So Turkish President, a.k.a. Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan is about to make a high-profile visit to Tehran - the date has not yet been set - to essentially kick start the ATM (Ankara-Tehran-Moscow) coalition in Syria.

Anyone as much as hinting at such a massive geopolitical tectonic shift a few weeks ago would be branded a madman. So how did the impossible happen?

A major strategic game-changer- Russia using an airfield in Iran to send bombers against jihadis in Syria - had already taken place, with its aftermath spectacularly misreported by the usual, clueless US corporate media suspects.

Then, there's what Turkey's Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said last Saturday in Istanbul: "The most important priority for us is to stop the bloodshed [in Syria] as soon as possible." The rest are irrelevant "details."

Yildirim added Ankara now agrees with Moscow that Bashar al-Assad "could" - and that's the operative word - stay in power during a political transition (although that's still highly debatable). Ankara's drive to normalize relations with Moscow had an 'important share' in this 'policy shift'.

The 'policy shift' is a direct consequence of the failed military coup in Turkey. Russian cyber-surveillance aces - in action 24/7 after the downing of the Su-24 last November - reportedly informed Turkish intelligence a few hours before the fact. NATO, as the record shows, was mum.

Even minimalist optics suggests 'Sultan' Erdogan was extremely upset that Washington was not exactly displeased with the coup. He knows how vast swathes of the Beltway despise him - blaming him for not being serious in the fight against ISIS and for bombing the YPG Kurds - Pentagon allies - in Syria. The record does show Erdogan has mostly ignored ISIS - allowing non-stop free border crossing for ISIS goons as well as letting Turkish business interests (if not his own family) profit from ISIS' stolen Syrian oil.

Compared to Washington's attitude Moscow, on the other hand, warning Erdogan about serious, concrete facts on the ground in the nick of time. And for Erdogan, that was highly personal; the putschists reportedly sent a commando to kill him when he was still in Marmaris.

Fast forward to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif's surprise visit two weeks ago to Ankara. Zarif and his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu did discuss serious options by which the budding ATM coalition could come up with a viable exit strategy in Syria. One week later Cavusoglu went to Tehran and talked again to Zarif for five hours.

It's an uphill battle - but doable. Tehran knows very well IRGC officers as well as Hezbollah, Iraqi and Afghan fighters were killed in the Syrian war theater, and that shall not be in vain. Ankara for its part knows it cannot afford to remain forever trapped in an ideological dead end.

A flurry of Iranian statements over the last few days have all but confirmed the point made in an article I wrote for The Duran.

The Russian deployment to Shahid Nojeh base near Hamadan was first and foremost intended to be a political statement of support by Russia for Iran. This is what I said in my article which I wrote on 16th August 2016:

"This is primarily a political not a military act. TU-22M3s have the range to strike anywhere in Syria from their bases in southern Russia and have repeatedly shown their capacity to do so. There is no operational reason for them to fly to Syria from Hamadan. That Russia has chosen to fly its TU-22M3s out of Hamadan is therefore a political statement by Russia that Russia and Iran are military allies in the joint fight against Islamist terrorism in Syria."

The US Treasury Department has warned about possible retaliation if the European Commission pursues American companies like Apple, Amazon and Starbucks over tax avoidance.

The EU has been investigating whether Apple's tax dealings in Ireland, which allowed the company to pay very little income tax for its European earnings, violated European rules. Apple is suspected of using loopholes in tax laws and paying just two percent tax in Ireland, well below the official 12.5 percent. The decision is expected to be announced next month.

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, recently condemned US policy for destabilizing the Middle East. The Phnom Penh Post in an article titled, "US policy destabilized Middle East, says Hun Sen," would report that:

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday lauded his own government's efforts of bringing "peace" to Cambodia without "foreign interference" while calling out the US for destabilizing the Middle East, where he said American policy had given rise to destructive "colour revolutions".

The Post also reported that:

"Please look at the Middle East after there was interference by foreigners to create colour revolutions such as in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt and Iraq, where Sadam Hussein was toppled by the US," the premier said.

"Have those countries received any achievement under the terms of democracy and human rights? From day to day, thousands of people have been killed. This is the result of doing wrong politics, and America is wrong."

Cambodia has been under the rule of Prime Minister Hun Sen since 1998. To describe the nation as a "dictatorship" would be fairly accurate. However, unlike the simplistic narratives spun across Western and Eastern media alike, Hun Sen's rule has been marked by several turn-arounds, at least in regards to foreign policy.

The Iranian security forces eliminated the head of a Jihadi group.

The leader of a Pakistani Balochistan-based Jihadi group Abu Hafs Balochi was killed by the Iranian security forces, Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alavi said Thursday.

"The traces of the foreign spying services in creation of some insecurities in the country's borders can be seen and their leader Abu Hafas Balouchi [Abu Hafs Balochi] with the real name of Hesham Azizi has been killed," Alavi said, as quoted by the IRNA news agency.

He added that the intelligence agencies of the United States, Israel, United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia were cooperating with each other to threaten Iran's security.

In June, Iranian police smashed a terrorist cell in Sistan and Baluchestan provinces, killing five of its members and seizing a large amount of explosives.

The United States and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom have agreed on a new plan to resolving the ongoing conflict in Yemen, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced in Saudi Arabia on Thursday.

"This morning, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States met to discuss ways to break impasse in Yemen...Together with UN Special Envoy Ismail [Ould Cheikh Ahmed], we agreed on a renewed approach to negotiations with both a security and political track simultaneously working in order to provide a comprehensive settlement," Kerry said.

DC Leaks documents detail how dangerous the Open Society and George Soros were to the preservation of the Russian Federation.

The recent DC Leaks, of over 2,500 documents from George Soros NGOs, has shed a bright light on how the billionaire uses his vast wealth to create global chaos in a never ending push to deliver his neo-liberal euphoria to the peasant classes.

While Soros has managed to thoroughly destabilize the European Union by promoting mass immigration and open borders, divided the United States by actively funding Black Lives Matters and corrupting the very corruptible US political class, and destroyed Ukraine by pushing for an illegal coup of a democratically elected government using neo-nazi strong men...one country that Soros has not been able to crack has been The Russian Federation.

Russia's political pragmatism and humanist value system rooted in a traditional, "nation-state" culture most likely infuriates Soros.

Russia is Soros' white whale...a creature he has been trying to capture and kill-off for nearly a decade.

NATO-led scaremongering hit British airwaves Wednesday night when the military alliance's former secretary general said there would "be a big, big celebration in the Kremlin" if Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn becomes the next UK Prime Minister.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen told BBC's Newsnight that Corbyn's failure to confirm whether he would defend other NATO nations "has really, really undermined the credibility of NATO" and "would tempt Mr. Putin to aggression to test the resolve of NATO."

While Rasmussen admitted it was unlikely Putin would launch an open attack on another country, he claimed he could conduct "hybrid warfare" and "disinformation," similar to the "illegal annexation" of Crimea, even though it happened when Tory PM and NATO enthusiast David Cameron was in charge.

"So there is no doubt that if Mr Corbyn were to be elected prime minster of the UK there will be a big, big celebration in the Kremlin. It would really play into the hands of Mr Putin," said the former Danish prime minister.

The European Commission and Portugal have agreed to inject up to €5 billion into the country's biggest and ailing bank Caixa Geral de Depositos (CGD).

The sum will include a €2.7 billion recapitalization provision, selling €1 billion in subordinated debt to private investors and converting €960 million of contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds into equity.

After Portugal had two bank rescues in 2014 and 2015, which has undermined investor confidence, its largest bank by assets CGD needs capital because of a number of bad loans.

US Vice President Joe Biden says Washington regards Russia's Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline as a "bad deal" for Europe. Biden was speaking at a news conference in Sweden on Thursday.

Before the conference, a Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet said Washington was intending to put pressure on Stockholm over its participation in the project.

According to the report, the US regards Nord Stream-2 as a Russian political tool designed to drive a wedge between European countries with different Russian gas supply needs.


In addition, it is seen by Washington as a way to cut off Ukraine from transit revenue for Russian gas.