Giants In Collision

There are some reports emerging on the very cool and increasingly cooler relations between the United States and Russia looming larger and closer on the horizon of warnings against political and ideological antipathies tipping over into proxy conflict. With Russia in support of Syria and the United States definitely not; with Russia enraged over the placement of missile stations in their backyards, convinced they're aimed directly at Russia and Washington failing to convince Moscow otherwise, relations are about as abraded as we've seen them of late.

Both leaders, President Barack Obama, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, are being challenged for their aspirations for re-election; President Obama for a coveted second term and Prime Minister Putin to succeed in his long-range plans to re-attain indefinitely, the position of President of Russia. Opposition to both is strong in each of their respective countries, but it is Mr. Putin and his United Russia party whom Russian protesters have targeted in an increasing outrage over election corruption reminiscent of the mass protests that have taken place in the Middle East and North Africa.

When the UN Security Council has met to discuss sanctions against Iran, against Libya, against Syria, Russia has always balked. These are Russia's clients, after all. Even more so than that of the United States for whom a larger and more responsible role in leading the international community has fallen as its sole remaining world power. A status that the old USSR once belligerently co-owned, and which Russia has been hugely resentful of having lost.

And Russia is playing a very dangerous game on the world stage. It should not be surprising that a country that flirted with democracy, then applied itself to a hybrid form claiming its own autocratic form of democracy, yet still accepting of administrative tyranny should find common cause with other countries largely ruled by tyrants. Russia is not alone in that, since RealPolitik insists that accommodation leads the way to success in trade and growth in GDP and useful political alliances.

But Russia's extreme helpfulness to the Islamic Republic of Iran in aiding it to succeed in its drive to nuclear power and eventual (not all that far into the future) success in obtaining nuclear weaponry threatens not only that part of the world, but starkly resembles an oncoming trainwreck on a much wider scale.

"Iran is a de facto nuclear weapon state [and] there is little that can be done except to hope [to] maintain control over their nuclear weapons. If Iran were to now make an all-out effort to acquire nuclear weapons, it could probably do so in two to six months." Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre, Washington

A recently released study by the International Atomic Energy Agency relating to Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles along with its non-nuclear weapons research (missile production) noted that Iran is on the cusp of tripling its production of enriched uranium to weapons grade. "Using Iran's currently operating centrifuges at the [Natanz] Fuel Enrichment Plant, the batch recycling (to make weapons grade enriched uranium) would take about two months", according to U.S. weapons expert Gregory Jones.

The IAEA report states also that its inspectors have reason to believe that Iran has been helped immensely with its program through covert assistance given by Russian weapons scientist, Vyacheslav Danilenko in the development of a sophisticated "multipoint" nuclear trigger for a bomb. And it is currently "in a position to build nuclear weapons that are significantly lighter and have a smaller diameter", potentially enabling their placement on warheads of medium and long-range ballistic missiles.

The chilling conclusion reached by the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre says it all: "In light of the IAEA's information about Iran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons and in particular, Iran's acquisition of a multipoint initiations system from a Russian nuclear scientist, it is clear that Iran is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons." This, at a time and at a place where the United States administration has been focused on delaying Iran's nuclear program, as a priority to avoid utter destabilization in the Middle East and beyond.

This is discomfitting, but anticipated news. What's more, the news that Russia and the United States are braced for a naval confrontation reminiscent of Cold War hostilities, in the eastern Mediterranean just over the Syrian coast, should be causing nightmares.