What do Russia and Iran have in common? If your answer was sanctions, congratulations. The two have been under sanctions from the western nations. So, you might think that two nations under sanctions would both be suffering cash shortages and thus would both be too financially strapped to assist each other in any way. But there are ways nations can assist each other that do not require dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling or any other normative tenders. But then the Iranians, or maybe for this we might call them by their original name, Persians and the Russians are returning to a more familiar means from history, trade and bartering. The Russians have something the Iranians have desired and made agreements which were prevented by combined actions by the United States and Israel, their advanced S-300 antiaircraft radar and missile systems. But what could the Iranians have that the Russians could use? Oddly enough, despite Russia being an oil exporter they have made an arrangement where the Iranians initially will pay for these advanced systems by shipping oil to the Russians and change their style of payment to some form of cash, not necessarily petro-dollars but rather some alternate currency which may be the initial first step to establishing an alternative international currency to compete with the dollar which Iran and Russia have been pressing for largely seeking to enjoin China in this effort which they believe might make such a currency internationally acceptable. In the meantime the oil provided as payment to the Russians will simply become a part of their own petroleum reserves as oil is an extremely fungible commodity which can be sold without fearing the buyer will be running laboratory tests to trace its nation of origin.
The Russians are moving on delivering these advanced antiaircraft radar and missile systems which are capable of targeting multiple aircraft including cruise missile and possibly some forms of ballistic missiles (not IBCM but ballistic mid-range missiles which do not leave the atmosphere and reenter the atmosphere) as quickly as the systems can be assembled, tested and configured. The Russians are showing little signs of putting this deal on hold and waiting for the sanctions to be officially removed and are not concerned whether the sanctions are going to be immediately removed upon the signing of a nuclear agreement as the Iranian Framework Agreement Farsi translation states, or gradually over a period of time after Iran meets certain markers as President Obama’s copy of the Framework Agreement claims. This not concerning the Iranians is more than readily believable and with the weakness shown by President Obama with his message requested to be given Putin by former Russian President Medvedev about his greater ability to be more flexible after the 2014 elections, like now, there will be no respect for anything President Obama might think forcing Putin to delay this deal more than about ten seconds. The Russians are actually apparently anxious to provide the Iranians with their advanced S-300, or perhaps the improved S-400, complete mobile anti-aircraft systems, almost as anxious as the Iranians are to receive them and put them around their nuclear development sites, even those sites which they will have switched over to spinning a mixture of gasses including a base noble gas and a cross-section of other gasses so that the cascaded centrifuges will retain their calibration and be immediately returned to uranium enrichment as soon as restrictions are retired, or whenever the Iranians decide to shoot for a nuclear weapon and deny the IAEA inspections and ignoring all restrictions of any agreement reached in the nuclear negotiations.
While the threat to use the military option should Iran break the deal reached presumably between now and June 30th and has repeatedly been brought to the world’s, and especially the media’s, collective attention by President Obama, the one truism existing is that the military option will remain there on the table for as long as President Obama is in office. The problem is that should the Russian deal with the Iranians come to fruition, and we doubt any threats from the west, either the Europeans or President Obama, are likely between the Russian energy stranglehold over the Europeans and President Obama’s greater flexibility, exercised like a man without a spine, would be believed by President Putin who would likely make a threatening move and all would wilt before his shirtless form. As far as the Iranians are concerned, and has been proven by the fiasco which have passed as negotiations, they really do not care what the rest of the world thinks and they know they have the upper hand as the Europeans have the military preparedness of a preschool compared to the Iranian missiles which can easily reach virtually all of Europe and the Americans have President Obama whose effeminateness precludes his taking any strong military attack is nil. Once the Russians have provided the Iranians with sufficient S-300 systems they will have become relatively immune from most military airstrike be they from jet fighter-bombers or cruise missiles. The S-300 systems radar station can track at least a dozen separate aircraft (up to seventy-two are trackable in its most advanced systems) and target six missiles in flight (up to thirty-six are targetable in its most advanced systems). A number of missiles are matched with a central radar system and both the missiles and radar system are mounted on trucks making the entire systems mobile, thus making them less easily targeted and easily relocated to guard targets considered most vulnerable at any given time. The S-300 systems, assuming the deal will provide Iran with as many systems as they desire, will make any air strikes by the Israelis close to impossible and at the least excessively costly in the cost of aircraft, and more importantly, pilots either lost or captured. Such a system would require stealth aircraft to avoid the high resolution wide-array radars. This would make Israeli Air Force excessively vulnerable and their initial targets would necessarily need to be the radar systems followed by the antiaircraft missiles themselves. Daring such attacks while not having the stealth aircraft for the mission would still present challenges which would tax any pilots beyond imagination. As far as a strike force from the United States, it would likely take their every F-22 Raptor escorting every B-2 Stealth Bomber with special radar seeking missiles equipped on the Raptors and for many of the buried and reinforced nuclear sites, especially the Fordow site, would require bunker-buster munitions with some requiring the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) which weighs 30,000 pounds (14,000 kg), with a length of 20.5 feet (6.2 m) and a circumference of 31.5 inches (0.80 m) and originally required a modification of the B-2 Stealth Bomber in order to carry this unfathomably strange and huge munition. Such an attack will not be even slightly possible before the next Presidential Inauguration before it should even be considered remotely possible, and then it will be dependent on who is the new President the people of the United States elect. The truth be told, this deal will be the final nail removed from the coffin to allow the nuclear mummy to rise from the crypt and begin the nightmarish specter of a nuclear armed theocratic realm with apocalyptic visions and aspirations to rise and spread the fears of nuclear annihilation across the globe and also release the spreading specters of fears spread to the rest of the Islamic nations of the Middle East and Northern Africa starting any number of nations, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and beyond take this as their starting whistle to developing their own nuclear weapons to balance against any Iranian threats. A world with such a spread of nuclear arms will have become one threat removed from a miscalculation spawning a reaction which very easily could tilt the balance into crazy and soon might follow the raining of missiles carrying the end of life as we know it as the clouds rise in a column then spreading their bulbous sides outward making a large caldron of swirling hot gasses spreading outward poisoning a large swath of Earth and changing our outlook into the future, if there is to be a future, if there is going to be a future at all.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 