WAR Regional conflict brewing in the Mediterranean

jward

passin' thru
TurkishFacts4u
@TurkishFacts4U

30m

#Turkey is a developing country and has three nuclear facilities two of which are research reactors and one pilot fuel production plant [emphasis added]. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCL


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TurkishFacts4u
@TurkishFacts4U

4m

List of Nuclear power plants currently under construction or in planning phase in #Turkey. All these energy plants require Uranium fuel rods- which are to be supplied by the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority Fuel Rod Plant. https://world-nuclear.org/information-li
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Plain Jane

Just Plain Jane

China Looks To Build Espionage Hub In Iran Under 25-Year Deal
Profile picture for user Tyler Durden
by Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/08/2020 - 21:00
TwitterFacebookRedditEmailPrint

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,
The next phase of the 25-year deal between China and Iran will focus on a large-scale roll-out of electronic espionage and warfare capabilities focused around the port of Chabahar and extending for a nearly 5,000 kilometer (3,000 mile) radius, and the concomitant build-out of mass surveillance and monitoring of the Iranian population, in line with the standard operating procedure across China, senior sources close to the Iranian government told OilPrice.com last week.

Both of these elements dovetail into Beijing’s strategic vision for Iran as a fully-functioning client state of China by the end of the 25-year period. By that time, Iran will be an irreplaceable geographical and geopolitical foundation stone in Beijing’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, as well as providing a large pool of young, well-educated, relatively cheap labor for Chinese industry. The mass surveillance, monitoring, and control systems to cover Iran’s population is to begin its full roll-out as from the second week of November, after the final agreement on event sequencing has been reached in the third week of October at a meeting between Iran’s most senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and intelligence services figures and their Chinese counterparts.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, already agreed on the broad plans in July, according to the Iran sources.
“The plan is for nearly 10 million extra CCTV [closed-circuit television] cameras to be placed in Iran’s seven most populous cities, to begin with, plus another five million or so pinhole surveillance cameras to be placed at the same time in another 21 cities, with all of these being directly linked in to China’s main state surveillance and monitoring systems,” said an Iran source.
“This will enable the full integration of Iran into the next generation of China’s algorithmic surveillance system that allows for the targeting of behavior down to the level of the individual by combining these inputs with already-stored local, national, and regional records on each citizen, together with their virtual data footprints,” he said.
“At the same time as this, China will start to trial its own heavily-censored version of the internet via the Great Firewall of China [that prohibits foreign internet sites], in Iran, and to begin the broad roll-out of Mandarin as a key foreign language to be learned in school, initially alongside English, but then to replace English,” one of the Iran sources added.
“By the end of this process, these seven cities in Iran will be among the top 25 most surveilled cities in the world,” he underlined.
This Sino-technologicalisation of Iran is essential to the use of Iran’s labor force by China, as envisioned in the original 25-year plan that was agreed between Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, and his China counterpart, Wang Li, last year - itself a development of the previous strategic co-operation deal agreed in 2016. Specifically, Beijing intends to build factories and other centers of business that function as extensions of existing businesses in China, with the same machinery, technology, and production lines, managed by Chinese personnel who have been overseeing identical production lines in mainland China.

“It will be exactly like a factory has been picked up from the middle of China by a giant hand and then placed into Iran, just like Apple operates in China or Chinese firms operate in various African countries,” one of the Iran sources said.
The resultant products will then be able to access Western markets by dint of another element of the new 25-year deal, which will be the new transport infrastructure to be financed and implemented by Chinese companies in Iran. Shortly after the new 25-year deal was presented by Iran’s Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri (and senior figures from the Economic and Finance Ministry, the Petroleum Ministry, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei) late last year, Jahangiri announced that Iran had signed a contract with China to implement a project to electrify the main 900 kilometer railway connecting Tehran to the north-eastern city of Mashhad. Adjunct to this, Jahangiri added that there are also plans to establish a Tehran-Qom-Isfahan high-speed train line and to extend this upgraded network up to the north-west through Tabriz.

In tandem with this increased surveillance of the population, China will use the end of the global arms embargo on Iran on 18 October to begin fast-tracked preparations for its increased military presence in Iran, as part of the ‘China-Iran Integrated Defence Strategy’ of the 25-year deal exclusively revealed by OilPrice.com in July. The top priority in these preparations will be ensuring that the military hardware and personnel that China, and Russia, are set to deploy as from the second week of November, are not vulnerable to attack. This equally applies to the oil and gas resources upon which Chinese and Russian firms are still working, despite the U.S. sanctions on Iran, under the guise of standalone contracts.

Such efforts would encompass each of the three key EW areas - electronic support (including early warning of enemy weapons use) plus electronic attack (including jamming systems) plus electronic protection (including of enemy jamming), although in the Chinese system, unlike in the traditional Western model, cyber and electronic warfare have been merged into a single discipline.

More specifically, Iran will be host to a range of technology, equipment, and systems coming from both China and Russia, as part of a three-pronged usage strategy for Iran that includes - in addition to the monitoring, surveillance of the workforce – proactive intelligence-gathering capabilities, and an extensive defensive apparatus, as part of, in particular, Russia’s standard anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) operational approach in these conditions. Included in the hardware of the military package, according to the Iran sources, will be the highly-regarded Russian S-400 anti-missile air defense system and the Krasukha-2 and -4 systems that proved successful in Syria. This equipment will function alongside the new dual-use civilian/military centers across Iran, for the air force and naval assets. “In the same way that the Russian military Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia functions alongside the civilian Bassel Al-Assad International Airport in Syria, sharing many facilities, so many of the existing Iranian airports that are designated for this dual-use will be extended to accommodate warplanes from China, and to a lesser degree, Russia,” according to one of the Iranian sources.


“This process will begin with purpose-built dual-use facilities next to the existing airports at Hamedan, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, and Abadan,” he added.
Indeed, OilPrice.com understands from these sources that the bombers to be deployed in the first instance will be China-modified versions of the long-range Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3s, with a manufacturing specification range of 6,800 kilometers (2,410 km with a typical weapons load), and the fighters will be the all-weather supersonic medium-range fighter bomber/strike Sukhoi Su-34, plus the newer single-seat stealth attack Sukhoi-57. It is apposite to note that in August 2016, Russia used the Hamedan airbase to launch attacks on targets in Syria using both Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 strike fighters.
At the same time, Chinese and Russian military vessels will be able to use newly-created dual-use facilities at Iran’s key ports at Chabahar, Bandar-e-Bushehr, and Bandar Abbas, constructed by Chinese companies. These companies will have attached to their workforces another 5,000 Chinese ‘security personnel’ on the ground to protect the Chinese projects, although many of these will be air force pilots, warship and submarine officers, special forces officers, and intelligence officers, in addition to straightforward army personnel. “This number will be increased to nearly 50,000 military and neo-military Chinese and Russian personnel within the next 14 months, with around half of that number focussed on developing and safeguarding China’s oil and gas assets in Iran and the other half being used in air force, navy, and intelligence hands-on and training roles,” one of the Iran sources said.


In tandem with all of this, as from the second week of November, China plans to build one of the biggest intelligence gathering listening stations in the world, in Chabahar.

“It will have a staff of nearly 1,000, comprising top Chinese intelligence and communications experts, plus some Russians to support their equipment and technology in the field, with a very small number of Iranians chosen from the top ranks of the IRGC in training, and will have a near-5,000 kilometer radius range,” he said.
“This will allow the station to intercept, monitor, and neutralize the C4ISR [Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance] systems used by NATO members and associate members, including U.S.-friendly countries in the region, most notably, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel,” he added.

As such, the Chabahar facility will allow Beijing to extend its reach in monitoring and disrupting the communications of its perceived enemies across an area ranging from the edge of Austria in the West (including all the former Yugoslav states, Greece, and Turkey), to Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya in the south, and back to the East across all of Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and Thailand. The Chabahar facility will also be connected into Russia’s intelligence gathering stations in and around its core military bases in Syria – the naval facility in Tartus, and the Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia – which, in turn, would allow it to be easily be tied in to Russia’s Southern Joint Strategic Command 19th EW Brigade (Rassvet) near Rostov-on-Don, which links into the corollary Chinese systems.
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Humm.
TurkishFacts4u
@TurkishFacts4U

3m

Turkish Government seizes US owned Uranium mine in #Turkey. The matter is currently before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and will be heard on April 28, 2020. Turkish Gov't says it will pay compensation & retain the mine. https://westwaterresources.net/investors/news
What!?....So did the tweet get the date wrong (not asking the poster, I jward you are just copying) or is this something new and they plan to sit on it until April 2021?

If Turkey is nationalizing and/or stealing US businesses this is huge, especially one with the potential to make fuel for nuclear weapons or reactors.
 

jward

passin' thru
Disclose.tv

@disclosetv


BREAKING - The Arab League calls on Turkey to withdraw all its forces from Arab lands and condemns the Turkish military intervention in Libya. In addition, they voted down a Palestinian proposal to condemn the normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
 

jward

passin' thru
What!?....So did the tweet get the date wrong (not asking the poster, I jward you are just copying) or is this something new and they plan to sit on it until April 2021?

If Turkey is nationalizing and/or stealing US businesses this is huge, especially one with the potential to make fuel for nuclear weapons or reactors.

It is less than clear. Some suggestion it is simply the wrong date, and a reading of the international arbitration paperwork that accompanied the tweet suggest it may be one of many key dates in the ongoing dispute settlement.
..Ell if I know, but like you, I found the concept alarming, though thus far it seems business as usual..I've brought over the rest of the pdf for (possible) clarity. Hope that helps.

WESTWATER RESOURCES PREVAILS IN KEY DECISION IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION AGAINST TURKEY

Apr 30, 2020

ICSID Tribunal Declines to Bifurcate Proceeding


CENTENNIAL, Colo.,
April 30, 2020, Westwater Resources, Inc. (Nasdaq: WWR), an energy materials development company, announced that the tribunal appointed by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has issued a procedural order that denies a request made by the Republic of Turkey to bifurcate the arbitration proceeding. As a result, a hearing on the merits is now scheduled for September 2021.


In December 2018, Westwater invoked the provisions of the bilateral investment treaty between Turkey and the United States and filed for international arbitration before ICSID as a result of the decision by the Turkish government to revoke seven uranium licenses held Adur Madencilik Ltd. (“Adur”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Westwater, located in Turkey. In March 2020, Turkey requested that the arbitral tribunal bifurcate the arbitration and decide two jurisdictional issues first, a procedural move that would have delayed the arbitration and potentially avoided a hearing to quantify damages. In its request, Turkey alleged that Westwater’s purchase of Adur in 2015 did not qualify as an investment in Turkey protected by the treaty, and also alleged that Westwater filed its arbitration demand too early.


In Procedural Order #2 issued on April 28, 2020, the arbitral tribunal denied Turkey’s bifurcation request and commented that Turkey’s jurisdictional objections that Westwater’s acquisition of Adur did not qualify as a proper investment in Turkey, was “standard fare” in investor state arbitration. With regard to that objection, the arbitral tribunal found Turkey’s position “would, if accepted, create great complexity” by “creating a chequerboard of rights” that did not fit with “public international law concepts of State responsibility.” On the issue of the timing of the commencement of the arbitration, the arbitral panel observed that “providing for a further period of negotiation would be, and would have been futile.” As a result of this decision, the tribunal will make a final decision on both objections in the course of the arbitration, rather than delaying proceedings to consider them separately.


Christopher M. Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, “This step forward in our case for compensation from Turkey is important to Westwater and our investors. We appreciate the time and effort that has gone into these proceedings by the arbitral panel and our legal team, and look forward to timely resolution of our dispute with the Republic of Turkey.”


As a result of the tribunal’s decision, a hearing on substantive issues and damages is now scheduled for September 2021. In addition, Turkey is required to submit a memorial setting forth its positions on July 20, 2020. Westwater’s memorial was filed on January 27, 2020.


About Westwater Resources



Westwater Resources (NASDAQ: WWR) is focused on developing energy-related materials. The Company’s battery-materials projects include the Coosa Graphite Project — the most advanced natural flake graphite project in the contiguous United States — and the associated Coosa Graphite Mine located across 41,900 acres (~17,000 hectares) in east-central Alabama. In addition, the Company maintains lithium mineral properties in prospective lithium brine basins in Nevada and Utah. Westwater’s uranium projects are located in Texas and New Mexico. In Texas, the Company has two licensed and currently idled uranium processing facilities and approximately 11,000 acres (~4,400 hectares) of prospective in-situ recovery uranium projects. In New Mexico, the Company controls mineral rights encompassing approximately 188,700 acres (~76,000 hectares) in the prolific Grants Mineral Belt, which is one of the largest concentrations of sandstone-hosted uranium deposits in the world. Incorporated in 1977 as Uranium Resources, Inc., Westwater also owns an extensive uranium information database of historic drill hole logs, assay certificates, maps, and technical reports for the western United States. For more information, visit www.westwaterresources.net.


Cautionary Statement

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are identified by words such as “expects,” “estimates,” “projects,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “could,” and other similar words. All statements addressing events or developments that WWR expects or anticipates will occur in the future, including but not limited to statements relating to developments in arbitration before the ICSID and ultimate outcome thereof are forward-looking statements. Because they are forward-looking, they should be evaluated in light of important risk factors and uncertainties. These risk factors and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, (a) the Company’s ability to successfully integrate Alabama Graphite Corporation’s business into its own, and the risk that additional analysis of the Coosa Graphite Project may result in revisions to the findings of WWR’s initial optimization study; (b) the Company’s ability to raise additional capital in the future; (c) spot price and long-term contract price of graphite, lithium, vanadium and uranium; (d) risks associated with our operations and the operations of our partners such as Dorfner Anzaplan, including the impact of COVID-19; (e) operating conditions at the Company’s projects; (f) government and tribal regulation of the graphite industry, the lithium industry, the vanadium industry, the uranium industry, and the power industry, and government support for domestic uranium production and nuclear power; (g) world-wide graphite, lithium, vanadium and uranium supply and demand, including the supply and demand for lithium-based batteries; (h) maintaining sufficient financial assurance in the form of sufficiently collateralized surety instruments; (i) unanticipated geological, processing, regulatory and legal or other problems the Company may encounter in the jurisdictions where the Company operates or intends to operate, including in Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada; (j) the ability of the Company to enter into and successfully close acquisitions or other material transactions; (k) the results of the Company’s lithium brine exploration activities at the Columbus Basin and Sal Rica projects, and the possibility that future exploration results may be materially less promising than initial exploration result; (i) any graphite, lithium, vanadium or uranium discoveries not being in high-enough concentration to make it economic to extract the metals; (m) currently pending or new litigation or arbitration; and (n) other factors which are more fully described in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should any of the Company’s underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those currently anticipated. In addition, undue reliance should not be placed on the Company’s forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce any revisions to any of the forward-looking statements contained in this news release.
 

jward

passin' thru
FJ
@Natsecjeff

2m

As I've been saying for months now, Qatar-Turkey-Iran is the new axis of resistance. Ironically, Qatar hosts largest US military base in the MidEast while being leading financier of Islamist causes. Washington needs to play its cards right if it wants to counter these bad actors.
 

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
FJ
@Natsecjeff

2m

As I've been saying for months now, Qatar-Turkey-Iran is the new axis of resistance. Ironically, Qatar hosts largest US military base in the MidEast while being leading financier of Islamist causes. Washington needs to play its cards right if it wants to counter these bad actors.

Add to that both Iran and Turkey have eyes on a lot of the same territory......
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
If and I do mean IF, the Turks in any way are responsible for that horrible fire in Greece than they have just committed a major war crime, not only that but it would also mean that ALL the refugees in that horrible camp are innocent of the fire (not just most of them).

Right now there is a terrible humanitarian crises brewing on that Greek island with at least 12,000 people on a relatively small island with no access to food, water or shelter; sleeping on beaches and who are too far from their original homes to get back there and some of them (especially the Afghani women) may even be "real" refugees by UN/even US standards, not just economic migrants.

I don't know what the heck the EU thinks is going to happen if they don't step in very fast to help do the proper humanitarian thing and at least put up a proper UN-style Tented refugee camp, preferably on the mainland and help Greece (who the EU forced into Bankruptcy) take care of these people properly.

They are going to need to do it anyway because Turkey has been holding a couple of million people essentially as blackmail at their border and they keep "threatening" to send them into the EU if the EU dares to try and protect Greece from an invasion.

I personally believe the Turks are going to do this anyway, and the EU should just call their bluff, set up a serious of proper camps (as has been done since WWII all over the world), and then vet each and every single person for either acceptance as a real refugee, deportation or essentially sit in jail for life.

IF the EU does not step up and help out the people on that island I predict with no psychic ability that one of two things will happen, people will start building rafts and leave (the better outcome) or they will swarm the small villages and towns on the island as a ragged mob of 12,000 plus hungry, starving, thirsty people and no matter how that ends (with dead villages, dead refugees or most likely both) it will be very very ugly.

I do understand that boats are being brought in to try to "help" but there needs to be a massive airlift as well as probably several large cargo ships to get people OFF THE ISLAND, like now or there will be heck to pay.

And if Turkey is in anyway responsible they should pay for it, eventually one way or another.
 

northern watch

TB Fanatic
Iran Conducts Annual War Drill To Thwart "Foreign Threats And Possible Invasion"

by Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Thu, 09/10/2020 - 05:57

Adding to the regional instabilities in the Gulf of Oman, near the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway, the Iranian military launched its annual three-day naval exercise on Thursday.



Iranian commander Admiral Habibollah Sardari, who is leading the drills, told Iranian state TV that the exercise would allow the military to thwart future "foreign threats and any possible invasion."

Reuters notes the exercise is being conducted in the eastern side of the strait in the Gulf of Oman, a hot spot that was the site of last year's tanker attacks.

The annual exercise, dubbed as Zolfaghar-99, will include naval, air, and ground forces. The drill will also include warships, submarines, fighter jets, and unmanned aerial systems.

The location of the exercise is situated near the world's most important oil chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz, which has large volumes of oil that flow through the strait via tankers, accounting for about 30% of all the world's oil traded in a given year.

Tensions have risen between Tehran and Washington this summer, mostly after Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard blew up a replica aircraft carrier in the strait.

Then in August, the Iranian Navy briefly boarded a Liberian-flagged oil tanker. The area has also seen a rise in Iran threatening oil tankers and US warships.

Ahead of the war drill, we noted last week how Iran's state-controlled Afkar News saying that "American Soil Is Now Within the Range of Iranian Bombs." The report bragged about the damage that the Iranian military could inflict on the Western powers:
"By sending a military satellite into space, Iran now has shown that it can target all American territory; the Iranian parliament had previously warned [the US] that an electromagnetic nuclear attack on the United States would likely kill 90 percent of Americans."
With Iran increasingly flouting its military strength ahead of the election, tensions between Tehran and Washington will continue to rise.

 

danielboon

TB Fanatic
EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3
·
8m
We agreed to start exploratory talks mediated by Germany, however Greece announced the agreement with Egypt. This means that Greece does not take dialogue seriously and so the research activities started again.
 

jward

passin' thru
EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3

49m

Update: CONFIRMED France will provide full military support to Greece in the event of a military confrontation with Turkey.

EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3

18m

Update: Greek City Times: France ordered its army to defend Greece in case of a Turkish attack. In a possible war, the Greek Navy will block the Dardanelles and France will attack the Turkish navy in the Aegean.
 
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