After its role in the Snowden case and now in the Syria chemical weapons dossier, there's a growing perception across the real "international community" -- not that fiction invoked by Washington -- that Russia is back as a great power. The chessboard is open to myriad possibilities.
Moscow is on the way to enhance its already substantial leverage over the flow of energy to Western Europe. In an incremental global push from oil to natural gas, it's on the way to enhance its leverage over distribution and marketing of natural gas to be exploited in the Eastern Mediterranean.
It's on the way to enhance its leverage as a prime supplier of first-class weapons, from sophisticated missile systems to stealth fighters such as the Sukhoi T-50.
It simply won't allow the Jihad International congregated in Syria to truck drive 900km and start raising hell in the Caucasus all over again.
And even as it faces Chinese competition for sources of energy in Central Asia, it is working towards a win-win situation where both countries benefit from increasing trade and energy deals.
This analysis may be muddled -- but it hits all the key nodes. The current movement of geopolitical tectonic plates is all about a slowly but surely move away from the petrodollar, with immense consequences.
Pipelineistan, of course, plays a central role -- from the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline (defying Washington, and now with a possible extension to China) to the proposed, $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline (bypassing Qatar and Turkey, both not by accident heavily bent on regime change in Syria).
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And that brings us back to Iran. There are two players who will take no prisoners sabotaging any possibility of a meaningful dialogue between Washington and Tehran; Israel and the Gulf petro-monarchies, especially the House of Saud.
For Israel, Tehran is the perfect, totally fabricated "existential threat" used as a diversionist tactic from the real issue; the apartheid regime imposed on occupied Palestine.
For the House of Saud, Tehran is the perfect "existential threat" in the form of demonized, "apostate" Shiites, who happen to rule a much more sophisticated state than the intolerant, Wahhabi, neo-barbarian oil kingdom. On top of it, slick operator Bandar Bush, flush with cash, will not stop playing the sectarian card and weaponizing to death various "rebel' strands, not to mention battle-experienced jihadists in Syria.
Both lobbies -- Israel and the House of Saud -- are extremely influential in Washington. And they know full well how American exceptionalism is obsessed with "credibility." So they won't stop inflating the "credibility" balloon. The question is whether, with his "credibility" in tatters after the "red line" fiasco, a zig-zagging Obama will muster the diplomatic courage to really start tearing down the Wall of Mistrust.
One thing is certain; don't bet on him putting his schoolboy ego on hold and asking for Putin's help.
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