It appears that Iran is entering into business negotiations in the Near Abroad and is looking to benefit from the new detente with Russia and China. Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) are already in negotiations in Uzbekistan where a million barrels of oil a day (from a daily production of 1.46 million barrels) are reserved for investors.
Affiliated companies of the Iranian Armed Forces and a shadowy body known as SETAD (Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam) (set up in 1979 to take in confiscated assets from thousands of ordinary Iranians and now involved in just about every industry and sector in the country) are believed to be operating together. SETAD has an estimated fortune of US$ 100 billion and is considered shadowy, since its activities are even hidden from parliament.
The rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia seems to be designed to do nothing more than increase the wealth of already wealthy individuals, at the cost of the people who support them.
Indications are that Iran is once again breeding terrorism. However, the British government still cannot seem to decide whether Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) is a terrorist set-up or not. This is much more than an ordinary military organisation. It has a vast network of terrorism and criminality. It has been implicated in the bombing of a Jewish community in Buenos Aires, killing and injuring more than 300. It has also murdered and kidnapped dissidents from all over Europe. It has been active in civil wars using Hamas and Hezbollah in Iraq, Syria and the Yemen. It also backs the hard-line faction of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It doesn’t matter what Russia or China want to see happening in the Middle East. All the Supreme Leader and members of the IRGC require is the removal of identified targets which they consider to be part of their religious duty. In other words, murder and assassination by any other name. Opposition activists and Jews are all targets – in Israel and in the rest of the world. Consequently, those who reside in the UK are also in the line of fire. And yet the UK authorities seem loath to put the IRGC on the terrorist list.
Once again Russia and China together have brought another chess piece into play to take NATO’s mind off what is happening in Ukraine, while applying pressure of their own.
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