Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Straight from the mouths of the Enemy…..

Theran Times

In a press conference in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, President Medvedev and President Bashar Assad backed Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The comments came as the U.S. and Israel, both possessors of nuclear weapons, accuse Iran of pursuing a covert military nuclear program and threaten to attack Tehran over its nuclear drive.

Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), insists that its nuclear activities are aimed at peaceful purposes.

The Islamic Republic and the major countries have resumed their talks in a bid to find a way out of the current nuclear standoff.

Tehran has declared that it would continue its cooperation with the UN nuclear agency providing that such cooperation falls within its obligations under the NPT and Safeguard Agreement.

Assad also met Medvedev on Thursday and expressed his support for Moscow in the Caucasus crisis between Russia and Georgia.

The Syrian president said: “”We understand the essence of the Russian position and its military response. We believe Russia was responding to the Georgian provocation.”"

Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia on August 7 in an attempt to regain control over the breakaway region, which has enjoyed de facto independence since 1992. Russian troops reacted by quickly moving into the region and driving out the Georgian forces.

(Source: Press TV)

And from the other day….

The United States should make a clear-eyed assessment of the fruits of strategic cooperation

Saturday, August 23, 2008 WaPo

ON THURSDAY, while overseeing his country’s continuing occupation of neighboring Georgia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev found time to meet with visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Assad, who is under suspicion of ordering the murder of political opponents in Lebanon, lavishly praised Russia’s invasion of Georgia and asked for more Russian weapons. Mr. Medvedev acceded to this request, according to his foreign minister.

This was a small and unsurprising event in the annals of Russian diplomatic history. But it’s worth noting as the United States and its European allies consider how to reshape relations with Russia in the wake of its Aug. 7 invasion of Georgia. A common theme of commentary since the war began has been that the United States is constrained in its condemnation of — or sanctions against — Russia because it needs Russia too much in areas ranging from counterterrorism to checking the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran. But you can’t lose what you never had, and it’s fair to question how much help Russia has been providing in any of those areas, even before Aug. 7.

Iran provides a useful example. Russia has participated, with Germany, France and Britain, in talks aimed at persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear program and even has gone along with some sanctions enacted by the U.N. Security Council. But Russia’s principal contribution has been to slow the process and resist meaningful sanctions, stringing the Bush administration along just enough to convince it that truly effective measures — sometime, somewhere down the road — might be possible. Iran’s nuclear program has proceeded without inhibition. Meanwhile, Russian experts help develop Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, and Russia sells Iran air-defense weapons it can use to protect its nuclear sites and anti-ship weapons it could use to menace Persian Gulf shipping traffic in the event of conflict. While the administration blames Iran and its proteges, including Hamas and Syria, for
destabilizing the Middle East, Russia sells arms to all of them, and to Venezuela and Sudan.

None of this means that the United States should seek or welcome a new cold war with Russia. Russia could make life far more difficult for many of America’s friends if it chose to do so, just as it could, if it chose, help combat terrorism and nuclear proliferation. But President Bush’s imagined partnership with president-turned-prime-minister Vladimir Putin has been pretty much an empty husk for a long time. We hope and believe that the West would not under any circumstance barter away the independence or territorial integrity of a small, free and helpless nation in exchange for a promise of big-power cooperation. But when that promise is an illusion, the calculation should become even easier.