Russia and Iran, happy again
Time to kiss and make up:
Russia paved the way on Monday for missile system deliveries to Iran and started an oil-for-goods swap, signaling that Moscow may have a head-start in the race to benefit from an eventual lifting of sanctions on Tehran.
The moves come after world powers, including Russia, reached an interim deal with Iran this month on curbing its nuclear program.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ending a self-imposed ban on delivering the S-300 anti-missile rocket system to Iran, removing a major irritant between the two after Moscow canceled a corresponding contract in 2010 under pressure from the West.
A senior government official said separately that Russia has started supplying grain, equipment and construction materials to Iran in exchange for crude oil under a barter deal.
Well, what did anyone think would happen? And yet the move has drawn “rebukes” from Israel and the US:
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf later told reporters that the U.S. has “certainly made our concerns with the sale of the S-300 system to Iran known for some time.”
“We don’t believe it’s constructive at this time for Russia to move forward with this,” she said Monday. “We think given Iran’s destabilizing actions in the region in places like Yemen or Syria or Lebanon that this isn’t the time to be selling these kinds of systems to them.”
I am sure—positively certain—that Putin is shaking and quaking in his boots at these stern words from Obama via Marie Harf.
Israel has a different way of putting it:
“This is a direct result of the legitimacy that Iran obtained from the emerging nuclear deal,” [Israel’s Cabinet minister] Steinitz said, according to The Associated Press. “Instead of demanding Iran stop its terror activities that it spreads in the Middle East and the entire world, it is being allowed to arm itself with advanced weapons that will only increase its aggression.”
These missiles are not long-range enough to be used to mount an attack. What they are very useful for, however, is thwarting an attack (by Israel, the US, or anyone else so inclined) on Iran’s nuclear installations.
The Iran deal—what could possibly go wrong?
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf:
“We don’t believe it’s constructive at this time for Russia to move forward with this,”
Apparently the world’s not big enough for unconstructive actions by other than the reigning superpower. Unconstructive regime change of Ukraine’s duly elected government was righteous because… USA! USA! And Iran’s destabilizing actions in that region — theirs — is so outré; but our destabilizing actions in a region not ours is what… de rigeur… because… superpower, i.e., we can. There must come a time when all thoughtful men will realize that anti-Americanism is no longer merely a knee-jerk reaction but a flawless conclusion. We had long ago run out of moral capital to be preaching geopolitical sermons from the pulpit. We make of Russia and Putin’ something axially evil and then are surprised when they act in their own interests instead of the West’s officer Krupke.
Marie Harf’s stern and uncompromising words call to mind a micro incident I witnessed many years ago.
This mother was dealing with her toddler, and she exclaimed to the toddler, “that is *unacceptable*!”
I chuckled to myself, as the toddler went right on perpetuating the “unacceptable” behavior. I have no idea what punishment was eventually administered, or whether the toddler eventually saw fit to mend his/her ways.
Somehow, to exclaim “that is *unacceptable*”, strikes me very much as something a leftie-ish, in peer culture and outlook, mother would say; I don’t see center or rightie-ish mothers reacting that way. But maybe I’m wrong.
It’s amazing how Obama never sees the consequences of his actions, be they announcing a pullout date from Afghanistan, pulling troops from Iraq, the spread of the JV team, welcoming illegal children and giving them all sorts of benefits. He is so focussed on his grand schemes to save the world, he never peeks around the corner to see possible effects. Of course, he doesn’t really care. After all Bush caused the problems.
George Pal:
Note also the presence of Harf’s phrase “at this time.”
Ayatollah Soetoro has Putin on double secret probation… so there!
&&&&&
The REAL story is that Iran had run out of hard cash back in 2010.
Now that ayatollah Soetoro is releasing buckets of Iranian stash, Tehran is in a position to even pay cash on the barrel head.
Putin wants Iran’s oil marketing problems like he wants a hole in his head. The barter deal is strictly for the press/ proles.
The ONLY market for Iran’s crude is off in Asia. Throwing Putin into that trade makes no sense whatsoever.
Nobody in Asia gives a hoot about Putin. He has absolutely no marketing arm superior to that of Tehran.
There are absolutely no pipelines running up from Iran into Russia. Moscow has always had its own Caspian oil to tap.
Russia has no serious oil tanker fleet. It’s primary customers trickle out by the time you exit the Baltic Sea! It’s only heavy hitter customer: Germany.
It’s only significant export is sweet light crude — by way of Saint Petersburg. Considering its gross production, Russia’s actual crude oil exports are shockingly low.
No Western refinery was ever constructed to process Russian specific crude oils. (This is common for all heavy grades that need custom processing to be economically competitive. This trick chemical engineering is always required for heavy, sour grades because they all have their own unique blend of nasty contaminants.
It’s wholly uneconomic to install processing ‘trains’ (petroleum refining speak) that are unnecessary, as they are hugely expensive to buy — and operate.
This economic reality makes all of the heavy, sour, grades ‘non-commodities’ — as they can’t really freely trade. Instead what you have is a ‘tango market’ whereby the players are few and they have to dance together. The monopoly supplier is squared off against a monopsony buyer.
Since the light, sweet, grades can be processed efficiently in most any refinery — they trade as the benchmark — giving the illusion that all crude oil is fungible. It isn’t.
Which gets us back to Iran. She has heavy, sour, grades in abundance. The light, sweet stuff ran out decades ago. A century of production will do that to a nation.
What’s killing Putin is fracking — as ALL of America’s boom is in exactly the one grade that Russia sells for big dollars.
Yes, he’s frantic about it.
Russians in the know believe that Putin is so highly stressed by the flow of events that he had to drop out for ten days to reassess his policy arc.
His hold on power is so touchy that he’s engaged in musical chairs — Stalinist style — right this very moment. The chairs that are changing are exactly those authorities responsible for regime stability.
So what does that tell you?
I believe that Putin is cutting this deal, and many others, to convince the rest of his crew that he’s not gotten them all boxed in.
If you read his agitprop website, ZeroHedge, you can see that Putin is absolutely frantic about being economically isolated.
His energy puppets are cutting his strings. Deals in motion make the out months absolutely terrifying for Moscow.
Naturally our best and brightest haven’t a clue about his cash flow crisis — in the out months. Washington operates strictly via the rear view mirror.
(Ayatollah Soetoro can’t even see past his shoulder when he’s looking at his mirror, hence his ‘selfies’ diarrhea.)
expat,
the mannish boy does not give a sh*t about the negative consequences of his actions; negative consequences are a feature, not a bug
We think given Iran’s destabilizing actions in the region in places like Yemen or Syria or Lebanon that this isn’t the time to be selling these kinds of systems to them
…But this is the time to be letting them get nuclear weapons?! Seriously, how the heck can anybody sustain that level of cognitive dissonance without their head exploding?
Victor Hanson gets it.
Putin’s Russia is, by far the foremost facilitator of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability and has been so for more than a decade.
IMO it is geo-politically naive to imagine that, for the past decade… Putin’s motivations in assisting Iran are primarily economic.
Russia’s technological and material support of Iran and Russia and China’s support in the UN of Iran is NOT accidental, nor is it purposeless. They are using Islam as a covert means of aggression and destabilization of the West.
“Rogue states never turn out to be quite the pariahs they are deemed. They are only able to cause, or at least threaten to cause, mayhem because they enjoy the covert support – usually by means of technology transfers – of one or more major powers within the charmed circle of global ‘good guys’.” Margaret Thatcher
“It’s amazing how Obama never sees the consequences of his actions,”
You assume he would learn from his mistakes.
I do not give him that benefit as I think these are calculated decisions to show “America its proper place in the world.” 🙁
When you look at the speed and energy that those “Backward, ignorant, and racist WWII Americans” mobilized and took care of that evil and compare that to today’s “sophisticated educated modern America”, I’m not sure America will adequately recover from the body blows this 5th column leader has dealt us and his 50% support level. It is sort of like a body getting Sepsis, at some point in time even though the body’s defenses fight on, the body defenses just are overwhelmed. Only time will tell. 🙂
MikeII Says: You assume he would learn from his mistakes
those werent mistakes…
when you throw a game, you dont do it in a way that people think you threw the game, you make a mistake.
ie. see john cleese
John Cleese – How To Irritate People 1968
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoSu6AUC-7k
UK scrambles jets as Russian planes and ships spotted
http://news.yahoo.com/three-russian-ships-english-channel-000348261.html
British fighter jets were scrambled on Wednesday in response to the sighting of two Russian military aircraft near UK airspace, hours after three Russian ships were monitored as they entered the English Channel.
[just think… if one of them went blewie in the thames]
Japan jets scramble at Cold-War levels as Chinese and Russian incursions increase
http://news.yahoo.com/japan-jets-scramble-cold-war-levels-chinese-russian-084627854.html
Japan’s air force said on Wednesday said jet fighter scrambles have reached a level not seen since the height of the Cold War three decades ago as Russian bombers probe its northern skies and Chinese combat aircraft intrude into its southern air space
[right now my son is having the time of his life dealing with north koreans]
In the year ending March 31, Japanese fighters scrambled 944 times
That is the second highest number of encounters ever recorded over the 12-month period since records began in 1958 and only one less than a record 944 scrambles in 1984 [before the soviet union “collapsed” – i mean restructured]
I havent seen the communists so happy since mercator showed trotsky how to pick your friends…
China to Build New Nuke Plants in Iran
New nuke plants major concern for critics of diplomacy with Islamic Republic
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-to-build-new-nuke-plants-in-iran/
Iran announced that China has agreed to assist in the building of five new nuclear plants across the country, according to Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI).
Russia has already helped to start construction of at least two plants in southern Iran, while the Chinese will assist with the rest, Kamalvandi revealed.
The Obama administration has said in the past that the construction of light water reactors such as the one in Bushehr does not violate existing United Nations restrictions or the interim accord struck with the country in 2013.
Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the AEOI, announced on Tuesday that Iran is pursuing at least five new nuclear power plants to produce nuclear fuel at an “industrial scale.”
——
some physics background..
light water and heavy water reactors both produce plutonium. their major difference is in the isotopic make up and the volume of plutonium produce in a period of time. a heavy reactor produces more plutonium and does so in 2-3 months… the light water reactor produces less and works for a year or more.
A 1000 MWe light water reactor gives rise to about 25 tonnes of used fuel a year, containing up to 290 kilograms of plutonium. If the plutonium is extracted from used reactor fuel it can be used as a direct substitute for U-235 in the usual fuel
the point would have been, if Obama was as smart as they say and wasnt working for the other side (blatantly), he would have required all new reactors in Iran to be THORIUM…. not URANIUM
A thorium nuclear rector would not be easy to have a meltdown, and cant make nuclear fuel for bombs…
Cold War-era governments (including ours) backed uranium-based reactors because they produced plutonium – handy for making nuclear weapons.
you can tell Greenpeace politics reflects the production of nuclear bombs as they declare to their people that this thorium uranium thing is a “myth”
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/the-mythologies-of-thorium-and-uranium/blog/48625/
they link to an article that is about china wanting to reduce smog… note that the article says nothig about the “myth” only greenpeace says its a myth.
its a whole lot of… “the problems are similar so why bother… because if we let them have something better, our ideas of removing them, will be harder… so we wont let that happen…”
meanwhile… they are not offering anything better… considering that solar cells take as much energy as they generate in their lifetime to make them (And that energy cant come from solar)… and that windmills are now being discovered to be bird killers, people hurters, eyesores, and do not put out enough energy, and its intermitancy sucks, and it will only work in the goldilocks regions (not too slow, not too fast)…
Also, they claim that these are not practical, and that there arent any..
Thor Energy has successfully created a thorium nuclear reactor
so in essence.. they are trying to place the peasants in the same place that they were in in the past.
Monty Pythons Holy Grail – Bloody Peasants!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJBg74WYa-0
George Pal Says:
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf:
“We don’t believe it’s constructive at this time for Russia to move forward with this,”
News reports have discovered that the reason putin was absent for a short while was that he was laughing at the stupidity of american politicans and their neo-soviet ideas of menshivick polity, and doing so so hard, that he was thought to have given himself a hernia busting a gut…
Ayatollah Soetoro has Putin on double secret probation… so there!
great reference blert… 🙂
Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f*cking Peace Corps.
blert Says:
There are absolutely no pipelines running up from Iran into Russia. Moscow has always had its own Caspian oil to tap.
sorry… there are pipelines… at the border of turkmenistan stright to russia… and a few into china
2011 headline:
Turkmenistan boosts gas exports…into existing pipelines running from Russia to northern Iran…
there is an oil pipeline from kirkuk to banias (Syria ocean port).
i laid out that the point of the recent fighting and such was to manipulate oil prices driving them up and seling X units for more money per unit… but the shale plays and other things of the free market confounded the plans of the globalist manipulators, which is why they hate capitalism… it makes conspiratorial cooperation very hard… (Despite the fact that they pavlovian like trained the people to write off a conspiracy for being called a conspiracy)
blert Says:
Russia has no serious oil tanker fleet. It’s primary customers trickle out by the time you exit the Baltic Sea! It’s only heavy hitter customer: Germany.
this is untrue sir… the WORLD uses the market fleets… you hire a ship, fill it up, and send it on its way for a fee…
and then there is MSCO
JSC “Murmansk Shipping Company” is one of the largest shipping company which carries out the major part of shipments under the Russian flag in Russian sector of the Arctic.The company is a leader in oil transportation and transshipment and develops the following activities: exploration works, transport and hydro installation building.
then there is the Volga fleet…
Oil transportation in barrels by the Caspian Sea from Baku (large oil producing region of Russia) to Astrakhan started in the 70s
there is the famous “Mikhail Ulyanov”, which is an icebreaking oil tanker…
then there is teekay tankers, and lots more
the west has a very wrong view of russia!!! it makes vast assumptions that they have not changed since the czars and are still the backwards peoples they were… or that their restructuring (“collapse”) meant that their military and stuff suffered. NO. it meant that the world thinks they are weak, wnen they are strong, and thinks they were strong when weak (see tsun tsu). given that their economy rolls mostly on raw materials, their fleets and things can be quite large. and that their public suffers what the Siloviki, the FSB, the GRU and others never do… Putin still collects Breuget watches
Russia is a major exporter of crude oil, petroleum products, and natural gas. Sales of these fuels accounted for 68% of Russia’s total export revenues in 2013, based on data from Russia’s Federal Customs Service. Russia received almost four times as much revenue from exports of crude oil and petroleum products as from natural gas. Crude oil exports alone were greater in value than the value of all non-oil and natural gas exports.
Europe, including Turkey, receives most of Russia’s exports of crude oil and products, as well as virtually all exports of natural gas. Asia (especially China) receives substantial volumes of crude oil and some liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia. Recently, Russia finalized a 30-year, $400 billion deal to supply China with natural gas from fields in Eastern Siberia
blert… it seems your assesment is wrong…
by the way… they have refineries in the US… Russia has a gas station in queens by my home… can you guess what the companies name is?
LUKOIL…
Headquartered in Moscow, Lukoil is the second largest public company (next to ExxonMobil) in terms of proven oil and gas reserves.
[second only to their partner ExxonMobil? blert… read your post and see if your talking about the second larges public oil company]
Check out China National Petroleum and Sinopec
Many Russian oil firms are vertically integrated, owning both the oil fields and refineries that process crude oil. These firms can sell crude oil directly to their own refineries at low prices. Domestic natural gas prices are also subsidized, forcing Russian companies like Gazprom to use export revenue to fund investment in new infrastructure and projects
50% of Russia’s federal budget revenue in 2013 came from mineral extraction taxes and export customs duties on oil and natural gas
What’s killing Putin is fracking – as ALL of America’s boom is in exactly the one grade that Russia sells for big dollars.
not true…
The US is not allowed to export OIL..
so it does not matter what kind of oil we have, as we can only export the processed materials.. ergo the boom in the refineries… Valero, Marathon, etc.
[i made a lot of money when the price of oil collapsed down, as valero went with it, then they woke up and remembered that when the price goes down, the output of valero sells near the same price but its input costs go down by nearly half. i bought in at around 47, and its now 58… but it peaked at 63… EASY MONEY… but why would anyone want to listen to a never been?]
What could possibly go wrong? Besides everything?
Art…
Thorium is not directly fissionable in a “Thorium Reactor” — it absorbs a neutron to become U-233 which is not only Uranium but a better nuclear explosive than either Pu-239 or U-235.
Iran has no pipelines going north into Russia. Turkmenistan was inside the USSR– and is now termed, by Moscow, as the near-abroad.
Russian oil scarcely ever leaves the European market. There is no economic rationale for it to do so.
Germany is the overwhelming Western customer for Moscow. Moscow also sells to Finland, Sweden, Poland, etc in a major way. They are just not as big as the German economy.
Wholesaling crude oil during a PRICE WAR is a pain, wholly unlike the glory of flipping cargoes during tight markets.
The widely publicized prohibition against exporting American oil has some exceptions. These are so vast that there is, at this time, no difficulty in getting American crude to market.
The primary ‘out’ is that even the SLIGHTEST pre-processing is enough of a pretext to permit American crude oil exportation.
Right now that provision is running about 500,000 to 1,000,000 bbl/day — depending on which liar you’re listening to.
In the big picture, America has long been set up to handle the MUCH discounted heavy, sour, grades — especially those from KSA. (The technology was actually developed for Kern County ‘sludge’ generations ago. Then the tricks were used to process Venezuelan crude — up until Exxon’s assets were seized generations ago. Then the refineries involved (Exxon, Shell, Chevron, floated their tankers over to new players in the heavy, sour, crude oil markets.
It just so happens that Iran and Iraq have pumped out the bulk of their light, sweet, stuff, (exception, Kurdistan and the un-tapped Sunni heartland of Iraq) … so much so that MOST of the oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf is now in the heavier grades.
KSA still pumps enough Arabian light to keep it as a benchmark – though it’s never recovered its news stature after London established Brent as the European benchmark for light, sweet, crude oil.
Russia’s profits on oil exports are hugely linked to trade with her near-abroad: Which is to say that Russia is not selling anything like what one would expect into Western markets. (It’s going to Red China, too.) Still, exports are exports.
Refineries live and die on the crack spread. So that’s the bet, and nothing else.
The same logic as yours would’ve had you going long the farming sector — where everything is twice as true.
Fuel and fertilizer are big cost factors, not so healthcare, so the ag-spread for farmers is now wonderful.
Their only threat is overpaying for additional acreage….
Cheers.
Time to see if EMPs really work…
Nobody dies but nothing works anymore, not even centrifuges. I suspect that is an option and it will be deployed immediately Iran tests a bomb. Just my suspicion.