An Iranian armed forces spokesperson warned it may be time to "teach Americans new lessons" if the Trump administration labeled Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.
“It seems the Trump administration understands only swear words, and needs some shocks to understand the new meaning of power in the world,” Jazayeri said, according to ISNA. “The Americans have driven the world crazy by their behavior. It is time to teach them a new lesson.”
President Donald Trump is expected this week to “decertify” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known simply as the Iran deal, declaring that the agreement reached in 2015 by the U.S. and five other international powers is not in America’s national interest. The matter will then be tossed back to Congress, which will have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose hefty pre-2015 sanctions.
... a new 52-page investigative report by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), entitled: “Iran’s Nuclear Core: Uninspected Military Sites,” obtained exclusively by Fox News and slated for release Wednesday, asserts that the country’s nuclear weapons program has far from halted.
“The more we investigated, the more we realized that the weaponization program is fully operational,” Jafarzadeh said. “The military sector has gone through changes in name, location and reorganizations over the years. However, it has never halted its work and key figures in the sector have remained unchanged.”
As detailed in the report, the Iranian Resistance has identified four major sites that “with high degrees of certainty” have been involved in various aspects of the allegedly ongoing nuclear weapons project.
Intelligence findings also reveal that “scores of large underground tunnels have been constructed in this military complex,” this providing “the possibility and flexibility of covering up the activities of the warhead project, or transferring it to a different location in the complex.” Furthermore, the Iranian Resistance states that North Korean experts cooperate with the regime’s experts in the project, and have been “particularly helpful in designing the aerodynamics aspects, the shape of the warhead, and have also provided the design for the Hemmat site, its tunnels, and underground centers.”
On Thursday, a shipment of 700 kilograms of plutonium arrived in Japan after a journey by sea from the French port of Cherbourg. That’s enough material for more than 100 nuclear weapons.
The plutonium – in the form of atomic fuel known as MOX, a mix of uranium and plutonium oxide – is for use in the Takahama-4 reactor, owned by Kansai Electric Power Co. and located on Wakasa Bay, in western Japan near Osaka.
There have been six shipments of such highly toxic cargoes since 1999, the result of an agreement to send radioactive spent fuel in Japan for reprocessing in France and the UK, and then to be shipped back as plutonium MOX fuel for use in Japan’s reactors.
Putting aside the reactor fuel issue for the moment, Japan’s plutonium program must be seen in the context of the nuclear arms proliferation dynamic that has existed for decades in Northeast Asia, but which today has taken on even greater urgency owing to North Korea’s nuclear weapon program.
It’s clear that without a peaceful resolution to the underlying security threats in the region, there is an increasing possibility that policy makers in Tokyo – backed by Washington – will decide that Japan should weaponize its plutonium stockpile.
Key Takeaway: Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to leverage uncontested basing in the Eastern Mediterranean to demonstrate Russian naval capabilities, while asserting its freedom of action on NATO’s southern flank.
Russia focused on showcasing the increased cruise missile capability of its Black Sea Fleet’s permanent Mediterranean Task Force (MTF) from August – October 2017. The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on August 25 that both sea and airborne cruise missiles were successfully utilized during a coordinated attack on ISIS positions for the first time since Russia’s entry into the Syrian Civil War in September 2015.[1]
Russia deployed two previously non-combat tested submarines to its Tartous naval base along the Syrian coast on August 28, signaling Russia’s continued prioritization of combat experience for the MTF.[2]
The two submarines later executed their first combat operation with Kalibr cruise missiles against ISIS in Eastern Syria on September 14.[3]
The Kremlin meanwhile demonstrated its continued desire to challenge U.S. and NATO forces in the Mediterranean through the deployment of additional naval vessels and a second S-400 long-range air defense system to Syria.[4]
Back in January 2016, we showed what the collapse of Venezuela looks like, when in addition to charting Venezuela's imploding currency (which back then was trading at a positive expensive 941 bolivars to the dollar), we presented what at the time was the IMF's latest Venezuela inflation forecast, which stunned us as it surged from 275% in the just concluded 2015 to a whopping 720% at the end of 2016.
Fast forward nearly two years until today, when the IMF released its latest estimate of what it believes will happen to Venezuela's economy in the coming year and a half. What is striking, besides the fact that Venezuela has somehow still managed to avoid bankruptcy, is that the IMF now expects Venezuela's hyperinflation to reach a staggering 2,349% in 2018, after rising by "only" 626% this year, the highest estimate for any country tracked by the IMF. While the South American country stopped reporting economic data in 2015, the IMF estimates that last year inflation clocked in around 254%, a number which is set to soar in the coming years for obvious reasons.
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