, Missiles Capable of Hitting US By William R. Graham, Henry F. Cooper, Fritz Ermarth, and Peter Vincent Pry from Sunday, Feb 1, 2015, and finally Op-Ed: EMP Blackout Could Be Closer than You Think by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry and Ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, former Director of Central Intelligence, former Undersecretary of the Navy and Co-Chair of the EMP Coalition Jim Woolsey from November 07, 2013. This is only one manner in which Iran (or North Korea) could use an alternate system which involves firing a single stage and likely solid fuel missile from within a freighter or cargo container ship. Iran has proven this as not only a possibility, but an actual usable tactic which they tested firing missiles from the Caspian Sea deep into the Iranian desert in the southern regions which were furthest distance from the ship repeatedly and have become extremely proficient. Such an attack could be carried out from any coastal area on the United States including from the Gulf of Mexico utilizing that very same blind area in the United States defenses and would reach the central location of the United States then shoot up to the necessary altitude and detonate knocking out the transformers almost from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast and from Texas on northward into central Canada leaving a large percentage of the United States to die over the first year and the likelihood that the system would be returned to service would take at least a decade and very possibly several decades. The scenario has been known and the military has taken some elementary steps but is mostly depending that their equipment already being hardened. This would work for an interim period as their generator trucks and backup generators would permit their bases to function short term. The military also realize that they would at some point have to return to the civilian power grid and that is where their problems would begin. Food preservation would have an initial problem but it would take military intervention to even begin to truck food from farms to the cities. Societal cohesion would be disrupted and the cities would become war zones where the gangs would have the initial upper hand as they are the ones with weapons.
Iranian Missile Trajectory of test firing from freighter cargo ship sailing out in the Caspian Sea aimed to strike in the southern end of the high desert covering a range of close to two-thousand-five-hundred kilometers. This test has been practiced with every solid rocket missiles from Iranian armories.
The problem with the Iranian nuclear deal is on so many levels that one can hardly know where to begin. Listing the obvious ramification of freeing up over one-hundred-fifty-billion-dollars and infusing the Iranian coffers will have long reaching ramifications. Believing that the majority of these funds will be used to relieve the suffering of the poorest in Iranian society is a bit Pollyannish as they have already spent almost half the incoming cash on weapons from Russia and China alone. These purchases are sufficient to start a formidable Air Force even if one were to be starting from scratch. About the only items not on their shopping list are training aircraft for the pilots to start their learning with. One must assume that the Iranians will be using whatever aircraft remained in their inventory as trainers and then assigning pilots according to their abilities. The Iranians had stated quite blatantly and fiercely that their plans were to install their latest and greatest centrifuges to use in their cascades and start production of enriched uranium immediately. President Obama has mislead the American public when he stated that the Iranians would not have any uranium enriched to the twenty-percent level which is one step from HEU (highly enriched uranium) which was presumably making the world safe from Iran being capable of making sufficient quantities of HEU without the inspectors reaching an inspection date and then they would easily catch Iran if there had been any cheating as there simply were too many steps before they could produce weapons grade uranium.
This assumption was made on the theory that the Iranians would need at least two centrifuge cascades running around the clock for Iran with the centrifuges permitted by the agreement, as President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry figured, would take Iran close to a year. The problem this poses is simple, these newest centrifuges that Iran plans on installing can take the three-percent uranium and run it through a cascade which would appear nearly identical to the cascades with the older centrifuges unless somebody did a close inspection which would require knowledge of exactly what each version looked like and exactly how to tell them apart. The only matter they could easily discern would be that all the centrifuges were of the same variety and had recently been tested and verified safe for use. A cascade of the newest and greatest centrifuges, if information we have seen is correct, arranged in a cascade in an identical manner they would be capable of taking three-percent or slightly higher such as five percent, both of which are levels they are permitted to have in their stores and from which they will be permitted to run through what for all intents and purposes appears to be a standard cascade which would only produce approximately twenty-percent to twenty-five-percent enriched uranium. With the newest centrifuges in a similar cascade, which would not in and of itself arouse any superstition, the Iranians would be capable, with a few minor adjustments; to produce weapons grade ninety-plus-percent HEU in one run. That is one run taking three to five percent uranium and making HEU bomb ready uranium in a single run. Such is the difference between the earlier centrifuges and their latest designs and the agreement permits further studies and designing of even more efficient centrifuges which the world can feel guaranteed will be put into service once it proves to be efficient and sturdy thus reducing the time required to reach weapons grade uranium.
The agreement which we have all seen and which can be viewed in an easy to read format provided by a Russian outlet and translated to English and edited by Beyond the Cusp to remove wasteful formatting which made the agreement nearly impossible to follow is titled Министерство иностранных дел Российской Федерации which we assumed meant “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Vienna,” dated 14 July 2015. The problem starts when we find out that there is a second agreement which was formulated through indirect communications with both sides sending their communication via the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and never negotiating directly. This apparent exercise in insanity had a very good and deceitful purpose, neither side could reveal the context of the deliberations between the other’s side with the IAEA as such negotiations are guaranteed secret and secure. Where the White House could give out their versions of the negotiations but not the items which were permitted them under an oath of secrecy, which in this particular case the White House will have developed morality and will observe their promises of silence. What makes this situation all the more convoluted is that we cannot know what the final agreement stated and it is entirely possible that the entirety of the White House conversation might very well start with an outline with stipulations, restrictions, requirements and establishing a serious and intense inspection routine including immediate snap inspections of every nuclear site, working or idled by the deal such that the starting demands would even satisfy Senator Tom Cotton. The entirety of the rest of the White House negotiations with Iran might then consist of a series of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ statement with a number interspersed and maybe even a few word phrase but nothing which could lead one to any conclusions. The two items you will be guaranteed to never see would not be the Iranian initial expressions of acceptable conditions as their initial description of their side and its desires and expectations nor would you see the final document and its stipulations, rights and requirements on both sides.
Some of the items which we have learned in the weeks since the initial agreement was released with its numerous different variations as each side took their own liberties when translating it to their own language and liking. We have found out that the United States will be providing protection from cyber-attacks on the Iranian nuclear projects. The United States is sworn to protect Iran from and air assault on their territories. The United States will share with Iran the blueprints and specification of the United States’ most advanced centrifuge. What other schematics and diagrams the United States has promised to provide the Iranians remains a mystery. When this agreement finally leads to the inevitability it has put into motion, then the biggest question will be on which side has the United States chosen to support, the Iranian Axis which by then will control: the bulk of the world’s oil coming from the Middle East, the Straits of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb Waterway which also controls both the Israeli port to the Indian Ocean and beyond to the Pacific Ocean at Eilat and the gem of the Egyptian economy the Suez Canal making it all but useless, and a large swath of land stretching from the Indian Ocean at it eastern edge to the Mediterranean Sea at its western tip. Iran likely may have defeated the Islamic State with United States providing the air power to assist in ending that Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda offshoot which initially appeared unstoppable.
Bab el Mandeb Strait located at the southern end of Red Sea near western edge of Yemen which controls land overlooking the waterway which allows for blocking passage from Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea traffic from through Egyptian financial collapse without fees collected from the Suez Canal made useless if Bab el Mandeb shuttered also making the Port at Eilat Israel closed from its access to Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean and all of Asia and the west coast of the United States, Canada and South and Central America.
So, one has to wonder about what it was exactly that did stop them, was it the requirement that they rule these peoples they had now conquered and had gained a home-front which required order and allowing the farmers and others to tend to their business in peace and with the guarantee that the police would keep the peace. At some point the battle will break down to which truly is the stronger horse, the young stallion that burst onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere, their leader’s name is Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai (in Arabic إبراهيم عواد إبراهيم علي محمد البدري السامرائي) and now simply known as al-Baghdadi; on February 2, 2004 he had been captured near Fallujah and been detained at Camp Bucca detention center under his name Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry and was held in Iraq until some time in December 2004 when he was released, as ‘low level prisoner’ after which during the Syrian civil insurrection he came upon opportunities to use his skill to catapult his group from simply an al-Qaeda cell into a self-sustaining entity controlling a large swath of land and across Syria and into central Iraq. Eventually Iran and the Islamic State will necessarily meet head to head, mano-a- mano and then the best force will prevail and one headache will have been eliminated by an adversary doing the world a favor. By the time this draw-down has occurred, Iran will have attained nuclear weapons but will not use them against the Islamic State as their use will be reserved for a larger and more important enemy, namely Israel and the United States, but not another Islamic nation as these it is best to convert the population after proving the superiority where Allah visited victory on the Shiite troops and then offer the fighters from the vanquished side to magnanimously accept them into the forces for truth, the forces favored by Allah who gave them victory. Should these fighters accept the offers remember that they should be placed at the front and be the tip of the spear where Allah can test their conviction and faithfulness and if theirs is a true conversion then Allah will grant them the commission of heroic deeds and if not they will join their former officers who were tried for their crimes against Allah through their organizing and sending brave but misguided soldiers to execute the plans to visit harm on the true forces if Islam. These are the perceived gains received from the Islamic State war with the Shiites of Iran and Iraq along with Hezballah completing the forces of Shia Islam who do appear to be the superior force which has gained the blessings from Allah.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 